Work on a Political Campaign
But the way most people get into politics, whether it be by working your way up or by transferring in, is usually by working on a campaign first. First of all, performing well in a campaign shows the candidate and the senior staff that you are loyal in the crunch. Secondly, campaigns teach you how politicians think and therefore the best way to sell ideas to politicians. You can have all the best policy ideas in the world, but if you can’t sell them to politicians, it’s a lot harder to get something done, for they are the ones in our society empowered to make those kinds of decisions.
After a campaign, if your candidate wins, you may end up in a U.S. House or Senate office. If you are interested in policy, it might be as a legislative assistant, someone who helps write bills and amendments that might be voted on in Congress, and who generally studies everything that will be voted on and can advise the boss on what the issues are and how to vote. Top LAs make over $100,000 a year.
Administrative Appointments
Or if you worked for a winning presidential candidate, you might go into the administration either as a “Schedule C” appointment (salary probably ranging from $60,000 -- $85,000), or, if you’re really good, as an “SES” (Senior Executive Service) appointment (salary range about $120,000), or even as an Assistant Secretary (salary about $130,000.) Or you could end up in the White House with a salary anywhere from $20,000 - $120,000.
The presidential appointees who have the greatest effect seem to share the following characteristics. They see their role as messengers for one or two policy elements in their realm, and concentrate on marshaling their constituencies and their sections of the media.They realize that between the short length of their tenure and the complexity of the environment in which they work, they can only impact a couple of issues.
So, they come to government with one or two issues they’re really passionate about and time their arrival for when the climate for those issues is near a tipping point. They then cut a deal with the senior career civil servants in their department whereby they will work hard on the bureaucrats’ agenda if the bureaucrats will work hard on the appointee’s. They fend off the White House and their Cabinet Secretary by giving them non-confrontational lip service on everything outside of the appointee’s couple of issues. They hire very adroit SESs to manage the agency and the appointee’s politics.
Whatever job you do in Washington politics, I can guarantee you that it’s going to be fast-paced, challenging and exciting. I was once the coach of the U.S. Olympic Team in whitewater kayaking and I thought that was exciting, especially when we won the magical gold. But every day I worked in the White House was like a day at the Olympics. I soon got what I called “event whiplash,” so many fascinating things coming at you one right after the other, all day long, that you didn’t have time to savor them until the job was over and you were out of office.
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Bill Endicott, who has worked in Washington politics over 30 years, has written a bipartisan book called “An Insider’s Guide to Political Jobs in Washington.” It examines jobs in campaigns, the two political parties, Congress, the White House the administration and the related jobs that form the revolving door that people who work in politics go into and out of: think tanks, labor unions, trade associations, interest groups, the media, and state and local government. It tells what the jobs entail, how you get them and where they lead. It also has 36 case studies of real people in successful political careers. The book has been endorsed by a number of people, including President Gerald Ford, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. , Pulitzer Prize winning historian and special assistant to president John F. Kennedy. It can be purchased at Amazon.com (look under William T. Endicott) or through bookstores.
