Dozens of economists have built their reputations on studies of location theory in economic affairs and thousands of businesses spend millions of dollars each year seeking the best location for new steel mills, automobile assembly plants, McDonald's Restaurants or Holiday Inns, to maximize clientele and minimize transportation and distribution costs. Yet little attention has been given to "location theory" in terms of the efficiency of government operations or its effects on foreign affairs.
Countless hours are spent in the design of any new business office building deciding exactly where to locate the offices of senior personnel with relation to each other. The objective is to facilitate interpersonal contact between key personnel, while retaining adequate contact between operational vice presidents and line personnel of their divisions. Memoranda and formal meetings with attendant more or less rigid agenda are no substitute for a short walk down the hall for an informal discussion of a new idea or base-touching regarding a possible new policy or program. Anyone with program experience in any department of the U.S. government can attest to the importance of such access in developing programs.
Perhaps the most disastrous event in U.S. diplomacy in recent years was the decision to move the operations of the Department of State from "Old State" (now the Executive Office Building) across town to the Old War Department Building (now New State).
Those who have wondered how National Security Council functionaries could run away with sensitive new foreign policy initiatives without the knowledge of either the president or secretary of state need look no further for an explanation than the isolation of the state department, i.e. the secretary of state, from casual access to the chief of state. A maverick of State Dean Atcheson could, after a brief phone call to President Truman's appointment secretary, simply walk a few hundred feet through an access tunnel to the White House and confer with the President in person. Yes, the secretary still has access to the president when he needs it. And, yes, it is only a fifteen minute ride from 21st and C to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But between the hassle of appointments and elevators and cars and traffic, the point is that such off-schedule meetings rarely take place today. There is much validity in the old saying, "out of sight, out of mind". One has only to re-read Present at the Beginning to appreciate how close the relationship between President Truman and his secretary of state was during the critical post-war period during which the Marshall Plan took form and the first crucial responses to the Cold War were taken. To be sure, the two secretaries of state of that period, Marshall and Atcheson, were exceptional men, as was President Truman himself. But can anyone believe the secretary/president relationship could have been so close had their physical proximity been more distant?
President Eisenhower created the National Security Council for the purpose of coordinating all programs, projects, and proposals of the several departments and agencies involved in foreign affairs, to assure that he would receive an unbiased evaluation of them, together with all possible options. This would have been a natural job for a small group of officials representing these several agencies plus some outside specialists adjunct to the Office of the Secretary of State. But with the secretary out of sight (and out of mind?) across town, it is understandable why a new White House group was brought into being. Now that we've seen the danger of a group formulating policy absent the normal clearance/coordination machinery, perhaps the time has come to rethink matters in terms of "location theory". Would General Haig have been so insistent on defining his role in the Reagan Administration as "Vicar for Foreign Affairs" had he had less experience with White House independence in foreign policy, or more expectation of ready access to the president as secretary of state?
Political scientists have for years debated the desirability of modifying American government to incorporate some of the benefits of the parliamentary system. Most agree that the two systems have traveled roads apart for too long to permit grafting notions of cabinet responsibility onto presidential government. But there are other considerations that suggest re-thinking our current approach. Few will recall, for example, that historically the secretary of sState was responsible for inter-state relations during the first hundred years or so of the U.S. experience. He is still, by law, the one responsible for maintaining the archives of intra-state accords. But having neglected this domestic aspect of his duties for so long in favor of his external responsibilities, we find that a "Domestic Council" has been created as part of the White House Office, taking over many of these duties, much as the National Security Council has taken over responsibility for coordinating foreign policy and assuring that the president receives a fair evaluation of all policy options. Not the least catastrophic result of the State Department's loss of authority was the removal in 1981 of the foreign economic policy initiative to the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Any believer in the holism of foreign policy might wonder how a Foreign Office is supposed to formulate and carry out a realistic policy divorced from the all-important (short of war) foreign economic policy lever. And any observer of the effects of "loose-gun" arms sales and the singled-handed unauthorized, diversion of millions of unappropriated dollars in proceeds to finance a war in another part of the globe without so much as a word of caution from the secretary of state or secretary of defense, might reasonably think he has the answer.
Under President Truman, the White House Office started out as a small house-keeping operation intended to give an over-worked president in-house expertise to keep up with what was going on in the burgeoning post-war U.S. government. It has grown to a size where it requires its own staff director and internal bureaucracy to keep track of what is going on in the White House. And, as we've just learned, even the staff director can lose track of things with disastrous results.
Location theory considers such variables as access of superiors to lower levels, information exchange, transportation expense of inputs, and distribution costs of final product. In government, inputs are almost always information. Cost of transmission (transportation) is minimal. The main consideration is time and access to the final user (the president or secretary, as the case may be). The final product is--at least in foreign affairs--information input for policy formulation, or policy for implementation--generally through international negotiations. Theory thus reinforces the notion that, at least in foreign affairs, and perhaps in government in general, timeliness and ready access to the president is more important than casual access to the troops and far outweighs the negligible cost of transporting (communicating) either inputs or outputs. Perhaps the time has come simply to clean house in the White House Office Building, recognizing that we've been down a wrong road, and trying a new route--not parliamentary government, and not cabinet responsibility. Perhaps just "cabinet access".
Location Theory would suggest that every member of the president's cabinet should be given an office in the White House Office Building with enough additional space for his own private secretariat of perhaps three or four key personnel. Day to day operation of his department could be left in the hands of a deputy secretary. As in parliamentary government, secretaries would continue to have offices in their departments as well. And both secretaries and deputy secretaries (plus under secretaries and assistant secretaries where circumstances warranted) could always ride across town in either direction for consultation. But the responsible executives would be available and accessible to see the president when required, or, within reason, merely when touching base seemed appropriate. A whole level of government could be eliminated (White House staffs and committees), the president would rely on the men/women he considered most experienced and capable of giving advice in the field under consideration when he appointed them to head their department, departments would feel more confident of top level consideration of their projects, knowing their secretary had immediate access to the president. And informal coordination between the most senior officials of government would be possible with all of them housed in the same building and only a few doors from each other, reducing, if not eliminating, the possibility of future "loose guns" in the bureaucracy.
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