Rachel Paulose's Departure
from her position as U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota has been getting a lot of press recently, including an editorial in Thursday's New York Times. I don't know exactly what to make of the situation: I've never met Paulose, and I don't have any close contacts (at least any that come to mind) in that particular office. If I had to guess, though, I would imagine that this commentary from the Minnesota Lawyer Blog is probably about right. Thanks to Legal Blog Watch for the link.
UPDATE: Over at Concurring Opinions, my friend and colleague Dan Solove adds:
UPDATE: Over at Concurring Opinions, my friend and colleague Dan Solove adds:
As one who has been very critical of the Bush Administration and of how it has politicized the DOJ, I ordinarily would not be very sympathetic to Rachel.
But I know Rachel Paulose. We were in the same class at Yale Law School. It is hard to believe some of the media accounts of her, as she always struck me as incredibly kind and nice. Rachel and I are at different ends of the political spectrum, and I would not have been friendly with somebody who was a hack, who was strident in her ideology, who was obtrusive about her religious beliefs. But I found Rachel to be quite likable, and I had many good conversations with her in law school. I never found her to be aloof, pushy, fiercely ideological, nasty, or many of the other characteristics currently being attributed to her. In my experience, she was always thoughtful, respectful, and friendly. Therefore, I doubt the accounts of her I've been reading in the media -- they certainly don't reflect the person I knew when I was in law school.
This seemed a bit too trivial to send an email about, so I thought I'd just stick it under the top post: Today's Non Sequitur cartoon is about the "seeing-eye constitutional scholar", and is quite funny.
How about all the commentary over at Powerline, by attorneys who know Paulose? Is there no chance that their commentary is "about right" as well?
What, commentary by a bunch of Bush sycophants and well-known partisan hacks who lie with regularity to advance the agenda of the administration? Not a chance.
The simple fact is that no 32 year old, no matter how brilliant they are, is qualified to be a U.S. District Attorney. The job requires maturity and managerial experience that takes more than just native intelligence and ideological purity. In fact I would contend that someone who is such a shining star is probably the last person you would want to be a manager, ever, because they tend to be arrogant, dismissive of "mere mortals" and think those who have not achieved such a high position at such a young age are rank idiots.
And if a quarter of the things that are reported about Paulose are true (e.g., taking disciplinary action against someone who had the gall to point out she was mishandling classified information) then she is nothing but a horribly ineffective, bad, and vindicative manager who should be fired, not kicked upstairs.
I read the first paragraph of Anton's link, which includes this:
"As Scott has noted at length, our friend Rachel Paulose, who by any objective standard was doing a fine job in the position, was forced out by the Democrats and their press minions after she committed the "offense" of defending herself against their partisan smears. "
So given its sneering, hysterical, hyper-ventilating tone I'd say no, there is little or no chance that it's "about right."
I wonder how old Rudy Giuliani was, when he was U.S. Atty in New York?
She was the victim of a revolt by prima donna's who didn't want to dance to the new orchestra leader's music selections (Bush DOJ priorities). If she'd been a former football playing, cigar chomping, American boy, she'd have turned the staff over (by resignation or firing) as soon as possible. Hired new staff (there are plenty of lawyers in Minneapolis) and got it behind her the first week.
Here's some balance. http://www.startribune.com/10216/story/1566944.html
Say what? Why is it so hard to admit that Paulose did not do a good job of managing her minions? Moreover, it's wrong to assume that her management failures are a result of race, gender, or politics. Kevin Ryan in the NDCA office faced the same charges of being aloof and out of touch with his staff, and he lost his job.
33yearprof, you obviously have no idea how difficult it is to fire a civil servant. It's just not done.
As a matter of democratic principle, I'm always very uncomfortable when the bureaucracy revolts against political appointees who are trying to implement the policies of the President, especially when the revolt is done through leaks.
We have seen this too often with the State Department and with the CIA, and now we are seeing it with the Justice Department. Elections should mean something, and the people we elect should have infinitely more power to control the direction of policy than unelected bureaucrats.
This is just silly. It might be true that it's difficult to get the sort of experience necessary to be a good U.S. Attorney before age 32 and that most 32-year-olds don't have it, but the absolute position is unreasonable.
Second, Ms. Paulose's title wasn't "U.S. District Attorney."
Sorry "U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota". I was being lazy.
No, the absolute position is not silly. Is there a 32 year-old alive who is qualified to be a senior partner at a major law firm? Then why on earth would a U.S. Attorney's office be any different? Good managers are not born, they are made, and no one that young has the experience and wisdom to manage an office like that.
As a matter of democratic principle, I'm always very uncomfortable when the bureaucracy revolts against political appointees who are trying to implement the policies of the President, especially when the revolt is done through leaks.
You seem to have a serious misunderstanding about how our government, especially the Justice Department, works. The government is not a patronage system. The civil service is there to provide continuity and stability across administrations. It is deeply ironic that the very same people who were complaining about the perceived politicization of the civil service under the Clinton Administration are now complaining that the Bush administration civil service is not politicized enough (even though politics seems to be involved in almost every agency decision made during this administration's tenure)
Well yeah, you just can't fire civil servants because you don't like their politics, their personality or they point out that you leave classified documents laying around your office unsecured.
You have to have a job performance related reason. What an odd concept!
What I have noticed from 30 years in the private sector: If one employee can't get along with the new boss -- employee leaves. If no employee gets along with the new boss -- boss leaves.
Because of the political nature of her position, she is (rightly) limited in her ability to directly hire and fire people. Generally (if DOJ works like other federal agencies, which I assume it does), the only people in the office she is the hiring authority over (in that she has the right to hire and fire--and even then not really), are the SES's and her direct office staff. And even those people she can only move out of her office and in the case of the non-political SES's, transfer or demote back to a GS position. She is very few people's boss in her office in the sense that she writes or signs off on their performance reviews. Most civil servants are reviewed by other civil servants. Senior managers are reviewed by mostly non-political SES's.* Only the most senior people in the office directly report to the U.S. Attorney.
Civil service positions are supposed to be filled without regard to political affiliation, because after all, government employees work for the citizens and serve the government of the United States, not the administration or the political party that controls the White House.
* SES's are Senior Executive Service. They can either be direct political appointees who come and go with the administration or career civil service personnel whose position, but not job, is dependent on a presedential appointment (i.e., they may get removed from their position but they must be given another job in the government).
In the military, middle-aged NCOs every day execute the orders of twentysomething officers.
Is this an administration that has a proven track record of searching out extremely talented young people and appointing them to positions of power?
Or is this an administration that has a track record of appointing young partisan hacks to positions for which they are not qualified.
I'd suggest we start the discussion with the Regents grads in the Justice Department and then look back over the appointment of various 20-something campaign volunteers during the "reconstruction" of Iraq for clues.
In all fairness, Paulose is clearly several leagues apart from Goodling.
FC writes:Well, that's not accurate. I know significantly more about this than most VC readers. I just don't have perfect knowledge, and I think it's only fair and honest to say so up front.
Probably. Someone who goes straight through college and law school would be done with law school roughly at age 25, on average. If that person gets seven years of good experience and knows enough people to bring in paying clients, I don't see why not. David Boies was probably ready at age 32, though I doubt someone needs to be quite that impressive to clear the bar.
Oh yes, let's not discuss our government, since none of us on the outside has sufficient knowledge about what really goes on.
So ... anyone else got a firsthand opinion on Britney's new album?
May I suggest that you refrain from feeding the troll. Prof. Somin's thread has done remarkably well today in maintaining a well-educated discussion, despite numerous posts by the usual suspect.
R78: I would point out that in any agency, one will find some appointees who fall short. After all, the bell curve has two tails.
Yes, and some bell curves are fairly shallow, whereas others are narrower, lengthier, ... well, positively phallic. I think r78 had the latter more in mind ... "F--ked up" takes on a whole new statistical meaning.
So, according to the post above by the angry little J.F.Thomas, Solove must be a "Bush sycophant" as well?
Seems to be the common thread here. I wish the people here expressing opinions would explain the basis for them. Solove, to his credit, tells us that he knew Ms. Paulose in law school. In the commentary to which Prof. Kerr links, the author explains that he has gotten to know Ms. Paulose by frequent contact with her through his job.
Most of the commenters here seem to view her departure as the latest bit of evidence for either: (1) the theory that the Bush administration's m.o. is to find young incompetent ideologues and put them in positions of power, so long as they are ideologically committed, or (2) the theory that anytime someone who occupies a position of power, isn't a white male, and dares to express conservative views, it's only a matter of time before the liberals turn on that person and run him/her out of town on a rail based on a pretext.
This calls to mind Prof. Kerr's mad lib op-ed re: judicial nominations.
If you people are so resistant to actual information, why do you bother reading at all?
I join everyone else here in the category of people-who-are-just-guessing, but this seems like the most plausible guess. AUSA's tend not to be bleeding heart liberals, so liberal revolt theory doesn't sound plausible either, especially since there was no revolt under her Republican predecessor.
Yes, but military officers are trained to lead, lawyers aren't. In fact, lawyers tend to be horrible leaders.
I love it when conservatives channel Al Sharpton.
At the age of 32, Joseph Story became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. He is widely acknowledged as a "Great Justice", and probably the best legal scholar ever to sit on the Court. He supplied the legal scholarship and background that supported many of the decisions of the Marshall Court. He also served from 1829 until his death as Dane Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, which was nearly defunct when he joined the faculty, with only 1 student. Story wrote 9 of the textbooks used at the school, and adopted by many others. His textbook on Constitutional Law was still being used 50 years after its initial publication. With Daniel Webster, Story compiled the criminal code that was enacted into law in 1825 as the first complete U.S. Code.
Well, besides the fact that 1829 was one hundred eighty years ago, where on earth did I say that this had anything to do with being a brilliant legal scholar? The position of U.S. Attorney is primarily a management one. That you equate legal scholarship with management ability shows that you are completely clueless too. They are two completely different skill sets.
And I will note that the comparison to military officers is also bullshit. A military officers job is to manage (lead). A 2LT (at least a good one) relies heavily on his or her NCO's. At the age of 32, they have reached the prestigious rank of Captain (Major if they are the creme de la creme) and command a company of a hundred or so (and if they are good they listen closely to their first Seargent), most of whom have no more than a high school diploma. A lawyer does not even begin to manage people until years into their career. A U.S. Attorney is one of 50 odd in the entire country. They manage a team of several hundred professionals, most of whom have graduate degrees and are highly competitive.
Your education continues. And please, please, please quit citing to military examples of which you know naught.
(1) Bill Gates founded Microsoft at the age of 21. At 25, he signed a contract with IBM to develop MS-DOS. I guess he didn't know anything about management either.
(2) At 4 platoons (Marines) or 4-6 (Army), a company Captain commands closer to 200 men. While you're correct that a J.O. relies heavily on his senior NCOs, I guess those 32 year old O-4s who are battalion commanders or squadron operations officers know nothing of management either. I guess a squadron of highly trained professional pilots, most of whom have graduate degrees and are highly competitive, are oh so easy to take care of... not to mention a few billion dollars worth of equipment.
Two truly exceptional cases. It's no insult to say that Paulose was no Bill Gates or Justice Story. There are a few 32 year olds prepared to lead headstrong employees (you have to be headstrong to be an AUSA). The military actively trains young officers in leadership, but outside of the military, 32 year-old leaders are the exception, not the rule.
Leading lawyers who are far more experienced than you are is hard. The most plausible interpretation of what we know is that Paulose was simply in over her head.
It is common knowledge that the First Assistants really run nearly all of the United States Attorney offices across the country, particularly on the criminal side. The Chiefs of Civil run the civil sides (and most U.S. Attorneys have ZERO interest in what goes on in civil because prosecuting criminals is what gets you elected Senator, not winning complex FTCA cases). All the average U.S. Attorneys have to do is show up at the press conferences and read what is handed to them. It may be a little different in NY, CA, IL, and the bigger offices, but MN? Give me a break.
That just means that DOJ takes a tremendous chance when putting someone so young, with so little experience, in such a position. To do so simply to score political points -- by positioning the next generation of up-and-comers, like Kyle Sampson, Karl Rove, and Alberto Gonzales were trying to do, is simply unconscionable.
Bill Gates founded Microsoft at the age of 21.
* * *
At the age of 32, Joseph Story became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Two truly exceptional cases.
Or maybe just two irrelevant cases.
Neither were hired to manage an existing, modestly large organization. Microsoft had existed for 6-7 years before it got to 100 employees, so Gates also had years of on-the-job management experience by the time Microsoft got that big; even then, shortly after Microsoft reached 100 employees, Gates & Allen hired an experienced professional as president/COO.
The facts don't remotely support this.
Paulose was appointed in 2006. The "new orchestra leader" had been in office well over five years, and the "prima donna's" apparently had no problem with Bush DOJ priorities during all that time. It was Paulose who was the problem.
Alexander was not particularly notable for his management skills. He murdered one of his lieutenants in a drunken fit, drove his army to the point of mutiny, and then retaliated against their refusal to press further east by marching them back through a desert. Then he died before he had to try to govern the empire he'd founded.
Interesting alternatives.
Who let Al Sharpton post here?
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Firmalar Rehberi
Şirket
Sektör
From the mass I have read about Paulose, she obviously was not an unusually bad US Attorney. She was smart and hardworking. She was young; perhaps she made some common, youthful management mistakes. Given an even remotely normal amount of time to grow in her new management post, she well could have turned out to be excellent.
By far the most remarkable thing about Rachel Paulose's story is how she was run out of her office in record time. Any useful and honest report on her fate needs to answer this question: Why did the pressure on her to leave rise so fast? Not Orin Kerr and not one of Paulose's detractors here has made a minimally convincing case that the reason was Paulose's actions.
Most commonly, people are fired for gross incompetence, or a personality clash on the order of insubordination. Is there bad blood between her and Mukasey? Because I haven't seen any of Paulose's supporters make a case for any other reason.
1. Paulose had ticked off pretty much her entire staff, who were taking demotions rather than help her lead.
2. The only people who supported her at HQ just quit before taking the Fifth.
3. She helped keep the US Attorneys scandal going.
4. Her home state Republican senator had turned on her.
5. Allowing her to take a staff job in Washington gave her a chance to rehabilitate herself, a chance she might have squandered by blaming racism and sexism for her management inadequacies (which makes me further question her judgment).