Making Mr. Secretary: Experts Weigh In on Skills Needed by the Next DHS Chief

Because there is still years’ worth of work to do in turning DHS into a cohesive unit.

“You need someone who understands that it is still a work in progress, that there will be problems along the way, and who has a sense of accountability built into their head,” Ridge said, adding later, “We left Chertoff work and he’s going to leave the next person work.”

Talking to Congress

Just about all parties agree that when selecting the DHS secretary, the next president should look for a great communicator — and beyond that, a great collaborator. And they know the first place where those skills should be put to work.

“They need someone who appreciates and, frankly, embraces the notion of congressional partnership, because I still think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done and you need someone who appreciates and perhaps even has experience, one way of the other, working with Congress,” said Ridge, who has been advising Sen. John McCain ’s presidential campaign on national security.

In the wake of the debacle that was the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, the relationship between Congress and DHS has suffered.

Some department officials have complained about the number of oversight committees, and said the Democratic majority elected in 2006 uses DHS as a surrogate pinata for the Bush administration.

Members of oversight committees, on the other hand, have publicly laid out a list of grievances against the department that includes missing deadlines, lacking accountability and not adequately responding to a host of problems within component agencies.

But there’s one unavoidable reality for DHS: It can’t get anything done without Congress. An effective secretary is going to have to help heal the rift. Whoever takes the job will have to be able to sell ideas and frame budgets, while knowing there will be opposition, Ridge said.

But working and communicating with Congress doesn’t mean bowing to the every wish of oversight committees, said Carafano, who called the Democratic majority’s leadership of DHS “terrible” and full of “gotcha hearings.”

What’s needed, he said, is a tough-love approach from a figure who can “basically stand up to the Congress,” but still make DHS’s needs and progress clear to the relevant committees, Carafano said.

“I think Chertoff has actually done that very well,” he said.

P.J. Crowley, senior fellow on homeland security at the liberal Center for American Progress, said Chertoff did not seem comfortable with the role of communicator at first, but has grown into it during his tenure. The new secretary is going to have to be a trusted figure that can improve the dialogue with Congress, he said.

Making Mr. Secretary: Experts Weigh In on Skills Needed by the Next DHS Chief

It’s a truism in homeland security circles that, since its inception, DHS has labored under an unwieldy oversight system of 86 committees and subcommittees with jurisdiction. Congress — first the Republican majority and then the Democrats that followed – has shown almost no sign of movement toward consolidation, despite complaints from the department and heavyweights on both sides of the aisle who say a change is needed.

But while experts said Chertoff’s successor should continue to highlight oversight redundancies, they also said the secretary needs to realize he has no practical power in the matter. Congress can make the decision at its leisure, although presidential pressure or another problematic response to a national emergency could push leadership to act.

Crowley said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., should take a look at the issue in the next Congress.

“It will take some change on both sides of the equation,” he said.

Ridge said there’s more that Congress could do to help the next secretary. If members are really worried about national security during the presidential transition, they will expedite the confirmations of a few critical DHS appointments, including secretary, deputy secretary and the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“There may be three or four really critical appointments that would be absolutely so crucial in my judgment that they could set aside some of these archaic rules and holds that they put on candidates,” he said.

A Host of Constituencies

Congress might be an important partner, but it’s far from the only one the next secretary will need.

Aside from federal agencies, the secretary has to work with state, local and private partners, ranging from police departments and emergency responders to power companies, wireless communication providers and hospitals.

“I probably have more state and local officials I deal with across the spectrum of my agency than almost any other department of government, maybe more than any other department,” Chertoff said.

In that kind of environment, Chertoff said, a secretary is going to have to be prepared for frustration.

“Inevitably, they will be unhappy with some decisions,” he said. “Not everybody will get everything that they want. So you just have to prepare yourself for the fact that there’s going to be an awful lot of push back. You’ve got to work hard to communicate as clearly as possible why you’re doing what you’re doing and you have to be willing to weather an awful lot of high wind in the opposite direction if you’re going to get stuff done.”

Or, as DHS Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection Robert Stephan put it at a recent National Defense Industrial Association symposium: “When you’re a coalition builder, not everybody wins. But, everybody should win something and everybody is then exposed to losing something. That’s what a coalition is all about.”

Making Mr. Secretary: Experts Weigh In on Skills Needed by the Next DHS Chief

Ridge said the secretary has to remember that the homeland mission doesn’t begin and end at DHS; local partners and the private sector that controls most of the country’s critical infrastructure are an essential part of it.

“It is a federal agency, but it is not a federal mission,” he said. And that mission requires “someone who appreciates and understands the notion that it is a national mission, not a federal one.”

DHS has already established some good lines of communications, Ridge said. Now, the department needs to use those to push initiatives. The next secretary is going to have to be an advocate for public-private partnerships and information sharing among the federal, state and local levels, he said, adding that the new president can help by announcing those efforts as priorities.

The times can dictate what sort of background the president wants in a DHS secretary. Ridge, the former governor, said his work at the state and local levels was an asset when he was brought into the start-up department.

“I think when the president called on me, there were certain relationships and experiences I had that helped him,” he said.

In recent years, DHS’s relationship with the Department of Justice and the FBI has improved. Ridge said that’s likely because of the presence of Chertoff, a former judge, head of Justice’s criminal division, and a contributor to the 2001 anti-terrorism law (PL 107-56) known as the Patriot Act. Carafano called Chertoff the “perfect pick” to head the department in 2005, when he was nominated.

“He knew how to work with Congress, he obviously had great law enforcement experience, and he ran a major federal organization in Justice,” Carafano said.

The relationships the new president is most interested in shoring up could have a big impact on who he chooses. Ridge said experience with state and local agencies should be an important factor in the decision.

“The next person, I would like to think, if it’s not someone with experience working with Congress, that it’s someone with experience working with state and local governments,” he said. “Fortunately for me, I had both.”

Improve, Not Redefine

But communicating with that giant pool of stakeholders has the potential to lead a secretary into believing that he has to address all of their issues. Ridge said the next secretary must avoid that trap, taking the long view, rather than the nitty-gritty within the department and its partners.

Once you set an agenda, “You can’t get in the weeds, because the field is too big,” he said.

The people around a secretary are the ones who drive that agenda, Ridge said. Crowley agreed, saying that an ideal situation would be pairing a “big picture” person with a management-focused deputy secretary who could translate an agenda into an effective organization.

Making Mr. Secretary: Experts Weigh In on Skills Needed by the Next DHS Chief

But all sources interviewed agreed that an overall agenda for the department should not include what Carafano called “any brilliant ideas.”

“There should be no sweeping organizational changes,” said Jonah Czerwinski, a senior homeland security fellow at the IBM Global Leadership Initiative.

In its five-year existence, DHS has gone through enough upheavals, he said. An effective secretary will work on improving the organization, not redefining it.

Czerwinski and others had plenty of ideas about how those improvements could be made, though. He said he wants to see a secretary who focuses on building up DHS’ workforce and business management. The nominee should be familiar with problems at DHS already outlined by groups like the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Essential Technology Task Force, which earlier this year called on the department to build up its acquisitions process.

“The next person has to be able to say ‘I get it. That should have been done yesterday,’” Czerwinski said.

Ridge said enhancing procurement, along with information technology integration, falls into the category of creating a more tightly knit, DHS — one that functions more like a single department, rather than a collection of 22 agencies.

“You need someone who has a notion and believes that you need progress enterprise-wide and will try to drive that agenda,” he said.

Since its creation, DHS has operated largely on a “prevention-based approach,” tending to identify risk and taking steps to reduce it. Crowley said he would like to see the department move to more of a “resiliency-based approach” that deals with the best way to recover from disasters and emergencies, especially in its dealings with the private sector.

Such a change in approach, from prevention to mitigation, could help a new secretary manage natural disaster recovery, Crowley said, adding that DHS still does not place enough weight on that aspect of its mission.

“I don’t think they’ve yet found the right balance between terror risk and disaster risk,” he said.

He also called for a DHS secretary who takes more of an active hand in policy, particularly in the realm of border security and immigration.

“You have to have the right understanding of what the Department of Homeland Security is,” he said. “It can’t just be about fences and border guards and gate guards. It is a broader concept than that. . . . I want the next secretary to be a leading advocate for immigration reform.”

With all of those options, picking a few priority areas might be difficult for the next secretary. Ridge, Carafano and Crowley all agreed that anyone who accepts the position won’t be able to get everything done that he or she wants. Whatever choices the secretary makes could go a long way in determining what becomes of DHS, a huge governmental organization still in its nascent stage.

Making Mr. Secretary: Experts Weigh In on Skills Needed by the Next DHS Chief

“The secretary has to have an understanding that this department must be looked at 25 years from now as on the right track,” Czerwinski said.

Dan Fowler contributed to this story.

Rob Margetta can be reached at rmargetta@cq.com. Dan Fowler can be reached at dfowler@cq.com.