Nine days after September 11, President George W. Bush announced that
the Federal government's effort to secure the American homeland
against future terrorist attacks would be led by a new, White
House-based Office of Homeland Security (OHS). He appointed his close
friend, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, to head the office. While
this step was widely welcomed, there has been a near-consensus among
Washington veterans that Ridge lacks the leverage necessary for the
job, even as a member of the White House staff with clear and direct
access to the President. "I fear that as an advisor who lacks a
statutory mandate, Senate confirmation, and budget authority, he will
not be as effective as we need him to be", Senator Joseph Lieberman
(D-CT) argued. "A homeland coordinator with only advisory authority
is not enough. We need a robust executive agency to carry out the
core functions of homeland defense." Lieberman and others have
accordingly introduced a number of proposals to rectify these
imperfections, and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director
Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., recently told Congress that the
administration was open to proposals for re-organization.
Almost every proposal thus far seeks to fix the problem by bringing
widely dispersed authorities and agencies into a new central
structure. But centralization alone cannot be the main answer to this
formidable challenge. Currently, responsibility for preventing,
protecting against, and responding to a terrorist incident is spread
not only across the Executive Branch, but also across Federal, state
and local authorities. Moreover, the private sector also has a
critical role to play. It is simply not possible, nor is it
desirable, to bring all the major homeland security functions under a
single roof.
