“There was obviously a lot on the mind of the President. I’m sure the SEC was not on the top of the agenda item at each morning briefing, but I certainly was never given the impression that the Commission was viewed as a backwater, unimportant, irrelevant or anything else.”
John Fedders, who was at the SEC during the 1980s, and Peter Derby, who served there two decades later, had the same philosophy for the SEC’s working relationship with the White House: no surprises. Fedders recalled, “That would be the worst thing you could do – to create a surprise.” Derby elaborated: “The official communication would be from an advisor in the West Wing, usually on the Economic Council … We are an independent agency, but we kept the White House abreast of policies that were being developed or introduced, and we would get views in return from them, as well as new concerns. Everything was always a flow of information. Our rule was, no surprises.”14
Contact between the White House and the SEC was limited. Michael Halloran remembered, “We had very little contact with the White House. They did not call up and give us orders or anything.” Elisse Walter noted, “As a Commissioner, you have nothing to do with the White House, absolutely nothing. You have very little to do with the White House when you’re Chairman. People seem to think that you get called by the President every day. You don’t get called by anybody anytime.”15
SEC Chairmen and Commissioners could face challenges in building relationships with the agency staff. Arthur Levitt was advised to “define yourself with your staff. If they support you, it will be extraordinarily helpful, and if they don’t, you’re doomed.” Joseph Grundfest observed, “The staff’s view was Commissioners come and go, but we’re here forever. They knew that in four or five years I would be gone. So the staff can develop a strategy that says, ‘Okay, we have to follow a containment-in-management approach with regard to any Commissioner or even Chairman, because at some point they’re gone. We’re career.’”16
SEC Chairmen also were challenged in working with their fellow Commissioners, due, ironically, to the Sunshine Act of 1976. As Daniel Goelzer noted, “A big effect of the Sunshine Act was to make the Chairman more powerful, to give him a much bigger role in setting the agenda. The Chairman could meet with staff freely, but he couldn’t meet with his fellow Commissioners except in a formalized, announced-to-the-public kind of setting. That made the Chairman more dominant and eroded collegiality.” For Cynthia Glassman, the Sunshine Act “makes it very difficult to be collegial and to develop a consensus on areas where there are strong differences of views.”17
The effect of the Sunshine Act, along with the need to keep the White House closely informed, meant that the SEC staff found themselves working more directly with the Chairmen rather than the Commissioners. Paul Roye recalled, “As a division director, you really work for the Chairman. It’s your job to carry out the Chairman’s wishes and his approach to dealing with the issues. You’re pretty much an advocate for the Chairman with the other Commissioners.” Robert Plaze noted, “Every Chairman I have worked for at the Commission – there were seven of them – always pushed us to get stuff out of the door before they left. Every administration, before it leaves, wants to finish the work that it started. It’s not politics in a sense that one point of view wants to take advantage of another point of view. Everybody wants to get their business done.”18