WSJ: Who Says the Cabinet Needs to Reflect Different Views from the President?

Although the administration of William Henry Harrison isn't the most acclaimed in American history, it did contribute one intriguing idea to the theory of executive government. According to historian John Baker of Louisiana State University, "Harrison had agreed that executive decisions would be based on a majority vote among members of the cabinet, with the president having one vote."

As fate would have it, Old Tippecanoe died within a month of taking office and his successor, John Tyler, promptly did away with the cabinet government concept. Good thing, too: Had Abraham Lincoln allowed his cabinet to govern with him (or for him) the Union would probably have gone to war against Great Britain, per the suggestion of his Secretary of State William Seward, instead of the Confederacy. But to listen to recent groaning over President Bush's cabinet picks, it would seem that Harrison's idea is up for revival....

The Constitution itself is vague on the subject of the cabinet: It says only that the president "may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices." But in Federalist No. 70, Alexander Hamilton specifically rebuts the idea of government by what he calls "executive council."

"No favorable circumstances palliate or atone for the disadvantages of dissension in the executive department," he writes. "They serve to embarrass and weaken the execution of the plan or measure to which they relate. . . . They constantly counteract those qualities in the Executive which are the most necessary ingredients in its composition, vigor and expedition."

Since then, it's been understood that cabinet officers are, at best, tools of presidential power; and that while they may respectfully differ with a president in private, in public they must support and implement his policies or else resign. There have, it's true, been lapses. According to John Quincy Adams, at one cabinet meeting late in the Monroe administration Treasury Secretary William Crawford called the president a "damned infernal old scoundrel" and "raised his cane, as if in the attitude to strike." For his part, Monroe "seized the tongs of the fireplace in self defense, applied a retaliatory epithet to Crawford, and told him he would immediately ring for servants and turn him out of the house." In 1868, President Andrew Johnson sought the resignation of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Stanton not only refused, he physically barricaded himself in his office.
The cabinet's role as a semi-official advisory body suffered its greatest blow during Andrew Jackson's presidency. Jackson saw cabinet appointments as convenient payoffs to his political supporters, while real advice was sought from an informal group known as the kitchen cabinet. Later on, the kitchen cabinet was given formal status when Franklin Roosevelt created the Executive Office of the President.

Some presidents tended to govern almost exclusively through their kitchen cabinet. Richard Nixon did not trust the bureaucracies, particularly the State Department, to carry out his policies. But rather than bring them to heel, he circumvented them, sending National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger on secret trips to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War and open China to the West while Secretary of State William Rogers cooled his heels at Foggy Bottom.

Then there was Bill Clinton, who came to office promising to appoint a cabinet that "looked like America." This is how he woke up next to the likes of Janet Reno. Yet here too he would not sleep in the bed he made: Nearly all of Mr. Clinton's key advisers, from Dick Morris to Leon Panetta, were outside the cabinet....