Selection and Tenure of Bureau Chiefs in the National Administration of the United States II1

Arthur W. Macmahon

American Political Science Review, 1926, vol. 20, issue 4, 770-811

Abstract: The Public Health Service, the Coast Guard, and (under very recent legislation) the Coast and Geodetic Survey constitute a special group of bureaus, distinguished by the fact that their heads are selected as a matter of rule from groups of higher subordinates who are originally admitted by non-competitive examinations and advanced under the closed systems of commissioned personnel peculiar to these services. In the case of the surgeon general of the Public Health Service, the statutes say merely that he shall be appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate. A regulation of the service, however, provides that the surgeon general shall be selected from the commissioned medical officers above the rank of “passed assistant surgeon”—next to the lowest grade. The President presumably could override this regulation, and indeed an opinion of the Attorney General has indicated that his choice is not confined to the list of commissioned officers by any law relating to the service. In fact, however, the principle has been observed in the selection of the four surgeons general appointed since 1879. This system of selecting the heads of the service guarantees training and acquaintance with its problems, but—especially in view of the flexible type of assignments so characteristic of the Public Health Service and so useful in freshening a permanent personnel—the options open to the President and the Secretary of the Treasury are numerous enough to leave room for the possibility of a sort of administrative politics.

Date: 1926
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