Senior Fellow John R. Bolton

Thank you all very much. It is a tremendous honor to receive the Bradley Prize, and to be joined by so many friends in these wonderful circumstances. I want to thank the Bradley Foundation and Michael Grebe, President of the Foundation, and of course the selection committee. The Bradley Foundation's contribution to the intellectual defense of liberty in this country and around the world is beyond measure. Its support and persistence has been manifested in many ways, in particular such as its long-time partnership with the American Enterprise Institute.

There are, of course, many other people I should mention. For example, I should note Senators Lincoln Chafee and Chris Dodd, who did so much to help make me eligible for this Prize. Prominent citizens of Pyongyang, Havana, Damascus, Tehran and elsewhere also pitched in, simply by being themselves.

But while I am certainly gratified to receive this Prize, the fact of the award contains bad, indeed dangerous, news as well. No one has told me the reasons for the Bradley Foundation's decision, but I don't doubt that a significant factor was my service in the Federal government in this Bush Administration and earlier in the Reagan and Bush 41 years.

In my first significant government job, General Counsel of the Agency for International Development in 1981, I decided I should make decisions by asking myself, "what would Ronald Reagan decide if he were sitting in my chair?" I see nothing extraordinary or meritorious about following this course of action, which is a simple extrapolation from the democratic legitimacy constitutionally conferred on a President. The Supreme Court said as much in Myers v. United States: "Each head of a department is and must be the President's alter ego in the matters of that department. . . ." In a specific example, in Ponzi v. Fessenden, the Court said: "The Attorney General is . . . the hand of the President in taking care that the laws of the United States be faithfully executed." Below the Cabinet level, other Presidential appointees carry his democratic legitimacy deeper into the bureaucracy, and should have as their primary objective the implementation of the President's policies.

Yet, we all know, especially in Republican Administrations, that too often this does not happen. Political appointees "go native." They may be conservatives before they join the Federal government, and they may be conservatives after they leave, but while they are in service, they are simply filling chairs in large bureaucracies. They adopt the attitude of the bureaucracy where they work; they fight its turf fights against Presidential appointees in other bureaucracies, and even within their own Departments, rather than allying together in common philosophical struggles; and they leave their government service without having made the slightest imprint.

There are many excuses for this kind of behavior: the "missions" of their Departments do not give room for philosophical allegiance; their superiors dictate what they can do, and they have no room for maneuver; or, most depressing of all, they have been seduced by their bureaucracy into thinking they are carrying out the President's policies. This last category is the most dangerous of all, but entertaining as well. I was never more amused in my government service than to hear bureaucrats explaining to me why what they had wanted to do through countless earlier Administrations was exactly what Presidents Reagan, Bush 41, or Bush 43 had in mind when they were elected, even though these same bureaucrats almost undoubtedly voted for their opponents.

To be sure, in most government agencies, conservatives generally find themselves in more or less hostile territory. After all, belief in limited government, as the Bradley Foundation holds, means there is not a government program or service that cannot either be eliminated, trimmed or made more effective. Without exception. Even more difficult is the policy arena, where some civil servants believe they should be fundamentally responsible for policy, rather than, in Jim Baker's phrase, "the guy who got elected," and his political appointees. And yet, for the most part, the permanent bureaucracy is content with policies and programs as they are. Ironically, there are many truly professional civil servants, ready to follow our policies, who are repeatedly amazed when we do not follow them ourselves.

In fact, some on the left go even further, arguing that a President should not even be allowed full control over the bureaucracy. In my case, Senators argued that an opponent of arms control should not be made Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, or that a UN critic should not be made UN Ambassador. Following this logic, if, in 1861, there had been a Cabinet Department of Slavery Affairs, Lincoln should have been required to name a pro-slavery Secretary. This line of argument is fundamentally anti-democratic and constitutionally perverse.

We are reminded of Britain's "Yes, Minister" television series, where the senior career civil servant assures a new Minister that his entire job consists only of moving the pile of papers from his in basket to his out basket. No need to read, understand or modify them; just move the pile from one side of his desk to the other. The new Minister is delighted to hear this, and the career civil servant is delighted that the Minister accepts this "division of labor." Too many of our political appointees took lessons from that program. I did not. I had my battles with the bureaucracy, which probably explains why I am here tonight. So let me make a confession. On many occasions, during this and prior Administrations, knowingly and willfully, I have committed acts of conservatism. It gets worse. I enjoyed every minute of it.

We must think ahead to future Administrations, not just to policy, and not just to personnel, which we now appreciate from bitter experience are synonymous. We must have people who are both "red and expert," as Mao Tse-tung liked to say. But we need something more than that. We need people who are red, expert, and determined not to be absorbed into the wallpaper. I doubt that this characteristic is genetic, and I confess I am not exactly sure how to train and instill people with it. Nonetheless, if we find ourselves, sooner or later, with another conservative President, the real challenge is not just filling its senior positions with right-minded people. We must find ways to avoid the seduction of the permanent bureaucracy; to remind appointees that fighting bureaucratic turf fights is not why conservative Presidents are elected; and above all, to make their government service philosophically productive.

That is something to which many in this audience could and should contribute, a kind of basic training for political appointees. Success could be measured by the commission of so many acts of conservatism in government service, that there is no need to award future Bradley Prizes to note their uncommonness.

Thank you very much.

John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI.