Health Secretary Thompson resigns
Eighth member of Cabinet to leave before 2d term
WASHINGTON -- Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced his resignation yesterday, becoming the eighth Cabinet secretary to step down since President Bush's reelection and giving Bush more Cabinet turnover at the start of his second term than any president since Richard Nixon.
Thompson, a former governor of Wisconsin who has served in the Cabinet since the beginning of the Bush administration, said at an afternoon news conference that he and his family decided it was time for him to ''move onto the next chapter in our life." White House officials said Thompson's probable successor would be Mark McClellan, a medical doctor who trained in Boston and who heads the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Thompson's resignation means at least eight of the 15 Cabinet secretaries will be new on the job in Bush's second term, a figure equal to the number of vacancies Nixon had after his 1972 reelection. A White House official said yesterday that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has agreed to stay on. But more turnover is possible, with Treasury Secretary John Snow and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta among those rumored to be leaving in the coming months.
By comparison, Bill Clinton had seven Cabinet members leave in the wake of his reelection. Ronald Reagan also had seven newly installed secretaries in his second-term Cabinet, though one of his secretaries changed jobs within the Cabinet and another post was filled by his chief of staff.
The announcements of more than 50 percent of the Cabinet leaving means that Bush will be able select replacements who will be enthusiastic supporters of his second-term agenda, analysts said. At the same time, the new faces could create a drag on quick implementation of policy because of the hurdles they face in becoming familiar with leading their agencies.
The number of resignations is surprising in that two of Bush's Cabinet members stepped down in the nearly four years that preceded his reelection. Paul O'Neill left Treasury after repeated clashes with top Bush advisers, and Mel Martinez resigned from Housing and Urban Development to run for a Senate seat in Florida.
The high turnover reflects pent-up desires among some Cabinet members who have wanted to pursue other opportunities but were committed to stay on through the election, as well as the president's wish to install a team more inclined to follow him through his second term, analysts said yesterday.
''This is a high number of resignations, and clearly it's a combination of where he wants change, and where people wear out," said Charles O. Jones, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. ''The president has this notion of a team whose purpose it is to serve, and that permeates not only the in-house staff, but also the Cabinet."
Rumsfeld's future had been uncertain since the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison became known earlier this year, but an administration official told the Associated Press that Bush believed the 72-year-old was ''the right person at this moment in our history in fighting the war on terror to lead our armed forces."
The vacancies give the president a chance to further consolidate power within his administration. He has nominated such longtime loyalists as Condoleezza Rice at State, Alberto Gonzales at Justice, and Margaret Spellings at Education. Thompson's probable successor, McClellan, previously served as a health-care policy adviser in the Bush White House and is the brother of Bush's press secretary, Scott McClellan. Mark McClellan has degrees from Harvard Medical School and MIT and did his residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital. The agency he heads is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
But installing loyalists comes with a price: The president is less likely to get unvarnished advice, and newcomers in top posts could have trouble dealing with Congress, foreign leaders, and their own bureaucracies, analysts said. The slate of former governors, members of Congress, and Washington veterans who comprised much of the first-term Bush Cabinet has now all but disappeared, said David Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
''These people aren't going to have the same kind of heavyweight stature in dealing with Congress and the outside world," he said. ''There's a premium being placed on personal connections to Bush, rather than the high-profile Republican leaders that we saw in the first term."
Canon added that all the newcomers could slow the implementation of Bush's domestic agenda, since Cabinet secretaries often need about six months on the job before they feel comfortable, and all must be confirmed by the Senate before they take over.
''This would put the brakes on an active second-term agenda," he said. ''There's a learning curve that's going to be there."
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said the president is not concerned about the large amount of turnover. He noted that jobs won't be vacant because all of the secretaries who have resigned have committed to staying until their replacements are confirmed. He attributed the pace of the resignations to the fact that so many secretaries served for the entire first term.
''There are a number of members of the Cabinet who have been serving for quite some time, longer than most secretaries have served in previous administrations," McClellan said. ''And we have put in place a process that will lead to a smooth transition. I think we're in a lot better position coming into this time than we were in 2000 to move into the next term. . . . It is also good to have some fresh new faces in place from time to time."
The Bush administration wanted Cabinet members to stay through the election, to avoid providing distractions. Now, with the election finished, White House officials are encouraging those who want to leave, and those whom Bush is nudging out, to resign relatively promptly, said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia.
''This makes a heck of a lot more sense than the way it's normally done, where secretaries dribble out over 18 months," Sabato said. ''It focuses the Bush administration on its second-term priorities."
Jones, of the Brookings Institution, said the lack of turnover during the first term and the large number of changes now suggest a president who emphasizes the management structure of his administration. ''There's an idea of loyalty, of service, that it's good for the team, whose purpose it is to serve," he said.
Thompson's resignation was not a surprise; he had long said that he intended only to serve for one term. The announcement came after Bush introduced Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, as the nominee to replace Tom Ridge, the secretary of Homeland Security.
Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com. 