Shadow Administration

In the UK, the Opposition Party has what is known as the Shadow Cabinet. Since (in their Parliamentary system) the Prime Minister is simply the leader of the majority party, it makes perfect sense for the minority leader to have his/her analogs to the PM’s ministerial cabinet. Thus you have a shadow Defense Minister, who speaks for the minority party on defense issues; you have a shadow Foreign Minister who advises the minority leader on foreign policy issues; etc.

It’s a system that’s never really caught on here in the US. In part that’s because our political races for the White House start out as a dog-eat-dog competition against each other (at least in the party without a returning incumbent), throwing party unity to the wayside while the scramble for party leadership takes place. As opposed to the Brits, for whom party leadership is already established leading up to each election — and which may change independent of said elections.

Scott, though, is basically proposing that sort of a shadow government as part of the Dems’ race for the White House. The idea is, once it’s clear who’s going to be the Democratic nominee (after, say Super Tuesday), everyone else falls in line, the nominee announces his/her major cabinet choices, and you end up with (in theory) an array of subject matter experts ready to address all of the Administration’s people one-on-one. It’s not, say, Dean taking on Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Powell, but Dean taking on Bush, and Clark (as shadow Sec’y of Defense) taking on Rumsfeld, and whomever Dean taps to be his Sec’y of State going up against Powell, etc.

The advantages are obvious and attractive. One of them is numbers, of course (and imagine a series of debates not just between the presidential candidates, but between their administration counterparts — and not just formal debates, but obligatory head-knocking on “Meet the Press” and the like).

More importantly, though, it would provide (require developing) a coherent policy structure. While the primaries have tended to be “Hey, I’m running for President because I’m against everything George Bush is doing,” a setup like this would let the Dems demonstrate what they are for, not just against. It would let them discuss in detail how they would be actually handling matters, would present a full and multi-faceted alternative to the current Administration.

But it’s probably unlikely to happen, for a variety of reasons. First off, given the primaries run-up, it’s a big start from square one. Even assuming that the nominee has a coherent and presentable policy framework, and can find people (amid the defeated contenders and outside of them) to support it, it’s going to take a lot of time to get that developed. An elected president has a couple of months of relatively free time to do it, and even then it can take up to a year to really get things together; a competing nominee would have to put something together from relative scratch in days, because s/he would still be having to deal with further primaries and with the actual election campaign.

Secondly, unless a lot of expensive and thorough vetting is done beforehand, an attempt to define a shadow cabinet is going to almost certainly bring in some folks with unknown but exploitable flaws. Look at the troubles that candidates have had with their VP picks in the past; multiply that by five or six, and you’ll almost certainly end up with someone with a hidden drinking problem, a criminal record, some shady financial dealings, or just some lame-o ideas that the other side can exploit. It’s not just that you’re adding to your own numbers, but you’re adding to your enemy’s targets — and a single, fat target brought down can bring down a whole campaign.

Again, the elected president had time to select these folks, and has folks willing to commit to the already-won cause when asked. There’s time for extensive background checks and reviews and winnowing of candidates — and even then sometimes slip-ups do occur. The Democratic nominee would certainly have the same problems, but with no time to pre-screen them.

Unless, of course, s/he relied upon fellow party contenders, on the assumption that most of the ghosts have been searched out of their closets. That may or may not be a good assumption, but it’s unlikely that more than a couple of the contenders would settle for a shadow cabinet post, even assuming the nominee wanted them there.

Which is also a good point. Nobody “runs” for Secretary of Defense, or Energy, or State. Heck, nobody actually “runs” for Vice President — it’s just part of the package that comes about after there’s only one winner on the field, the presidential nominee. People talk about Clark, for example, as a good Defense Secretary candidate — but that’s not what he’s (ostensibly) running for, and it’s not at all clear that’s what he’s interested in. The long-term vetting and setting of party policy, policy leadership, and party leadership is just not something we in the US do, and in fact seems incompatible with our current electoral and party setup.

And, finally, one unintended consequence of this may be the further sound-bite-ization of the federal government. Cabinet secretaries have to be presentable in public, of course, and act as public advocates for the Administration’s policy. That doesn’t necessarily make them good campaigners, and turning an election into referendum on not just the presidential candidates but all of his/her cabinet choices might cause the presidential runner to emphasize traits and abilities that aren’t necessarily the same as what you want from a cabinet secretary. I don’t know if that’s been the case in the UK — but, then, in the UK, you aren’t necessarily voting for the PM (and his cabinet) directly, but for your local MP.

In short, while the idea has some promising features, it’s not something that fits into the timing and nature of American politics. Maybe I’m not thinking outside the box enough, and maybe as an alternative strategy it might be the Dems’ only chance against the White House in 2004. But even if it happens, I suspect it would be a one-shot deal, as it carries at least as many risks as it does advantages.