Let’s talk briefly about the Cabinet, as the media are paying it quite a lot of attention. What does it do? How much does it matter? First, “the Cabinet” typically refers to the heads of a slice of administrative agencies. It isn’t the heads of all of them. Not even close. 1/

Traditionally, when the government was much smaller, the Cabinet served as the president’s principal advisory body. The White House didn’t have much in the way of staff, and there was no sprawling bureaucracy solely of the president’s own to help him do the work of the office. 2/

The Cabinet was of considerable importance in the 1800s. It WAS the administrative government, though of course it lacked the formal authority the president possessed — his word was final. (“7 bays and 1 aye. The ayes have it,” Lincoln is reported to have once said). 3/

Over time, the government expanded; new administrative structures were created in the Progressive Era of the late 1800s, and these agencies were not considered part of the president’s Cabinet. The Cabinet expanded, too, adding new departments representing certain clientele. 4/

How each president dealt with their Cabinet was a matter of personal taste, but butting heads was not uncommon. Cabinet secretaries frequently negotiated directly w/ Congress on matters of funding, bypassing the president. Charles Dawes (Coolidge VP) once described Secretaries 5/

as “Vice Presidents in charge of spending” and thus a president’s natural enemies. The Cabinet began declining in importance as the president’s capacity increased. With the creation of the Executive Office of the President (EOP) in the late 1930s... 6/

...presidents got a dedicated staff solely devoted to helping the president handle the day to day affairs of government. Certain presidents since that time have attempted to have more involved Cabinets and a return to “Cabinet governance.” 7/

Under such a system, the Cabinet is more or less left to its own devices, trusted to tend to their respective policy domains and implement the president’s priorities faithfully. In practice, every president who has tried this model has been frustrated with it and abandoned it. 8/

The Cabinet has become peripheral in many ways. The EOP does much of the practical governing. JFK called Cabinet meetings “simply useless.” LBJ counseled Nixon during the transition that he “would’ve been a damn fool” to entrust the Cabinet with full information. 9/

Because the Cabinet includes so many ancillary agencies with which the president has minimal interaction, some speak of the “inner Cabinet” — State, Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice. These officials a president will normally interact with quite a lot. 10/

But the Cabinet is not the central policy making body it was in Washington or Lincoln’s time. With a sprawling administrative state and a central presidential apparatus to direct (or attempt to direct) it, presidents no longer lean on their Cabinet like they once did. 11/

Appointments are important for some agencies, of course, but in many cases presidents are looking to fill posts as a way of rewarding coalition partners or placating various interest groups. How much policy gets made in the Cabinet itself is very limited. 12/

The sort of romantic, textbook view of a president consulting their Cabinet on all important decisions is a fantasy in modern government. Instead, the EOP and the president’s core advisors fill much of that function. That’s not say the Cabinet doesn’t matter. 13/

We are talking about the heads of a considerable number of large, central agencies. But they do not fulfill the function they used to, and in many modern presidential administrations are practically marginalized. 14/14