Public affairs enters the US President's subcabinet: creating the first assistant secretary for public affairs (1944 –1953) and subsequent developments

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.293
• Date: 01 August 2008
• Author: Mordecai Lee
• Published date: 01 August 2008

Public affairs enters the US

President’s subcabinet: creating

the first assistant secretary for

public affairs (1944 –1953) and

subsequent developments

Mordecai Lee*

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA

A majority of US cabinet departments now have an assistant secretary for public affairs.

As a subcabinet office, such appointments are presidential nominations and require

Senate confirmation. Given Congress’s general hostility to public affairs in the US

executive branch, how did such a position first come into being, thereby creating the

precedent and a template for other departments? This historical inquiry identifies the US

State Department as the first with an assistant secretary for public affairs. However, the

office only gradually emerged as a staff position, with Congress never having

an opportunity to vote on the principle of creating such a subcabinet office. Once

established, other cabinet departments gradually followed suit, to the point that such

positions are now routine in Washington, DC.

Copyright #2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Introduction

The practice of public affairs by government is

not as well established in public administration

as it is in the corporate world. For example, a

majority of the research published in this

journal relates to the private sector, with fewer

relating to the public sector. Some recent

examples of the latter include Lee (2002),

Yeomans and Adshead (2003), Gregory (2005)

and Fairbanks et al. (2007).

In particular, the practice of public affairs in

the US public administration is hampered by

hostility to the function in American political

culture. One of the major factors for that is the

antagonism of the US Congress. The federal

legislative branch has traditionally feared

executive branch propaganda, criticized pub-

lic affairs as puffery and hucksterism, viewed it

as a waste of taxpayer funding, and sought to

prevent agencies from being able to generate

public support that would, in turn, reduce

Congress’s power over those agencies. That is

why Congress has enacted many limitations on

the overt practice of public affairs in executive

branch agencies, beginning with a 1913 ban on

employing ‘publicity experts’ and a criminali-

zation of administrators’ lobbying of Congress

Journal of Public Affairs

J. Public Affairs 8: 185–194 (2008)

Published online in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscie nce.wiley.com) DO I: 10.1002/pa.29 3

*Correspondence to: Mordec ai Lee , Unive rsity o f

Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Suite 6000, 161 West Wisconsin

Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53203-2602, USA.

E-mail: mordecai@uwm.edu

Copyright #2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Journal of Public Affairs, August 2008

DOI: 10.1002/pa