November 27, 2007
From the ‘best catbird seat in government’, SIS professor followed the money
BY MIKE UNGER
(Photo by Jeff Watts)
For anyone thinking of taking Gordon Adams’s national security budgeting course, let this serve as a spoiler alert. On day one, the class will begin with Adams speaking these four words: “No budgets, no policy.”
The sentence forms the backbone of not only one large—very large—aspect of the American government, but of Adams’s career in civil service and academia as well.
“Budgets are the implementing vehicle of policy,” he says. “If you want to know where policy is going to go you’ve got to follow the money, if you want to know if it’s going to work, you gotta follow the money. That’s why for me budgets have always been a very interesting prism through which one can see how the government operates.”
When it comes to the gargantuan federal defense budget, few people can peer through that prism and still come away with such a clear vision. For Adams it’s always been a labor of love. He’s been focused on America’s defense and foreign policy for nearly as long as he can remember.
“My first recollection of following a foreign issue was when I was about nine,” he says. “It was the Korean War. I can remember spreading the map of Korea out on the floor of the living room and following through the newspaper reports where the battle lines were. When I was in high school I was very interested in the evolution of the Cold War. I used to collect pictures of politicians and put them in scrap books. Not just us, but Joe Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev and people like that.”
A year spent studying as an undergraduate in France piqued his interest in international relations, and started him on a career path examining the relationship between economics and politics. In 1983 he founded the Defense Budget Project, a think tank that analyzed defense economics and policy issues.
“The purpose was, from a research perspective, to translate arcane information into available information,” he says. “How to educate Congress, media, publics, scholars about what the defense budget is, what it’s composed of, how the choices get made, what’s the relationship between personnel. The Defense Department is in many ways a universe in miniature. There’s almost nothing you can imagine that the rest of the government does that isn’t done in the Defense Department.”
After a decade at the research center, Adams decided it was time to “put his mouth where the taxpayers’ money was.” He accepted an offer to become the associate director for national security and international affairs in the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton White House. The position’s responsibilities include reviewing every budget that has anything to do with defense, foreign policy, and intelligence.
“I really wanted the opportunity to have a hands-on responsibility in this area. Not just to talk about it theoretically or from an analytical point of view, but to participate in the decisions,” Adams says. “I found it the best catbird seat in government. It’s right at the heartbeat of the executive branch. It’s a great place to get a sense of how the process works, and I’m a process guy. I’m very interested in demystifying the process, understanding how it works and explaining it.”
Few jobs in the government are more taxing. Adams and his unit were charged with vetting annual budgets in the neighborhood of $270 to $320 billion.
“I used to describe it like standing in the middle of the room with a paddle,” he says. “All around the wall people are throwing balls at you as fast as they can. Your job is to figure out which ones you have the chance to hit back, and hope you don’t make a mistake because the one that you let go by you because you don’t have time, bounces off the other wall and hits you in the back of the head.”
Despite the long hours and stressful work load, Adams found his five years at OMB
enlightening.
“I learned a fantastic amount,” he says. “I say a lot of people go into government and spend capital intellectually. I went in and accumulated intellectual capital. That was incredibly rewarding. I got a chance to work with some of the finest civil servants in America. The OMB mantra is ‘Thank God it’s Friday, only two more working days until Monday.’ They’re married to the organization. It’s a very interesting but utterly exhausting place to work.”
After leaving the government and fulfilling an appointment teaching at George Washington University, Adams spent last year as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars writing a book due out in a year, tentatively titled Buying National Security. Adams joined the SIS faculty this fall, and he’s now teaching students about a defense and foreign policy budget that has roughly doubled in the decade since he was tasked with vetting it.
“Because for the average American it involves the expenditure of taxpayer dollars, it’s a subject of automatic concern,” he says. “Because it’s gone up as fast as it has, it’s a growing concern. When I was at OMB about 50 percent of discretionary spending was in foreign and defense policy. It’s now pushing 60 percent. It’s how we spend the preponderance of our discretionary money.
“We’re now in a position where our role in the world is questioned,” he says. “We’re not the super beloved in the world. It’s not clear that we’re getting our money’s worth. It’s not clear that we’re getting greater security out of all that. I think there’s a huge sea change coming in the way the United States relates to the rest of the world, and the way the rest of the world looks at the United States.”
The first clue as to the direction of that new world order just might be buried in a line of an obscure defense budget.
