About 30 percent of President Bush’s selections for top government jobs are women and 20 percent to 25 percent are minorities, said Clay Johnson, Bush’s presidential personnel director.
That would place this administration’s appointments in rough parity with those of former President Bill Clinton, whose administration was the most racially and ethnically diverse ever. It would represent a marked increase in diversity over the Cabinet and sub-Cabinet appointees of Bush’s father.
Johnson, who spoke this week at the Brookings Institution, said that by Friday about 230 people were to have been approved by Bush for nomination, accounting for roughly half of the 484 Cabinet, sub-Cabinet and agency positions. Not all of those names have been made public.
Johnson said the White House’s goal is to have all nominations confirmed by the August congressional recess, which would beat former Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Clinton.
White males, he said, would still be a majority, but only barely, at roughly 55 percent of the top jobs. Johnson, who was Bush’s personnel director in Austin when Bush was Texas governor, said about 35 percent of his appointments there were women, and 52 percent to 53 percent “were not white male.”
About 35 percent of Clinton’s top appointees were women, according to a study done near the end of his first year in office, and 22 percent were minorities. The Brookings Presidential Appointee Initiative, studying only President Bush’s first 126 publicly announced selections, found 27 percent of his picks were women.
Asked about the diversity in appointments so far, Johnson declined to say it resulted from any form of affirmative action and insisted “there are no quotas.”
But he acknowledged that racial and ethnic diversity, as well as gender, are considered.
“The president is very committed to diversity of thought, of professional background, of geography, ethnicity and gender,” he said. “It’s a constant challenge.”
If there are multiple candidates for a position, he said, discussion among the selection team runs something like this: “What does the rest of the sub-Cabinet look like in this department? Well, [there are] a lot of females. Wouldn’t it make sense to have a male or two in that?
“You look for people who have particular strengths or diversity, or they have a demonstrated position on this or a strong management position. It’s a wide variety of things. It’s a big puzzle.”
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He said the White House wouldn’t “get into that quota game and affirmative action game” but “if everybody comes from the same background, same part of the country, looks the same, acts the same, it’s not going to be as strong a Cabinet as if you have diversity of background, however you define that, of geography, ethnicity, gender.”
Johnson said he, Vice President Dick Cheney, Chief of Staff Andrew Card and senior adviser Karl Rove meet with Bush for about an hour weekly–they met more frequently in the first few weeks of the administration–to review about two dozen candidates.
Bush generally doesn’t review multiple candidates and select one, Johnson said. Rather, he decides to accept or reject his aides’ and Cabinet members’ recommendations. The White House has received 60,000 applications, Johnson said.
Though Bush often said during the campaign that he would reach out to Democrats, he has put only one in his Cabinet, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta. Johnson said there were “a couple” in the pipeline.
Appointees, he said, should share Bush’s philosophy so they can implement policies that “grow out of his campaign promises.”