PlusPolitics & Government

The Strange Idea That a Cabinet Officer Should Report to the President

by Donald Devine

A Trump administration agency head’s struggle against bureaucracy illuminates the need to subordinate executive agencies to the president’s will.

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Then-president Donald Trump listens to then-U.S. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt speak during an event touting the administration’s environmental policy in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., July 8, 2019.

Carlos Barria/Reuters

David L. Bernhardt, former U.S. secretary of the interior, deputy secretary, solicitor, and an independent agency commissioner, lets us in on an intriguingly strange secret about what insiders like him would recognize was an exceptional command he received from a U.S. president.

In 2018, President Donald Trump called in Deputy Bernhardt and informed him that, “You’re going to be running the ship [at Interior] for a while,” as acting secretary. And the president added, “Do you have any questions?” The savvy Bernhardt only asked one: “Who do I report to?” He tells us that “President Trump looked at me quizzically. ‘You report to me,’ he said.”

DD

About the Author

Donald Devine

Donald Devine is a senior scholar at the Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C. He served as President Ronald Reagan’s civil service director during his first term in office. A former professor, he is the author of eleven books, including his most recent, The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order, and Ronald Reagan’s Enduring Principles.

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