Inauguration Part II
From The West Wing (Season 4, Episode 15)
Categories:
Run time: 4:29
Clip Description: Illustrates the formal appointment of a member of the President’s staff
American Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: This clip can showcase discussions that Presidential staff have along with the influence of bureaucratic relations.
Possible Uses in Classroom: This clip works for discussions of Presidential staff and bureaucratic regulations.
Discussion Questions
- The executive branch is staffed three different ways at once. White House staff are chosen by the president and serve at his pleasure — no Senate vote, no term, no cause needed to remove them. Cabinet secretaries and agency heads go through confirmation. Career civil servants are hired on merit and are difficult to fire. Each arrangement is protecting against something different. Name what each one guards against, and say which of the three you would strengthen if you could only pick one.
- Everyone who takes a federal post swears to support and defend the Constitution. Nobody swears loyalty to the president. But a White House staffer’s job, access, and future all run through one person. What actually makes that oath operative rather than ceremonial — name a mechanism, not a sentiment. And if you took a job like this at twenty-six, what would you decide in advance was the line?
For AP Students
AP Comparative Government and Politics
Unit 2: Political Institutions
Topics: 2.3 Executive Systems; reaches 2.1 and 2.2 on parliamentary, presidential and semi-presidential systems
Skill: Country Comparison
Big idea: Power and Authority
Course countries: United Kingdom, Russia, Mexico
The formal appointment of a member of the president’s staff, done with ceremony. Every executive has to staff a government, and how it does so — out of the legislature, out of a permanent civil service, or out of a personal network — is one of the sharpest differences between systems. An American scene works here because the course expects students to compare outward from the case they already know.
Discussion questions
- An American president appoints a cabinet from outside the legislature. A British prime minister appoints one from inside it. Name one consequence of each arrangement for how loyal a minister is, and to whom.
- Explain the difference between political appointees and a permanent civil service. Name one advantage of each for a government trying to get something done quickly.
- In Russia, senior appointments run heavily through personal networks around the president. Explain what that does to the incentives of the people appointed.
Short activity
Staff a government three ways (15 minutes). Students write one sentence each on how a new leader in the United Kingdom, Mexico and Russia fills the top of a government: who they may choose from, who has to approve the choice, and who can remove that person later. Three sentences, three countries, the same three questions. The third question is where the systems separate most clearly, and it is the one students have usually never been asked.
Clip hosted on Critical Commons.