Washington: The White House has forbidden members of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet to address the Democratic National Convention this month, a stark break from past policy that is intended to avoid the appearance that the administration’s final months are being consumed by the politics of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
In 2012, as he campaigned for re-election, five members of the president’s Cabinet addressed the party convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. But in issuing the prohibition this year, Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, decided to “send a signal about the primacy of the Obama administration’s responsibility to manage the government and serve the American people,” said Jennifer Friedman, the deputy White House press secretary.
It is hardly the first judgement that Obama’s team has had to make about how deeply to get involved as the president takes on an increasingly active role in the raucous campaign to succeed him — decisions that involve not only considerations of policy and appearances, but legal ones, as well.
Federal law requires top appointees to carefully separate their official duties from political ones, and those distinctions have taken on added significance this year, given the unusual nature of the race to succeed Obama.
White House officials believe that the campaign presents a particularly tricky set of challenges: a presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, who routinely prompts controversy with his provocative statements and positions; a presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Clinton, who once served in the administration and has considered several Cabinet secretaries as potential running mates; and a still-popular president who looms over the race.
“This is largely an effort to delineate as clearly as possible the public, official governing responsibilities we have at the White House, and separate that from politics,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary.
Administration officials must walk a fine line, one that sometimes involves hairsplitting differences. Hurling a personal insult at Trump from a White House lectern? Off limits. But Earnest can note the many ways in which Trump’s positions are at odds with the president’s.
Headlining a fund-raiser for Clinton? No problem for a Cabinet secretary, as long as the secretary does not use his or her official title or ask for contributions.
The White House counsel, Neil Eggleston, and members of his staff have stepped up their warnings to White House officials and other top administration appointees to exercise care that their political activity stays within the law, which limits the use of official resources for partisan activities.
At the same time, lawyers at the Office of Special Counsel, which enforces the federal law that restricts partisan activity by government officials, have increased their investigations of federal employees and have been warning Obama’s top advisers and appointees to watch what they say and do when it comes to the presidential campaign.
The president and vice president are exempt from many of the legal strictures. But even Obama has taken precautions to separate his role as the head of the Democratic Party from his official duties. When Obama taped his endorsement video last month for Clinton at the White House, it was done in the Map Room — part of the residence, rather than his West Wing offices — and Earnest was quick to note that it was “not filmed at government expense.”
This week, when Obama travels to North Carolina for his first campaign appearance with Clinton, the cost of the trip on Air Force One will be shared between the White House and Clinton’s campaign, according to a complicated formula worked out by his legal counsel to comply with federal election law.
The risk of ethics breaches is increased by the sheer number of Cabinet secretaries active on the campaign trail. A handful have publicly endorsed Clinton, and three — Julian Castro of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Thomas E. Perez of the Labor Department and Tom Vilsack of the Agriculture Department — routinely surface on lists of potential vice-presidential candidates.
White House officials emphasised that there had been no finding that Cabinet secretaries were barred by law from speaking at the convention, although Obama’s lawyers concluded before the 2012 election that they must not use the title of “secretary” if they did.
“They’re pitching a no-hitter in the ninth inning of the administration, and why screw it up at the end?” said Norman Eisen, a former special counsel for ethics and government reform under Obama. “Historically, the last months of an administration are a time when people get lazy and things go off the rails, so extra vigilance is called for.”
The Hatch Act, which was enacted after officials in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration were accused of using New Deal programmes to sway the outcome of the 1938 congressional elections, is designed to prevent political favouritism and coercion in the administration and ensure that citizens receive the same service from the federal government, no matter their political affiliation.