Chapter 10 Exercises

These exercises ask you to apply the chapter's frameworks to current institutions, real people, and your own district. They range from short research tasks to longer steel-manning prompts. Several can be completed in thirty minutes; others are designed as semester-long mini-projects that you build on as you learn more about the executive branch in Chapter 11.

The recurring discipline: when an exercise asks you to evaluate something, distinguish what the evidence shows from what you think should happen about it. Both questions are interesting. They are different questions.

Exercise 1. Identify your Cabinet's department heads as of early 2026

Task. Produce a current Cabinet roster. For each of the fifteen executive departments listed in Section 2.2 of this chapter, identify (a) the current Senate-confirmed Secretary as of the date you do the exercise, (b) one prior position that gives them their substantive credibility for the role, and (c) one significant policy initiative or controversy associated with their tenure so far.

How to do it. Start with whitehouse.gov/administration/cabinet. Cross-reference with each department's own .gov site (e.g., state.gov/biographies for the Secretary of State). For controversies, check the Federal News Network or Government Executive; for policy initiatives, check the department's press releases.

What to look for. Notice the variation in backgrounds. Some Cabinet secretaries come from elected office (former governors and senators are common at State and other policy-coordination departments). Some come from the private sector (Treasury and Commerce often draw from finance and industry). Some come from the policy world (HHS, Education, and Labor often have think-tank or academic credentials). Some are career military or career civil servants who reach the top (Defense and VA). The mix tells you something about which departments the President considers political-coordination roles versus operational roles.

Reflection. Of the fifteen secretaries, how many had been Senate-confirmed for some prior position before being confirmed for their current job? How many were essentially first-time political appointees? Does the mix surprise you?

Exercise 2. Track an OMB regulatory review

Task. Use the OIRA dashboard (reginfo.gov) to identify one regulation currently under OIRA review or recently completed. Trace what you can about the review: when it entered OIRA, how long it has been there or was there, which other agencies are participating in the interagency review, and what (if anything) is publicly knowable about the substance.

How to do it. Go to reginfo.gov. Click on the "Search Regulatory Review" section. Filter by status (under review or recently concluded). Pick one regulation. Read the underlying regulatory impact analysis (RIA) if available, the interagency comments if posted, and any public-comment record at the agency's docket on regulations.gov.

What to look for. Notice how long review takes. Most major rules are under OIRA review for months. Notice which other agencies are participating; this tells you the policy reach of the rule. Notice what is not public; OIRA review notes themselves are generally not posted, though the changes are reflected in the final rule text.

Reflection. Based on what you can see, would you describe OIRA's role in this rule as substantive (it shaped the rule's content) or procedural (it cleared the rule without major changes)? What additional information would you need to make that judgment confidently? Note which administration this rule is being drafted under, and consider how the substantive priorities of that administration are visible in the RIA.

Exercise 3. Trace a 25th Amendment Section 3 invocation

Task. Pick one Section 3 invocation: George W. Bush's colonoscopy invocations (June 2002 and July 2007), or Joe Biden's colonoscopy invocation (November 2021). Find the original White House announcement, the formal letter to the Speaker of the House and the Senate President pro tempore, and the news coverage. Trace exactly what happened: when Section 3 was invoked, who became Acting President for what duration, how the formal handoff occurred, and how power was returned.

How to do it. Search the White House archives at presidency.ucsb.edu (the American Presidency Project). The formal letters are in the public record. C-SPAN coverage of these events is often available.

What to look for. Notice the routine character of the invocations. They are not constitutional dramas; they are medical procedures with a brief constitutional formality attached. Notice the precise wording of the letters; the language is consequential. Notice that in each case, the Vice President exercised the powers of the Presidency for a few hours and then formally returned them.

Reflection. Section 3 has been used five times in modern practice; Section 4 has never been used. What does that asymmetry tell you about the institutional culture around presidential disability? Why do you think Section 4 has not been used, even in moments when some advisers reportedly contemplated it? Is the high political cost of Section 4 invocation a feature of the design or a bug?

Exercise 4. Cabinet meeting frequency across recent administrations

Task. For each of the most recent five administrations (Bush 43, Obama, Trump 1.0, Biden, Trump 2.0), find the approximate frequency of full Cabinet meetings during the first year of the presidency. The full Cabinet meeting (with all fifteen secretaries plus Cabinet-rank officials) is typically photographed and reported; you can use those records to count.

How to do it. The C-SPAN archives, the White House photo archives at flickr.com/whitehouse, and reporting in the Washington Post, New York Times, and Politico all document Cabinet meetings. Compile a rough count.

What to look for. Most administrations hold roughly six to twelve full Cabinet meetings per year, often clustered early in the term and around major policy rollouts or budget cycles. Cabinet meetings are typically more frequent in the first year (when the President is establishing direction) than in the fourth (when the focus shifts to re-election or transition).

Reflection. What is the empirical pattern? Does the frequency of Cabinet meetings correlate with administration effectiveness, with policy substance, with administration scandals, with anything you can identify? The honest answer is probably "not much"; the Cabinet meeting is not where decisions are made. But you can notice which administrations use the Cabinet meeting as a public-communications event versus which treat it as a private deliberation. Both parties have done both.

Exercise 5. "Who is the President's Chief of Staff?"

Task. Identify the current White House Chief of Staff and trace the Chief of Staff trajectory across the most recent five administrations. For each Chief, identify (a) when they served, (b) the prior position that prepared them for the role, and (c) what kind of Chief of Staff they were (gatekeeper, honest broker, team player, or something else).

How to do it. White House histories at whitehouse.gov and at the Miller Center (millercenter.org) include Chief of Staff lists. For the styles, Chris Whipple's The Gatekeepers covers Chiefs from Eisenhower through the early 2010s; subsequent Chiefs are covered in journalistic profiles in the major newspapers and in books by individual chiefs (e.g., Mick Mulvaney's writings, Ron Klain's book).

What to look for. Notice that Chiefs of Staff tend to come from a small pool: prior senior White House staff, prior senators or governors, or trusted longtime political advisers to the President. Notice that the average tenure is roughly eighteen months to two years; it is a high-burnout role.

Reflection. Of the Chiefs you identified, which would you classify as gatekeepers, which as honest brokers, and which as team players? Does the classification line up with how the administration operated in public? Do any of them resist easy classification?

Exercise 6. Steel-man "Cabinet government" vs. "White House government"

Task. Write a one-page steel-manning of each side. The "Cabinet government" position holds that the President should govern through Senate-confirmed department secretaries and their departments, with White House staff playing a supporting and coordinating role. The "White House government" position holds that the modern presidency requires centralized direction from the EOP because the issues cross departmental boundaries, the speed required exceeds what departments can deliver, and the political accountability runs through the President.

Constraints. Neither side can be portrayed as obviously wrong. Neither side can be a straw man. Both sides should be rooted in real arguments people have actually made (not arguments you invent for the exercise).

Where to find the arguments. For Cabinet government: Stephen Hess's Organizing the Presidency, the Brownlow Committee's original report, the Heritage Foundation's "Mandate for Leadership" series (which often advocates restoring departmental authority), and various academic critiques of EOP centralization. For White House government: Andrew Rudalevige's Managing the President's Program, Bradley Patterson's To Serve the President, and the political-science literature on the "two presidencies" thesis.

Reflection. After steel-manning both, which argument do you find more persuasive? Why? What is the strongest objection to the side you find more persuasive, and how would you respond to it? Has either side's case been weakened or strengthened by the experience of the past twenty years?

Exercise 7. Democracy Audit — which Cabinet departments most affect your district?

Task. This is a continuing exercise across the textbook's "Democracy Audit" project, which asks you to analyze the federal government's actual presence in your own congressional district. For Chapter 10, identify the three Cabinet departments whose programs and personnel most affect your district. For each, name the specific facilities, programs, or transfers in your district, the approximate dollar amount or staffing level, and the political contestability of the federal role there.

How to do it. Use usaspending.gov to identify federal contracts and grants in your district; use the BEA regional data for transfers (Social Security, Medicare, agricultural subsidies, etc.); use the Department of Defense base list, the National Park Service unit list, the VA hospital and clinic list, the HUD public housing inventory, and similar resources to identify physical federal presence.

What to look for. The pattern depends sharply on your district. A rural district may have major Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs (crop subsidies, rural development), Interior Department lands, and a VA outpatient clinic. A coastal urban district may have HUD subsidized housing, HHS-funded health centers, Treasury-funded community development, and DOD or Coast Guard installations. A district with a major federal facility (a national lab, an air force base, a national park, an Indian reservation) may be dominated by that one department.

Reflection. Three observations to make. First, the federal government is more present in your district than headlines suggest; whatever you are looking at, the dollar amounts are large. Second, the political coalition for each department's continued operations runs through districts like yours; reducing that department means reducing what you have. Third, the visibility of federal programs is uneven; people often know the VA hospital is there but not that the rural electric cooperative was financed by USDA, or that the highway maintenance comes from DOT. The Democracy Audit makes the invisible federal presence visible.

Exercise 8. Compare any First Spouse's policy engagement across two administrations

Task. Pick two First Spouses from different administrations of opposite parties (Eleanor Roosevelt and Pat Nixon; Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush; Michelle Obama and Melania Trump in Trump 1.0; Jill Biden and Melania Trump in Trump 2.0). For each, document: (a) the formal initiative or initiatives they led; (b) the approximate staff size and budget of their Office of the First Lady; (c) the policy reach they exercised, formally and informally; and (d) any institutional firsts or precedents associated with their tenure.

How to do it. The First Ladies' biographical materials are well-documented on the National First Ladies' Library site (firstladies.org) and at the White House Historical Association. Press coverage from their respective tenures is searchable. Memoirs (Hillary Clinton's Living History, Michelle Obama's Becoming, Laura Bush's Spoken from the Heart, Melania Trump's Melania, etc.) provide first-person perspectives.

What to look for. The variation across First Spouses is greater than across most other White House roles. Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton operated as policy partners with substantive portfolios. Pat Nixon, Barbara Bush, and Laura Bush operated more in the traditional ceremonial-plus-cause-advocacy mode. Michelle Obama operated with very high public visibility on a focused set of cause-advocacy initiatives but did not undertake formal policy assignments. Melania Trump's two tenures have been substantially different in profile (Be Best in Trump 1.0; a more conventional ceremonial role in Trump 2.0). Jill Biden's continued teaching at a community college was an institutional first.

Reflection. What does the variation across First Spouses tell you about the role's institutional character? Is it a defined office (with stable expectations) or an empty office (filled by each spouse's choices)? How does the variation compare to other White House roles you have looked at? Is the absence of formal definition an institutional weakness, or a feature that gives spouses appropriate latitude to choose their level of engagement?