Chapter 3: "The Power to Persuade"

in

Richard E. Neustadt

Presidential Power


"The constitutional convention of 1787 is supposed to have created a government of "separated powers." It did nothing of the sort. Rather, it created a government of separated institutions sharing powers".

"The essence of a President's persuasive task is to convince such men that what the White House wants of them is what they ought to do for their sake and on their authority".

"From the veto to appointments, from publicity to budgeting, and so down a long list, the White House now controls the most encompassing array of vantage points in the American political system. With hardly an exception, the men who share in governing this country are aware that at some time, in some degree, the doing of their jobs, the furthering of their ambitions, may depend upon the President of the United States. Their need for presidential action, or their fear of it, is bound to be recurrent if not actually continuous. Their need or fear is his advantage".

"The President's advantages are checked by the advantages of others".

"The view of power as akin to bargaining is one we commonly accept in the sphere of congressional relations....The concept of real power as a give-and-take is equally familiar when applied to presidential influence outside the formal structure of the Federal government....Power is persuasion and persuasion becomes bargaining"

"The probabilities of power do not derive from the literary theory of the Constitution".

"There is a widely held belief in the United States that were it not for folly or for knavery, a reasonable President would need no power other than the logic of his argument....The best of reasoning and of intent cannot compose them all. For in the first place, what the President wants will rarely seem a trifle to the men he wants it from. And in the second place, they will be bound to judge it by the standard of their own responsibilities, not his. However logical his argument according to his lights, their judgement may not bring them to his view".

"The essence of a President's persuasive task with congressmen and everyone else, is to induce them to believe that what he wants of them is what their own appraisal of their own responsibilities requires them to do in their interest, not his"

"But adequate or not, a President's own choices are the only means in his own hands of guarding his own prospects for effective influence. He can draw power from continuing relationships in the degree that he can capitalize upon the needs of others for the Presidency's status and authority. He helps himself to do so, though, by nothing save ability to recognize the pre-conditions and the chance advantages and to proceed accordingly in the course of the choice-making that comes his way".


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