Tom Ridge on the creation and evolution of the Department of Homeland Security and the future of the Republican Party.
Tom Ridge is the first Secretary of Homeland Security. He is a former Representative and Governor of Pennsylvania. He was very visible in the 2008 Presidential Race as an aide to Senator John McCain.
Harvard Political Review: Can you describe the administrative challenges of setting up the Department of Homeland Security, a Cabinet-level Department. There is some controversy with respect to the bureaucratic aspect. How did you decide which agencies to include in the Department of Homeland Security?
Tom Ridge: Let’s talk about the process of creating the department first. There was a very methodical process, which is one of the great political stories that was never leaked to the press. (It’s impossible to ever do anything secretly in Washington, D.C.) [The process] consumed about six or seven weeks. About eight people in the White House, in a very thoughtful way, reviewed the disparate agencies and groups that had some homeland security responsibility and almost storyboarded it in the sense of ‘yes or no’. Should the FBI be in or should it not be in? Should the air traffic controllers be in or should they not be in? Should FEMA be in? … The administration recognized the reality that the Congress was probably going to … mandate the department. But the best idea was to accept that reality and then try to sit down and create the department that the administration best thought would serve our security interests. … I think they did an excellent job, and ultimately, with some modest modifications, I think Congress agreed. … The only area where I think some members of the House and Senate disagreed, and it was a nonstarter from the White House, would have been including the FBI in the Department of Homeland Security. … Now the administrative challenges are both from a policy point of view and from an administrative point of view when you inherit particularly five or six very muscular agencies: the Coast Guard, the Customs Board of Protection, immigration and customs enforcement, FEMA. They all had their own IT, human resources, budget, fiscal responsibilities. As a result there were business line integration requirements, the policy requirements, branding yourself, and getting people to buy into the mission — which was fairly easy after 9/11. And then there was the external challenge of being accepted as a partner by the other departments and agencies, and you had to earn your stripes with that crowd.
HPR: How do political pressures affect the functional efficiency of the department?
TR: As somebody who’s spent most of their life in politics, the pressure can be a good thing. Political pressure around a big idea can often result in very positive outcomes. Where the political pressure can sometimes be disruptive is when it becomes a micromanaging element of what you’re trying to do. One of the challenges that the department has (I had it. Secretary Chertoff had it, and Secretary Napolitano’s going to have it) is that they report. The department reports to eighty plus committees and subcommittees, and so you don’t have any single committee that truly has a holistic view of what the department does or that is in a position to set priorities. So the political pressure you’re going to get from one committee that has oversight over one or two of your units, multiplies times three, four, five. When you aggregate those responsibilities you end up getting funding for less, and you’ve got to start making choices.
HPR: To what extent did that micromanaging happen? Where was it coming from?
TR: One was just the nature of funding that we finally decided we were going to send to the states and the first responders. Everybody wanted more, which we couldn’t give them, but from my point of view the political pressure from the Congress, both Republican and Democrat, frankly created a larger fund than the White House was willing to include. So to that extent it was good. Big picture: To the extent it was bad is that once we came up with a formula to distribute, then you had in a micro sense the political pressure that changed the formula or argued to try to change the formula because their constituents didn’t get what they thought was appropriate. I don’t view political pressure as anything other than a dimension of how we govern ourselves. Often people talk about it in negative terms; I think it can be a very positive thing. It becomes a problem, though, when it disrupts the setting and funding of priorities, which it does from time to time.
HPR: The mission of the DHS is in part to prevent terrorism and reduce our vulnerability. To what extent you think it has succeeded in that mission? And to the extent that it hasn’t, how it should it be reformed for the long term?
TR: It is impossible to isolate any of the departments who have a role in homeland security and make a qualitative judgment on how they’ve impacted the security. It really is a multidimensional effort across not only the federal government but down to the states and locals, and to a certain extent, the private sector and the academic community. You can point to certain very specific responsibilities that I think the department has had and that has reduced particular threats. … One of the challenges on homeland security was to push our perimeter out as far as possible and to begin to do the kind of work you needed to do to protect America. We really want our borders to be the last line of defense, not the first. I think we’ve done a lot of very important and productive initiatives within the department. … But it’s difficult to point to Justice, the Department of Defense, the intelligence community or DHS because it’s really all been a collaborative enterprise. We’ve all been working together to make America more secure.
HPR: What do you think are the Republican Party’s prospects for 2010? What do you think the party’s message should be?
TR: Well in 2009 I think our prospects for 2010 are pretty bleak. Thank goodness it’s April of 2009. But I think if we are going to rebuild the numbers in the House and the Senate, if we’re going to regain some governorships in 2010 (I think there are 36 races, a huge number of races out there) we better sharpen our message. … I believe in fiscally conservative government and responsible government and ethical government. We’ve kind of lost our traction on some of those issues. … I don’t think saying “no” to President Obama is enough. If we don’t care for his health care plan we’ve got to articulate our own. I think we’ve always missed the boat when it comes to the environment. And there are so many Republican ways, so many initiatives around a Republican philosophy, which I think Americans would buy into, if we articulated them. And the other thing that I think we ought to drive home is energy independence. I fully support the notion of electric cars and solar and wind power, but we’re not the Netherlands. We need a lot more electricity than that. We need a lot more fuel than that, so let’s be serious about nuclear. Let’s be serious about clean coal. Let’s articulate a strong energy policy and environmental policy and healthcare policy and fiscal restraint. We need to be less judgmental about each other on social issues. … I’ve had two Republican presidents who altered my life. I got a draft notice from Richard Nixon and I ended up being an infantry staff sergeant in Vietnam; I got a phone call from President George Bush and I ended up leaving a job that I loved as governor with three dogs, two teenagers. And you know what? On neither occasion did they ask me about abortion, stem cell research, or gays. They said, “Will you serve?” And until we become less judgmental within our own party about those issues, and focus on governance, I think we’re going to have a very difficult time climbing our way back into becoming a majority party.
HPR: How do you think the surveillance program and interrogation techniques have impacted the Republican image, and how do you think it can recover from that? What do you think the party’s message on those kinds of policies should be?
TR: That’s a wonderful, insightful question. We failed to articulate effectively, in my judgment, and respond effectively to Abu Ghraib. Waterboarding, we admitted was used but as of I think 2003 was never utilized again. … Most Americans and even most Republicans thought it was [still being utilized], and they were uncomfortable with it because it didn’t seem to be consistent with our value system in this country – over time. I think we failed to deal with it as directly as we could have, and so it has had an adverse effect on the party that is limited in scope. … I think long term, the way we overcome the discomfort that a lot of people had is by focusing on issues that I talked about: healthcare, employment, environment, energy. …
HPR: Can you clarify your position on waterboarding for our readers?
TR: I think waterboarding was, is, and will always be torture. My personal belief is not a legal definition (there’s no treaty) but any technique that puts the interrogee in fear of imminent death, that’s a form of torture. I was appalled to think that some people, some Democrats, thought that certain things were torture. It’s somewhat amusing, but if sleep deprivation is a torture, I know a lot of undergraduates and graduates are tortured at Harvard. If slapping somebody in the face is torture, give me a break. I mean I went to a Catholic school, was slapped around the head, beat in the chest, and anybody that played any sports knew the coach would grab you and smack you around a little bit. … We did not do a very good job [communicating] during the administration, particularly with Abu Ghraib. It was a horrible situation, but it was an aberrant situation. Guantanamo: we had to set up Guantanamo. We were a little slow on an adjudication process, but what else are you going to do? I was for Guantanamo when it started; a lot of that has to do with public messaging and I don’t think we were as effective as we could have been.