Numerous articles have appeared in the past year castigating the White House for being slow in coming up with nominees to Presidentially nominated positions. For example, on January 20 this Al Kamen piece in the Washington Post said that Obama had filled 305 and nominated 396 of 515 positions tracked by the Brookings Presidential Appointments Initiative, whereas Bush had filled 348 and nominated 420 positions at the end of his first year. This created more hair pulling on at least one blog.
Of course, the Head Count feature offered by the Washington Post doesn't provide a direct comparison between Obama and Bush. Meanwhile, the Brookings Presidential Initiative website offers no data either.
The White House Transition Project does provide detailed information however, and it seems to show that Obama is not behind, with 561 nominations sent to the Senate his first year, compared to 496 for Bush.
The reason I'm writing about this now is that it came up the other night in a discussion I had with a friend-- who was under the impression that the Obama administration was way behind in filling positions. When I said he was running at about the same rate as Bush, he was surprised. But on reflection, the media over the past year has been filled with scandalously sounding stories about how this or that agency is understaffed.
While initially these stories may be helpful in shedding light on a particular area where administration decision makers need to be prodded, they become harmful if they start to lead to a general sense of incompetence that doesn't reflect reality. This dynamic seems to be common the press's coverage of many Obama initiatives, including the stimulus package and programs like cash for clunkers.
The White House Transition Project has extensive data for cross comparisons available, including historical data, and is tracking a larger number of positions than the Washington Post.
As of 1/20/2010, the Obama administration had announced 569 positions (compared to 513 for Bush), the Senate had received 561 nominations (compared to 496 for Bush), and the Senate had confirmed 353 nominations (compared to 360 in the Lott-Daschle Senate). This puts the Obama administration slightly ahead of the "record" pace of the Bush administration, and Obama + Senate only slightly behind Bush.
The WHTP explains as follows:
"Throughout most of this first year, the Obama White House has tracked the Bush White House on appointments," notes Terry Sullivan, WHTP Executive Director. "These data might suggest for the first time just how common the appointments process is for all new administrations."
However, a large backlog remained in the Senate as of 1/20/2010:
The Senate backlog continues to grow, now reaching over 200 pending nominations, not counting the large number of nominations to ambassadorships and federal attorney positions, which WHTP does not track. The 208 in the Senate backlog is about 70 more than the Senate had backlogged at the end of 2001, amounting to a 53% increase over the Bush backlog. "I think this performance lag tells us something about the Senate's capacity for vetting appointments," Terry Sullivan, who heads the appointments study, points out, "something we didn't know before." While the Executive Branch has a substantial operational capacity charged with vetting, located in the White House and elements of the FBI and OGE, the Senate must rely on its own policy-oriented, committee staff to pull double duty. "When the Senate's policy work fills out in the second half of the year," Professor Sullivan notes, "vetting slows down dramatically. There is simply a limited capacity for vetting."
Furthermore, the Obama administration's pace in nominating judicial appointments had been much slower compared to Bush's. Obama had 15 of 44 judges confirmed versus 33 of 76 for Bush.
But in overall nominations and Cabinet Department nominations (where Obama has sent 331 full time posts to the Senate and gotten 266 confirmed, compared to 298 and 254 respectively for Bush), Obama is running at about the same rate as the Bush administration.
Not that a strict 1 year out comparison is very good to begin with-- a year is an arbitrary deadline. That means an administration that appointed no one for 364 days but got 300 nominated and confirmed on January 19 would look better than one that got 299 nominated and confirmed by June 1, but no one else until January 21. What's really needed is a metric that measures the total "volume" of time x number of people nominated and confirmed.
However, we don't have that information available as far as I know. (The Al Kamen article suggested that Obama's nominations were more front-loaded than Bush's, so he probably beats Bush, but we can't be sure). According to the facts available, this White House is NOT lagging on Presidential appointments overall. So this source of frustration can really go away.