-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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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