Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's new desktop could sleep two people quite comfortably. His basketball-court-size office is bigger than any one man needs.

And yet, kicking back on a sofa in front of a roaring fireplace on Tuesday, Salazar said his new executive office fits him better than his old job on Capitol Hill.

The longtime rap on Salazar is true, he admitted. He's more executive than legislator.

He said he respects the institution of the Senate. "And I dearly love my fellow senators, both Democrat and Republican. . . . But it is a slow process in terms of getting things across the finish line and having an impact on humanity in a positive way," Salazar said in his first sit-down interview since joining President Barack Obama's Cabinet.

He thinks he can have an impact much quicker in his new job, starting with an aggressive push to help the department overcome what its inspector general, Earl Devaney, termed "a culture of ethical failure."

Last year, an investigation by the inspector general uncovered a litany of problems inside the Colorado and Washington, D.C., offices of the Minerals Management Service, which oversees royalties from oil extracted from federal lands.

The investigation cited inappropriate relationships between regulators and industry insiders, rigged sales of government-owned oil and gas, improper gifts to agency officials and some sordid examples involving sex and drugs.

Obama gave Salazar a mandate to clean up the department's image. Last week, Salazar greeted many of his Interior Department employees, telling them there was "a new sheriff in town" - complete with a trademark cowboy hat and background as Colorado's top law enforcement official, attorney general.

Salazar blames the highest levels of the White House, specifically former Vice President Dick Cheney's "rifle-shot agenda" to "drill under every rock" for creating some of the culture in the department he now wants to change.

"I think the door was opened to the special interests," Salazar said. "And I think that's what created many of the problems.

"I think this department was very much run out of the White House, as opposed to having a strong secretary of Interior who developed a strong mission for the Interior Department and then executed that mission," he said.

Salazar casts himself in the "strong" executive category.