Heidi Li's Potpourri

A letter to President Obama (or should I say "Jock in Chief")?

Dear President Obama:

One of your Cabinet Secretaries, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is striking a chord with women abroad and at home as she mixes in, with her discussion of global warming and economic security, the issue of women's empowerment, as a matter of democracy and social justice. Might you consider taking a lesson from the Secretary of State? If you did, you would incorporate her message about the importance of women to democratic politics and economic security into every aspect of your own programs and many of your public statements.

Those of us interested in the emancipation of American women would be delighted to hear you echo Secretary Clinton when she states, "I think that it’s imperative that nations like ours stand up for the rights of women. It is not ancillary to our progress; it is central" or "We have to highlight the importance of inclusion for women. We have to make clear that no democracy can exist without women’s full participation; no economy can be truly a free market without women involved." (Secretary Clinton, February 20, 2009).

You, Mr. President, are in a flurry of summits, initiatives, and speeches, leading up to the announcement of your budget this Thursday, February 26, 2009. Those who wonder whether you understand the significance of women in the U.S. economy need to hear you speak at home in terms your Secretary of State speaks abroad. We need to hear this partly because many of us doubt whether you are as forward thinking about women's issues as we would expect a Democratic president who will be seeking our votes again ought to be but also because we doubt you are as forward thinking about economic matters as we expect a Democratic president to be. Women do not dominate the boardrooms and executive suites of Fortune 500 companies; they do depend heavily on Social Security; they are a major source of small business initiatives in this country. When you discuss "entitlements" or "business" this means something different to the majority of women than it does to the majority of men.

Even in symbolic ways, we need you to do better if you want us to trust your commitment to women's empowerment. Just recently you cooperated with Men's Journal, a men's lifestyle magazine, that along with so many other publications, decided to devote a cover story to you. This is the cover:

For those who cannot read the headline, running alongside a photo of you holding a football in your hands, it says: "Barack Obama, Jock in Chief: His Moves, His Trash Talk & His Weekly Power Basketball Game."

Mr. President, I am not sure whether you are proud of being depicted as a trash-talking jock-in-chief - that seems to me to fulfill both sexist and racist stereotypes you yourself might find personally offensive. But the magazine editors certainly mean this headline to be laudatory, although they would never write the same sort of headline about a woman president or cabinet secretary and mean it to have the connotations of hipness and coolness they meant this one to carry. ("Trash-talking" is not a phrase used to praise powerfully positioned women.)

You, Mr. President, could by word and deed use your bully pulpit to discourage this sort of sexist pigeonholing not only of yourself but therefore of what power is supposed to look like or be like. I have written before about the need for you to convene a Presidential Empowerment of Women Advisory Board, to be as significant and influential with you as you suggest your PERAB and PIAB (Economic Recovery and Intelligence boards, respectively). This is becoming more urgent, not less. If you want the American economy and American democracy to remain strong, you must empower the 51 percent of the population who are women to participate as fully and on fair terms in our society.

Yours truly,

Heidi Li Feldman, founder and president, 51 Percent

Presidential Advisory Boards - Part Three: A multiplicity of models for a Presidential Empowerment of Women Advisory Board

Dwight Eisenhower did not invent the Presidential advisory board. Presidents before and after have created such bodies. But apart from P(F)IAB - the Presidential (Foreign) Intelligence Advisory Board initiated by Eisenhower and continued by every president since (exception: Jimmy Carter) -  most Presidential advisory boards have been short term endeavors, often although not always lacking teeth. One exception was Ronald Reagan's economic advisory board ("PEPAB"), which is what President-elect Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board ("PERAB") sounds like to me, so far. Reagan's board was not continued by his successors but it was highly powerful within his administration; given the high profile President-elect Obama is giving to PERAB it certainly seems like PEPAB, the group that kept Reagan firmly in the grips of supply-side economic theory and ideas about trickle-down economic benefits. The similarity lies not in economic philosophy necessarily (we do not yet know PERAB's theoretical bent or if it will have one) but in the importance attached to the board by the respective President or President-to-be.

To gain an idea of the multiplicity of the models, consider this totally nonexhaustive list of the Presidential advisory boards that have existed from FDR's time to the present:

• Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 9387 - Establishing an Advisory Board on Just Compensation and Prescribing Its Functions
• Harry S. Truman, Statement by the President on Reestablishing the Advisory Board on Just Compensation
• Harry S. Truman, Statement by the President on the Advisory Board on International Development
• Lyndon Johnson, Statement by the President Upon Appointing the Air Quality Advisory Board
• Gerald R. Ford: Executive Order 11962 - President's Advisory Board on International Investment
• Jimmy Carter, Executive Order 11070 - Presidential Advisory Board on Ambassadorial Appointments
• William J. Clinton - Executive Order 13050 - President's Advisory Board on Race
• [William J.] Clinton Establishes Advisory Board on Tribal Colleges and Universities
• [George W.] Bush Names 21 Individuals to President's Advisory Board on Historically Black Universities and Colleges

This highly incomplete sampling demonstrates that in developing the idea of Presidential Empowerment of Women Advisory Board ("PEWAB"), the various templates will have to be surveyed. Which boards had teeth? Why? Looking at precedents can help with such questions, questions that must be answered if PEWAB is to be influential and reestablished by the Presidents that follow the 44th one, assuming the need for it continues. But for now the sample is worth reviewing because it reveals the range and flexibility of the advisory board tool.

Third in a series - see Part One or Part Two

Presidential Advisory Boards - Part Two: Do past members indicate objective, bipartisan input being provided to the President?

As I wrote in Part One, PERAB, President-elect Obama's new economic advisory board self-styles itself on Dwight Eisenhower's original PFIAB. So was the last Presidential economic advisory board, created by Ronald Reagan. Members of Ronald Reagan's President's Economic Policy Advisory Board:

Arthur F. Burns, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Counsellor to President Nixon, and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Eisenhower.
Milton Friedman, senior research fellow, the Hoover Institution, and Nobel Laureate in economics.
Alan Greenspan, president, Townsend-Greenspan & Co., Inc., and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ford.
Arthur Laffer, Charles B. Thornton Professor of Business Economics, University of Southern California; president, A. B. Laffer Associates.

James T. Lynn, managing partner, Jones, Day, Reavis, and Pogue; former Director, Office of Management and Budget; and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Paul McCracken, Edmund Ezra Day University Professor of Business Administration at the University of Michigan; former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Nixon.
George Shultz, president, Bechtel Group, Inc.; former Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Labor, and Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
William E. Simon, former Secretary of the Treasury.
Thomas Sowell, senior fellow, the Hoover Institution.
Herbert Stein, senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute; former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Nixon.
Charls E. Walker, chairman, Charls E. Walker Associates, Inc.; former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.
Walter B. Wriston, chairman, Citibank/Citicorp.

George Shultz will serve as Chairman of the Board. Martin Anderson, Assistant to the President for Policy Development, will serve as Secretary to the Board.

Hmmm..lots of Nixonians, lots of Hoover Institute types, plenty of neo-classical economic thinkers. Not the sort of group that seems likely to have provided unbiased, nonpartisan advice.

How will PERAB differ in this respect? We citizens need to know who the members will be sooner rather than later.

On Presidential Advisory Boards - Part One: Just exactly what is the President's Economic Recovery Board?

"The President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board..is modeled on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board created by President Eisenhower to provide rigorous analysis and vigorous oversight to our intelligence community by individuals outside of government, individuals who would be candid and unsparing in their assessment. This new board will perform a similar function for my administration as we formulate our economic policy. "
-Barack Obama, November 26, 2008

Since reading about the new President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board ["PERAB"}, I have been curious about presidential advisory boards. I decided to check on how often they have been used and for what purposes. As it turns out, presidential advisory boards are not that uncommon, and the most recent President to use one dedicated to economic matters is Ronald Reagan. As for Eisenhower's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board "PFIAB", it has been in operation since then under one name or another except under President Carter, who canceled it - Ronald Reagan reinstated it.

According to the White House webpage on The President's Intelligence Advisory Board and Intelligence Oversight Board (emphases mine):

Introduction

The President's Intelligence Advisory Board and Intelligence Oversight Board (PIAB) provides advice to the President concerning the quality and adequacy of intelligence collection, of analysis and estimates, of counterintelligence, and of other intelligence activities. The PIAB, through its Intelligence Oversight Board, also advises the President on the legality of foreign intelligence activities.

The PIAB currently has 16 members selected from among distinguished citizens outside the government who are qualified on the basis of achievement, experience, independence, and integrity.

The Role of The Board

Unique within the government, the PIAB traditionally has been tasked with providing the President with an independent source of advice on the effectiveness with which the intelligence community is meeting the nation's intelligence needs and the vigor and insight with which the community plans for the future.

The History Of The Board

The Board was established in 1956 by President Eisenhower and was originally called the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities. It gained its current name under President Kennedy and it has served all Presidents since that time except for President Carter. A record of chairpersons is available.

For over four decades the PIAB has acted as a nonpartisan body offering the President objective, expert advice on the conduct of U.S. foreign intelligence. This role reflects the vital assistance that intelligence provides the President in meeting his executive responsibilities. The President must have ample, accurate and timely intelligence; and most recent Presidents have sought the assistance of a separate, unbiased group -- the PIAB -- to advise them on intelligence matters.

PIAB Operations

Through meetings with intelligence principals, substantive briefings, and visits to intelligence installations, the PIAB seeks to identify deficiencies in the collection, analysis, and reporting of intelligence; to eliminate unnecessary duplication and functional overlap; and to ensure that major programs are responsive to clearly perceived needs and that the technology employed represents the product of the best minds and technical capabilities available in the nation.

PIAB Product

Independent of the intelligence community and free from any day-to-day management or operational responsibilities, the PIAB is able to render advice which reflects an objective view of the kinds of intelligence that will best serve the country and the organizational structure most likely to achieve this goal. The effect of the Board's recommendations over the years has been to influence the composition and structure of the intelligence community, the development of major intelligence systems, and the degree of collection and analytic emphasis that is given to substantive areas.

In carrying out their mandate, the members of the PIAB enjoy the confidence of the President and have access to all the information related to foreign intelligence that they need to fulfill their vital advisory role.

Assuming the P(F)IAB is really the model, I will quite curious to see who the additional 14 or so members of the new PERAB will be; how bipartisan it will be; what will ensure its objectivity and lack of bias; and what the full scope of its reviewing authority is going to be. Which Republicans will be serving? Will there be representatives from various economic schools of thought such as the Marxist School, the Institutionalist School, and the Keynesian School, just to name three of the major schools identified by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco? Will the members of the committe be able to/be expected to review the FEC, the FTC, the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, the Department of Commerce, the Treasury Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Pentagon, etc. to gather all information related to economic recovery?

As these questions indicate, if the model is PIAB, PERAB could be an extremely wide-ranging and influential body. Note it will operate independently of legislative oversight, reporting to the President and not to Congress. Maybe this is fine, maybe it is not - much depends on just how influential and wide-ranging President-elect Obama intends it to be. We citizens need some details about this newly minted Advisory Board.

Based on a quick survey of the literature, the last President to appoint an advisory board specifically dedicated to economic matters was Ronald Reagan, who created the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board ("PEPAB"). PEPAB is not currently in existence; it is unclear whether PERAB is modeled upon it.

According to Martin Anderson, a historian and Reagan domestic policy advisor,  Reagan's economic policy board was also modeled on Eisenhower's PFIAB (remember Reagan reinstated PFIAB after Carter had discontinued it (see Anderson, Revolution: The Reagan Legacy, p. 261)). Anderson describes the formation of the PEPAB, and notes that it was meant to silence potential outside critics by bringing them "inside the Reagan Tent" (p. 262); it also served to empower Anderson, who mistrusted other Reagan administration team members such as David Stockman (pp. 262-64). PEPAB reported directly to the President to the consternation of the Treasury Department and, according to Anderson, to Don Regan. Anderson credit PEPAB with the creation and implementation of "Reaganomics" (p. 267).

Assuming Anderson is correct, and assuming that the new PERAB is intended to have the same force as the other self-styled economic descendant of Eisenhower's foreign intelligence advisory board, we citizens definitely need more details about President-elect Obama's intentions for PERAB.