"The Textbook and Prime-Time Presidency"

Thomas E. Cronin

in

The State of the Presidency

Thomas E. Cronin

"Textbooks summarize current thinking and guide the work of contemporary researchers. For more than twenty years after the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidency, most textbook treatments of the presidency seriously inflated presidential competence and beneficence. There developed a view that America needs a strong central government and it needs strong central leadership to attain strong government....What resulted very often was a storybook view that whatever was good for our president must be the right thing....Only in the late 1960s and early 1970s did disillusionment with the presidency temporarily still this textbook devotion. But after a trial period in which the public turned to Congress rather than to the presidency for leadership, the prevailing view once again took hold that only the president can get things done, only the president can lead legislatively, only the president can make the country governable....But as we turned to our presidents for more and more kinds of leadership we also helped to promote false notions and myths....In the long run, rising expectations hurt presidents, who were led to make exaggerated promises and encouraged to go to great lengths "to look presidential" as if in the textbook mold. The imaginary, legendary, and hoped-for presidencies needed to be counterbalanced by a discussion of the real presidency with all its complexities and paradoxes".

The Textbook Presidency of the Fifties and Sixties

"The great engine of democracy"

"the American people's one authentic trumpet"

"the central instrument of democracy"

the presidency is growing: "wearing more hats"

"He is, rather, a kind of magnificent lion, who can roam widely and do great deeds so long as he does not try to break loose from his broad reservation".

"Lincoln is the supreme myth, the richest symbol in the American experience. He is, as someone has remarked neither irreverently nor sacrilegiously, the martyred Christ of democracy's passion play. And who, then, can measure the strength that is given to the President because he holds Lincoln's office, lives in Lincoln's house, and walks in Lincoln's way? The final greatness of the Presidency lies in the truth that it is not just an office of incredible power but a breeding ground of indestructible myth."

"Perhaps the most respected and specialized treatment of the presidency written in the 1950s or 1960s was Richard Neustadt's Presidential Power (1960). Neustadt's insights countered much of the conventional wisdom by stressing the highly political and bureaucratic context in which president's must operate, the obstacles posed to presidential directives by Washington emire builders, and the scarce resources available to a president who wants to reverse policy directions....Neustadt argued vigorously for a more powerful president--one who could guard his options and would impose his will. His study held on to the hope that a shrewd and manipulative leader could and should be a powerful engine of change".

"Post-New Deal textbooks on government emphasize also the importance of personal attributes....But stressing desirable personality characteristics may well have a tendency to create merely another kind of textbook presidency tradition".

"To summarize, four propositions can be singled out as the main elements of the textbook ideal:

Omnipotent-Competent Dimension

1. The president is the strategic catalyst for progress in the American political system and the central figure in the international system as well.

2. Only the president can be the genuine architect of United States public policy, and only he, by attacking problems frontally and aggressively and by interpreting his power expansively, can slay the dragons of crisis and be the engine of change to move this nation forward.

Moralistic-Benevolent Dimension

3. The president must be the nation's personal and moral leader; by symbolizing the past and future greatness of America and radiating inspirational confidence, a president can pull the nation together while directing its people toward fulfillment of the American Dream.

4. If, and only if, the right person is placed in the White House, all will be well; and somehow, whoever is in the White House is the best person for the job--at least for a year or so.

THE ROOTS OF THE TEXTBOOK-PRESIDENCY TRADITION

1. The rise of the president as "the leader of the free world"

"In instance after instance the idea of the United States as world leader and the image of the president as a permanent commander in chief of the free world's militia heightened the promise and the role of the president...This was the root of the imperial presidency--of a presidency that reached out to control and shape world events".

"These images of a president as an international figure not only enlarged the responsibilities of a president but also, at least initially, encouraged people to believe that a president must have greater leeway in such matters--including the power to withhold information from ongress or the people. The rise of extensive secret negotiations and diplomacy by executive agreements followed, along with the view that a president could even lie to us if the best interests of the survival of the free world would thus be served".

2. The need for a national symbol of reassurance

"Within the complexity of contemporary political life, the presidency serves our basic need for a visible national symbol to which we can attach our hopes".

3. The values of liberal pundits and textbook writers

"Those who wrote about the presidency in the post-Word War II period were predominantly liberal and internationalist in political outlook....The duty and challenge of a president, according to this school, was to articulate the national purpose and to mold public opinion....Most writers of the fifties and sixties identified with the considerable liberal faith in the possibilities of structural reforms. This liberal viewpoint advocates that better and faster reforms are more likely to be achieved through a vigorous chief executive than through alternative institutions".

4. The vast expansion of government coupled with the gradual relinquishment of powers to the president by Congress

"Government today does vastly more in domestic and economic affairs than it did in the nineteenth century, and a president is the most visible leader of that level of government, the national establishment, which nearly monopolizes the rich and expanding monetary resources made up of the personal and corporate income tax and social security taxes"

"Congress yielded power, or at least an enlarged mandate, to the presidency for several reasons. First, they were overwhelmed or overtaken by events. The country wanted faster action and practical solutions. Congress recognized that as a deliberative body it had severe limits for setting broad policy goals and for acting quickly in foreign- and economic- policy situations. It also recognized it could not manage or plan very well. That the presidency might not do these things exceedingly well either did not matter; the view was that there was more unity and more potential for swift, informal action in the executive than in Congress. So Congress became something akin to a loyal opposition. Having yielded considerable managerial and policy responsibilities to the president, congressional leaders organized themselves to oversee, oppose, and occasionally veto presidential government".

5. The desire for national stability and regime loyalty

"A president may be elected by a small margin, but after election he is supposed to speak for all the people".

6. Constraints on research and writing about the presidency

"Normally, an author relies on some combination of the public record, prior texts, cabinet, and White House staff memiors, and perhaps some interviewing of Washington officials...Many newsmen who have covered presidential campaigns have been converted into an admiring claque"

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7. The rise of prime-time television coverage of presidential campaigns and presidential performance

"Since its invention, television has become an increasingly important part of presidential politics. Television has dramatically changed the very nature of the office, the kind of men who hold it and how the public responds to presidents".

"Televison places in a president's hands enormous powers not provided for in our Constitution, powers over reality, perception, and over the whole way in which issues are presented and discussed in America".

"Presidential television has produced a troubling problem for democratic politics. The problem is the near monopoly enjoyed by presidents who skillfully use that medium in determining the way issues get shaped and even over the way political participation often takes place in the American political arena".

"Television, in short, serves to amplify the president's claim to be the only representative of all of the people. Television promotes the image of the president as the towering figure in national politics. Television allows a president an added extra-constitutional advantage in diminishing the role of other who would compete with him....We have today a "television presidency" and a video politics that have altered our political system in ways that are constantly underestimated and in ways that we are still trying to comprehend".

CONSEQUENCES OF THE TEXTBOOK AND PRIME-TIME PRESIDENCY

1. The effect on citizen politics

"Thus, although the vast majority of Americans support and honor their presidency, presidents are prime targets for psychotics and extremists. Regrettably, presidents become deeply loved and roundly hated, unduly worshiped and unduly feared. On both sides of the presidential popularity equation, the president's importance is inflated beyond reasonable bounds. On one side, there is a near-mindless faith that a president enjoys a monopoly of national civic virtue and wisdom and that any detractor must be an irreverent, effete snob or a nervous Nellie. On the other side, a president becomes the most crooked of all politicians, the perpetuator of poverty and racism, the tool of the establishment, and the primary source of a choleric national disposition".

2. An invitation to cynicism and despair

"Cynicism, a crisis of confidence, and a diminution of the feeling of legitimacy in the institutions of the presidency seem inevitable, and indeed these have occurred. The paradox is that when misunderstood and misused, those very characteristics that nourish the potential for responsible leadership in the presidency--its pronounced visibility, its mystique, and its exalted leacy--can also undermine it".

3. Distortions of Presidential Perceptions

"The reverence and loyalty rendered a new president are a rich resource, but an overindulgent citizenry can distort the president's psychological perspective and sense of balance".

LOOKING PRESIDENTIAL

1. Don't Just Stand There ; Do Something

2. Bend Over Backwards to Disprove Your Stereotypes

3. Don't Be Soft; Appear Resolute and Dominant and Accentuate the Sense of Crisis

4. Claim to Be a Consensus Leader When the Polls Are Favorable and a Profile-in-Courage Leader When They are Not

5. Travel Widely; Be a Statesman; Run for a Nobel Peace Prize, and Be Your Own Secretary of State

6. Don't Let the Vice-President or Any Other Member of the Cabinet or White House Staff Upstage or Outshine You

7. Claim Credit When Things Go Right and Decentralize Blame, Choose Problems for Their Potential Credit Value

8. Proclaim an Open Presidency and an Open Administration but Practice Presidency-by-Secrecy, Manage the News, and Circumvent the White House Press Corps

9. History and Historians Reward Him Who Protects and Strengthens the Polwers of the Presidency