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My colleague Matt Yglesias raises a good point about the nature of this particular presidential campaign:

The presidency, after all, involves significant managerial challenges. And neither McCain nor Barack Obama has ever been a mayor or a governor or run an executive agency. Neither has ever run a company. McCain was a Navy officer, but he didn't achieve the kind of rank where he had substantial managerial responsibilities -- he flew airplanes, he didn't command ships. For both of them, their presidential campaigns are the largest enterprises they've ever run. That's not good preparation for the White House in either case, but we don't have much else to go on.

I've noted before that I think that presidential campaigns are lousy indicators of how well a candidate would do at running the entire federal government.

We'll explore the management styles and initiatives of McCain and Obama in the September and October issues, respectively, of Government Executive. But it's not easy to pin down what they plan to do, or even to find surrogates who can talk about the management challenges facing the government. Which could make for a very interesting next four to eight years.

One thing's for sure -- the era that started 16 years ago in which candidates gave management initiatives -- from the National Performance Review to the President's Management Agenda -- a prominent place in their campaigns and their administrations, is over.

Embattled Office of Special Counsel chief Scott Bloch doesn't sound like a guy who's going to step aside any time soon. Bloch responded swiftly to a letter from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman yesterday asking him to step down.

Bloch, you may remember, is the subject of a federal investigation into whether he destroyed computer files related to charges he illegally retaliated against OSC whistleblowers.

But as to the question of whether that means he should move on, Bloch reminded Waxman in the letter that he was appointed to a five-year term that doesn't end until Jan. 5, 2009, and that "the president very recently declined an invitation to dismiss me under OSC's authorizing statute, at least according to news accounts."

Bloch promised Waxman only that "I will note your concerns and I will take them under advisement as I consider the remaining few months of my term."

President Bush called the members of his Cabinet to the White House Wednesday. They had a "good" meeting, he reported afterward. "We discussed the challenges facing our economy, amongst other things, and we spent time on the high gasoline prices."

Really?

The secretaries of, say Education, Housing and Urban Development and Health and Human Services were asked to weigh in on the price of gas? I realize that Cabinet meetings are basically a formality at this stage, but passing this one off as a substantive discussion of how to ease Americans' pain at the pump struck me as kind of funny.

Psst...want a sneak peek at the August issue of Government Executive? It's not officially out until the end of the week, but we're experimenting with a digital edition, which you can find here.

Let us know what you think of it. The focus of the issue, by the way, is on the government's efforts to be more environmentally friendly. It features pieces on the Air Force's project to build the largest solar array in the Americas, GSA's efforts to encourage eco-friendly purchasing practices, the renewed push for telework, and much more.

And in addition to the digital edition, we'll have several other features in a special section on GovernmentExecutive.com to accompany the issue.

Fergus Falls, Minn., bills itself as the "gateway to the lakes." I happen to know that's an accurate description, because I've actually been to Fergus Falls, which is not far from the lake cabin my family used to visit when I was a boy.

The town (population 12,000) also apparently has a nice new Social Security Administration office, with plenty of security. That irks Fergus Falls resident Julianne Sanden, who wrote about her experiences at the office in yesterday's edition of the Fergus Falls Daily Journal. She lamented having to go to a "computer doodie" to sign in at the office, and criticized the less-than-attentive staff. Waiting 10 minutes to speak to an SSA representative, she wrote, made her "understand why they have an armed police officer there."

"Some people, customers, or taxpayers might get a little fidgety," Sanden added. "Not me. I just sat there in the wonder of it all."

The case of Dessie Ruth Nelson, 65, of Oakland, Calif., a longtime General Services Administration employee who pleaded guilty earlier this year to accepting more than $100,000 in bribes and a Caribbean cruise from a firm providing security to federal buildings, has come to a close.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Nelson was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison. She also was ordered to forfeit $138,500 and pay $38,780 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has a simple creed: He doesn't think the government should start new programs -- even good ones -- without checking first to make sure that similar programs don't already exist. And if they do, he says, lawmakers shouldn't start new ones without getting rid of the old ones.

Rather than just make speeches about the issue, or try to gently persuade his colleagues to see things his way, Coburn has taken a far more combative approach: Tying the Senate in knots with holds on legislation and procedural efforts to block bills that he thinks violate his philosophy. In the ever-collegial Senate, that's just not cricket.

Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is taking on Coburn head-on. He's created the "Tomnibus," a $10 billion amalgamation of a series of bills Coburn has blocked, covering everything from a measure to commemorate “The Star-Spangled Banner” to an effort to curb child pornography.

Reid may be pleased that his counterattack has made the front pages of both the Washington Post and the New York Times today. But I have a feeling that all the exposure is just going to embolden Coburn to continue his crusade.

Well, the conspiracy had to crack sometime.

Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut on Apollo 14 and the sixth man to walk on the moon, told Kerrang! Radio this week that we're not alone in the universe and the government knows all about it.

"I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real," he said.

Mitchell is more than just a famous astronaut and a scientist. He grew up in Roswell, N.M., site of a famous alleged UFO landing. And, he said, "I've been in military circles and intelligence circles that know beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge that yes, we have been visited. ...I have been deeply involved in certain committes and certain research programs with very credible scientists and intelligence people that do know the real inside story."

"There's been quite a bit of contact going on," Mitchell added. "The Roswell crash was real and [the fact that] a number of other contacts have been real and ongoing is pretty well known to those of us who have been briefed and have been close to the subject matter."

So who exactly are the visitors? "Some of them are these little people that look strange to us," Mitchell said. "As far as I know from my contacts that have had contact, that was the reaction."

NASA politely suggests Mitchell doesn't know what he's talking about. "NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe," the agency told the radio station. "Dr. Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinion on this issue."

Oh really? If Mitchell's crazy, how do you explain the fact that he got the agency's Ambassador of Exploration award just a couple of years ago?

Here's Mitchell in his heyday, by the way:

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

My colleague Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic reports today that Barack Obama's campaign already has begun planning for a potential transition.

"Barack is well aware of the complexity and the organizational challenge involved in the transition process and he has tasked a small group to begin thinking through the process,” a senior campaign adviser told Ambinder. “Barack has made his expectations clear about what he wants from such a process, how he wants it to move forward, and the establishment and execution of his timeline is proceeding apace.”

This will inevitably lead to talk that Obama is jumping the gun, acting like he's already won, etc. But the truth is, the sooner a would-be president starts directing people to figure out exactly what will happen after he's elected, the better. As Ambinder notes:

New presidents have only three months to complete a herculean remaking of the equivalent of ten of the world's biggest companies. Most presidential candidates don’t spend precious campaign time thinking about [what] to do, so the questions come fast and furious: how do you your turn your ideas into policy? What do you do first? What does Congress expect? What last-minute executive orders should you overturn? What will your first 100 days look like? How will you vet and when will you appoint major cabinet secretaries and political appointees? What’s the proper balance of power between executive departments? Budgets, costs, logistics?

If Obama and John McCain are smart, they'll have their teams dig fairly deeply into the bureaucracy to address these kinds of questions. One thing they'll hopefully learn quickly is that there are key efforts underway in the areas of information technology, federal procurement and personnel issues involving agencies like the Office of Management and Budget, the General Services Administration and the Office of Personnel Management. These efforts may initially seem arcane and bureaucratic, but they could make all the difference between effectively using the levers of government and being tainted by embarassing mismanagement.

The transition is not just about who gets to be Secretary of State. It's about establishing an appropriate, efficient structure for running the government from day one.

I love the Transportation Security Administration. Really, they do a great job.

I just wanted to get that out of the way before noting the following: CNN correspondent Drew Griffin says that ever since he began a series of investigative reports in May that turned out to be critical of TSA's effort to maintain a terrorist watch list, he's been hassled every time he's tried to fly.

"Eleven flights now since May 19," Griffin said. (Video is here, courtesy of The Raw Story.) "On different airlines, my name pops up forcing me to go to the counter, show my identification, sometimes the agent has to make a call before I get my ticket."

TSA says it's all the airlines' fault, and that the agency absolutely doesn't target reporters who say critical things about aviation security. Whew.

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

If you happened to be watching the Fox Business Network this morning at 7:30, then you saw Government Executive's Robert Brodsky discussing the potential impact of the impending change in presidential administrations on defense contractors.

And if you missed it, here's the video:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is trying to help other federal agencies -- and employers around the country -- understand the rules regarding religious discrimination in the workplace. The EEOC has issued a new compliance manual on religion, addressing what the agency acknowledges are "sometimes complex workplace issues involved in balancing employees’ rights regarding religious expression with employers’ need to maintain efficient, productive workplaces."

In a question and answer fact sheet, the EEOC addresses some of the basics, such as what exactly constitutes a religion. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the agency says, the definition is pretty broad:

Religion includes not only traditional, organized religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, but also religious beliefs that are new, uncommon, not part of a formal church or sect, only subscribed to by a small number of people, or that seem illogical or unreasonable to others. An employee’s belief or practice can be “religious” under Title VII even if the employee is affiliated with a religious group that does not espouse or recognize that individual’s belief or practice, or if few – or no – other people adhere to it.

Think your job sucks? It could be worse: You could work for Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y. The New York Times details the travails of Weiner's staffers today. They apparently deal with his explosive R-rated outbursts on a regular basis. But at least as a House member he only has a handful of employees. Now he wants to be governor mayor of New York, and oversee its 300,000 workers.

They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the proportion of Americans who admit to being obese increased 2 percent between 2005 and 2007.

The fattest states in the nation are Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, each weighing in -- so to speak -- with more than 30 percent of adults self-reporting as obese. The West is the skinniest region of the country, with a little more than 22 percent of people classified as obese.

These statistics, by the way, were published in what has to be the most uplifting publication regularly produced by the federal government: the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Tired of lugging around a big ol' passport every time you leave the country? Now the State Department will issue you a pocket-sized version, USA Today reports. But since about 350,000 people already have applied for the new cards, you're going to have to wait about four weeks for yours to arrive.

Homeland Security Department officials swear they don't mind congressional oversight. They'd just like a little less of it, thank you very much.

In an op-ed in today's New York Times, Stephen R. Heifetz, DHS's deputy assistant secretary for policy development, bemoans the "congressional mess" his department faces on a regular basis. With an obligation to respond to the 80 committees and subcommittees that oversee DHS and its component agencies, the department, he says, has little time to actually develop and implement policy.

The "surplus of committees compels agency workers to devote countless hours to responding to literally thousands of requests and conflicting congressional priorities," Heifetz writes. "In 2007 alone, department officials testified at 231 Congressional hearings and provided more than 2,600 briefings to legislators and their staffs."

What's worse, he says, "individual committees focus on the risks in their domain at the expense of comparable — and perhaps greater — risks outside."

In the early part of the 20th century, the Justice Department had no agents of its own. Instead, it had to ask the Treasury Department for help when it wanted to conduct investigations. In 1908, Congress moved to address the situation, creating a Bureau of Investigation.

In a speech yesterday, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey detailed what happened next to the organization that would eventually take on perhaps the best-known acronym in government -- the FBI:

The bureau had 34 agents at its beginning. Expectations, at the time, were correspondingly low. In his annual report to Congress six months after the creation of the bureau, one of my predecessors, Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte, made brief reference to the creation of a small force of special agents, and added, these are his words: "the consequences of the innovation have been, on the whole, moderately satisfactory."

One hundred years after that somewhat tepid endorsement, I am happy to
report that the FBI's current contribution to the investigation,
prosecution, and prevention of crime has gone from moderately satisfactory
to absolutely extraordinary.

Last week, we published a CongressDaily report on a Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing about how shoddy electrical wiring in facilities in Iraq is leading to the deaths and injuries of soldiers. The New York Times picks up on the story today, reporting that a 2007 Army survey showed that "electrical problems were the most urgent noncombat safety hazard for soldiers in Iraq."

The survey found “a safety threat theaterwide created by the poor-quality electrical fixtures procured and installed, sometimes incorrectly, thus resulting in a significant number of fires.”

The paper reviewed internal documents and found "dozens of memos, e-mail messages and reports" showing that procurement experts at the Army, the Defense Contract Management Agency and other agencies have long acknowledged that electrical problems are a major safety threat.

Military service members aren't the only ones stepping up to deploy to hot spots around the world at a moment's notice. With the launch of the Civilian Response Corps yesterday, civilian federal employees such as diplomats, development specialists, public health officials, law enforcement and corrections officers, engineers, economists, lawyers, public administrators and agronomists are officially volunteering to go to countries in crisis.

The Civilian Response Corps is a partnership of the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Justice, and Treasury departments.

In remarks at a ceremony launching the corps, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that rebuilding countries after conflicts "is a mission that civilians must lead. But for too long, our civilians have not had the capacity to lead, and investments were not made to prepare them to lead. As a result, over the past 20 years, over the course of 17 significant stabilization and reconstruction missions in which the United States has been involved, too much of the effort has been borne by our men and women in uniform."

The corps has both an active component, with 250 members, and a standby force of 2,000 federal employees in various fields who are willing to get additional training as needed and deploy overseas.

Even before the official launch of the corps, the State Department has deployed members to Sudan, Chad, Haiti, Lebanon, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Bush administration also wants to recruit 2,000 “reserve” members of the corps from the private sector and state and local governments -- such as police officers, city administrators, and port operators.

Update: I should've noted in the original post that there are some serious hurdles in the way of widespread deployment of civilians overseas. Katherine Peters' story yesterday about the Pentagon's Africa Command being forced to scale back its ambitions of having a quarter of its staff come from civilian agencies is certainly a cautionary tale. So is the State Department's warning to diplomats earlier this year that some of them could be forced to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan if the agency can't drum up enough volunteers for those hardship posts.

From Food & Water Watch: FDA Spends Too Much on Employee Parties, Not Enough on Food Safety

Nobody in Congress should crow about President Bush's low approval ratings. While he's down at 28 percent, our nation's legislature is even lower -- 14 percent in the latest Gallup poll, USA Today reports.

The numbers are, of course, partly merely a reflection of dissatisfaction with the state of the nation, especially the economy. But 14 percent is a shockingly low number -- the lowest since Gallup began asking the question in 1974. Fully 75 percent of respondents said they disapprove of the job Congress is doing (10 percent had no opinion).

Insurance companies concerned about the cost of replacing expensive homes destroyed by wildfires in western states are increasing relying on more than just federal and state firefighting crews to protect the property. "Business is booming for private firefighting companies," the Associated Press reports.

Timber and oil companies have long used private firefighting services, but now insurers with a vested interest in protecting high-value real estate are getting in on the act. That has some officials concerned that the private firefighters might get in the way of government firefighters, and that the wealthy will end up getting better protection from wildfires.

I'm at our Excellence in Government conference today, where CNN political analyst Bill Schneider got us off to a great start with a breakdown of this year's presidential election.

"This is not a normal political year," he noted, with both John McCain and Barack Obama running as independent-minded candidates who can bring an end to longstanding partisan divisions in Washington. In the upcoming political conventions, Schneider noted, "what we'll be witnessing is the remaking of the Republican and Democratic parties." Obama, he said, will be seeking to translate his movement for change into an electoral coalition, while McCain seeks to limit the influence of "movement conservatives" in the GOP and take the party toward the center.

But both candidates have serious challenges ahead of them. Given President Bush's low approval ratings, "this election should be a lost cause for Republicans," Schneider said. So McCain must try to win as a "Harry Truman Republican." Obama, on the other hand, is a "very difficult candidate to elect," Schneider said -- not because of his race, but because of his relative lack of political experience.

We'll be profiling each of the candidates in upcominng issues of Government Executive -- McCain in September and Obama in October.

A year ago, after Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he's a "very low-tech person" who doesn't use e-mail, and President Bush acknowleged he had a thing or two to learn about cyberattacks, I posed this rhetorical question in a column : "Is it too much to ask at this stage that top federal leaders have at least a working knowledge of technology?"

Apparently so. John McCain revealed in a New York Times interview this weekend that he's pretty low-tech himself. He told the paper he relies on his wife and and two aides to deal with this whole Internet thing. “They go on for me,” he said. “I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need.”

Also, McCain said he's “never felt the particular need to e-mail.”

It's easy to joke about this stuff, and there are good reasons why a politican might not want to personally leave the online trail that e-mailing entails. But setting aside the issue of whether the country should be run by people who basically never go near a computer, it's hard to imagine how they make it through a working day or week without doing so.

I know that top career officials in government used to get by having their assistants handle all computer-related tasks for them, but that's not true any more, is it?

The price of everything from gas to groceries may be on the rise, but the value of a human life is dropping, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The Associated Press reports that as of May, the agency reckons that "value of a statistical life" is $6.9 million, down almost $1 million from five years ago.

Agencies set a value on life -- based on what people are willing to pay to avoid certain risks and how much extra employers pay their workers to take on additional risks -- in order to calculate the costs and benefits of regulations. EPA says it adjusted the figure it uses based on updated economic studies. But some environmentalists say the Bush administration is fudging on the value of life to tilt the cost-benefit figures in the direction of not implementing tougher regulations.

EPA still places the highest value on life of any federal agency.

Some employees of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad aren't paying close attention to the rules about carrying firearms, the Associated Press reports.

"Weapons are continuing to be left unattended throughout the embassy compound," according to an unclassified internal memo obtained by the news organization. "The improper handling of weapons has legal and political implications."

The rules not being fully observed include keeping weapons within arm's reach at all times ("If using the embassy pool, you must designate a gear guard") and not drinking while carrying a gun.

What's the proper ratio of career ambassadors to those who are political appointees? Since the Kennedy administration, about a third of ambassadorial appointments have gone to non-career folks. Now the American Academy of Diplomacy is making the case that 10 percent is a more appropriate figure.

In a letter to presidential standard-bearers Barack Obama and John McCain, the academy's chairman, Thomas Pickering, and its president, Ronald E. Neumann, argue for a higher percentage of career ambassadors, saying, "too often ambassadorships have served as political rewards for unqualified candidates."

Pickering and Neumann recommend that all ambassadors meet a defined set of criteria, including "unquestioned integrity, personal discretion and self-discipline," "demonstrated interest and experience in foreign affairs," and "efficiency as a leader, manager and executive, reinforced by sound judgment and strength of character."

The academy is made up of 200 highly experienced retired diplomats. Both Pickering and Neumann are accomplished former career foreign service members.

(Hat tip: Al Kamen's "In the Loop" column, Washington Post)

I simply must offer my belated congratulations to the latest research geotechnical engineer at the Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory to be promoted to the GS-15/DBV level.

Why the kudos for the kind of advance through the ranks that's happens every day in government? Because the geotechnical engineer in question is none other than Sally A. Shoop. She's no relation (that I'm aware of, anyway), but we Shoops have to stick together.

According to a press release issued June 20, Shoop's "expertise lies in the impact of terrain on vehicle performance and maneuvers, vehicle and soils instrumentation and testing, terrain strength and constitutive representation, moisture migration and numerical modeling." Looks like she's swimming in the deep end of the Shoop gene pool.

NASA's plans to send astronauts to Mars are dependent on getting back to the moon first and setting up an outpost there to use as a jumping-off point for exploring the Red Planet. That, in turn, requires housing people on the moon for extended periods of time.

Smithsonian reports that figuring out where and how they'll live is the job of Robert Howard Jr., manager of NASA's "habitability design center" at Johnson Space Center in Houston. His challenges are many, including making sure that astronauts are shielded from solar radiation. And then there's the "eww" factor, the magazine reports: "In a waterless environment every drop of H2O, including sweat and urine, must be recycled and purified."

Options for the lunar outpost range from aluminum tubes to giant balloons.

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

Is it time to create an Earth Systems Science Agency? Several former senior federal officials think so. In an article in the journal Science, the group makes the case for merging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey. The idea would be to combine NOAA's atmospheric and marine programs with the terrestrial, freshwater, and biological programs of USGS to form one super-agency with a comprehensive perspective on the planet.

The group backing the idea includes former NOAA administrator D. James Baker, former USGS director Charles Groat, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Donald Kennedy and former presidential science adviser John H. Gibbons.

"Population pressure, development impact, and resource extraction affect land and sea alike," Baker says. "Just as the science of the Earth is seamless, so should the government responsibility be merged for these separate Earth agencies."

Dr. Shrink Gains GSA Approval

No, it's not about psychological services. Dr. Shrink is the world's largest shrinkwrap supplier.

Looks like the Washington Post has found a replacement for its bought-out "Federal Diary" columnist, Steve Barr. Fishbowl D.C. has gotten its hands on an internal Post announcement that the new columnist will be Joe Davidson, a Metro section editor. In what may or may not be a telling sign, Davidson recently has overseen the paper's religion page.

Prior to joining the Post, Davidson covered various government agencies at the Wall Street Journal. And before that, he worked in Philadelphia as chief of the city hall bureau for the Bulletin newspaper.

Looks like FEMA has some nasty leftovers from the Katrina relief effort in a warehouse in Fort Worth, Texas. Last week, Government Security News reports, the agency issued a solicitation seeking a contractor to help it get rid of 478 pallets of "contaminated food products" in the warehouse. Pressed for details, the agency said the food wasn't exactly contaminated but had been "exposed to infestation hazards." It happens in any warehouse, FEMA insisted.

Whatever the exact nature of the problem is, FEMA wants to get rid of the damaged goods, pronto.

If John McCain gets elected this fall, he's practically guaranteeing there will be lean times ahead for federal agencies. The Politico reports that in a new policy paper, McCain renews a promise to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. For starters, he says, all the money that would be saved once we finish with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan would go to deficit reduction.

But McCain also proposes an immediate yearlong "pause" in domestic federal spending. Specifically, he pledges to:

Freeze non-defense, non-veterans discretionary spending for a year and use those savings for deficit reduction. A one-year pause in the growth of discretionary spending will be imposed to allow for a comprehensive review of all spending programs. After the completion of a comprehensive review of all programs, projects and activities of the federal government, we will propose a plan to modernize, streamline, consolidate, reprioritize and, where needed, terminate individual programs.

In coducting such a review, McCain says he might "use the bi-partisan commission structure used for the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC). Such a commission could be required to report to the president who would then submit the recommendations to the Congress for a straight up or down vote."

And, for good measure, McCain promises to "reform our civil service system to promote accountability and good performance in our federal workforce."

I'm back, refreshed by a trip to the great American Midwest. I'll be back in the saddle shortly with some new items.