THE POLITICS PRESIDENTS MAKE Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton ° Stephen Skowronek Su ‘THE BELKNAP PRESS OF ‘Cambridge, Massachusetts, don, EnglandCopyright © 1993, 197 bythe President and Fellows of Harvard Cage All gh reserved Prine in the United Sits of Aerie To Susan Limary of Congress Cataloging Publication Dat Skowronek, Stephen The pois presidents make: eadetship om John Adams to Til Chao / Stephen Skowronk Orgnally published: Cambridge, Mas: Belknap Pres, 1993. Tncades bibograpbial references and inden ISBN 0.674689572, 1 Presdens—Unted Stater—History, 2 Plt ite Iwsttan9 19 S522560973—de2) 97-7818 leadership—United Stee HistoryCHAPTER 1 Rethinking Presidential History are continually remaking our politics, changing the terms of de- bate and the conditions of maneuver. The wonder is that we $0 seldom think about chem this way. We know far more about the ob- stacles chat frustrate presidents’ efforts to become masters of American politics than about what those efforts do to American politics. The ineffectiveness of our leaders has become a consuming preoccupation; there is litte stepping back to take stock of their political effects. We approach each new administration flush with ideas aboue what is wrong but shore on explanations for the variation in what is wrought. Taking the alternative tack, I found that historical examination of the presidency’ political impact has alot ro tell us about where things stand today. My objective in this book has been co understand the different kinds of polities that presidents make, I treat leadership efforts, short- falls and all, as politically formative; my interest lies in how they shape the American political landscape and drive its transformation, From this has come a different view of past experience and what we need to be concerned about now. The book ranges the whole course of presidential history, retelling along the way the leadership struggles of a dozen or so incumbents. I returned to the old stories to rethink fundamentals in light of what I saw as the limitations of familiar analytic strategies. The tendency bas Jong been to compartmentalize the study of government institutions on the side of order, system, and routine in politics, to identify them wich “politics-as-usual” and look outside of them for the “real” forces of change? But the presidency has never fit this frame very well It conflates these categories and distinctions, and much of its political Ss or fal, presidents are formidable political actors. TheyRethinking Pr significance is lost on them. Array the stories of the presidents in suc- cession—each in his turn endowed with broad constitutional powers and determined to exercise them in his own right—and the blunt dis- ruptive force of this institution instantly comes to the fore. Together these stories tell of an office that regularly reaches beyond itself to assert control over others, one whose deep-seated impulse to reorder things routinely jolts order and routine elsewhere, one whose normal activities and operations alter system boundaries and recast political possibilities. Disruption of the status quo ante is basic to the politics presidents make and, beyond that, to the dynamics of American political develop- ment in the largest sense. Rather than filter it out as background noise, [propose to fashion an institutional analysis that beings it center stage.* The first step is to redirect the signposts which we use to make sense of presidential history The Limits of Our Search for Order Ikis easy to get lost in presidential history. Each story presents itself as baldly idiosyncratic and therefore defiant of any quest for generaliza tion. ‘The subject matter tends at once to wander outward, encompass- ing the operations ofthe federal government as a whole, and to collapse in upon itself as a study of individuals. Patterns stretch over long spans Of time, more often than not obscured by the immediate twists and ‘turns of personality and circumstance. To show us the order of things, scholars have divided up the history of the presidents into periods. They have grouped historically contigu: ‘ous incumbents together and gleaned from the shared elements of their situations a sense of the parameters of the political system at that time From this they derive the characteristic demands that the system places fon the presidency and the characteristic resources available t0 meet those demands. Once the problem of political action within the period has been set in this way, presidential leadership becomes a function of relative skill at manipulating, politics-as-usual, Take, for example, Richard Neustadt’ classic study of the polities of leadership, Presidential Power (1960). The centerpiece of Neustad®s analysis was his description of a new political/nstitusional system that hhad taken shape in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Flis portrait of “the presidency at mid-century” identified incumbents after Franklin Roosevelt as a distinct and coherent group facing similar challenges in Presidential History pial uci, eau teaypevd eal e teleoetel oeea sued im sl pte ath prec of the office, had bee ae renicra ‘moot by recent, dramatic events (the N Net Deal and World War I) that had made crisis management a normal Pealand Word ind concerted action a matter of striking bargains among, ndependent interests and institucional actors who were themselves pos- ind sessed of a stubborn tendency toward gridlock. From his portrait of this new system, Neustadt derived the skills and strategies requisite to making ie work, and he sustained within that frame a thematic evali- ation ofthe performances of Traman and Eisenhower This was no mean achievement. Neustadt’ periodization of presiden- tial history—his distinction betwen modem and premodern contexts for the exercise of power— introduced a sense of coherence into the relenles succession of incumbents and raised the study of leadership efforts above the idiosyncrasies ofthe case at hand. But simple peviod ization schemes impose severe limits on the analysis of leadership, and Neustadts was no excéption. Nore frst that Neustadt se the modern incambents apart from their predscessors with a mere caricature ofthe past. The notion of a prior age when presidents did not have to be Teaders—an age when vital national interests were only sporadically at the fore and most presidents could rest content with mere clerkship—is nothing more than a conceit of modern times. While che imagery groups the modern presidents together on common ground and cordons them of fom prior experience, the question of just how diferent the politics of leadership in modern times is or whether the mid-rwentith-centary presidents individually share more with one another than they do with presidents in earlier periods is never really explored Second, in describing the system that mideentury incumbents had to sip, napoleon ctste cise of presi to what he HH comer war Wir bow etry work, and he evalua presidents do not change the ps politica and institutional parameter of the system appear impervious ‘to the exercise of presidential power; they are transformed by great ‘estermal Fores like economic depression or world was. Indeed, to com pare Teuman and Eisenhower by the same standard, Neustadt bad toRethinking Presidential History assume that Truman did not do anything to alter Eisenhower's political challenge or leadership prospects. This is really the crux of the peciod ization problem: to sustain comparisons within a given time frame, the systemic political impacts of successive leadership efforts must be filtered out, and no sooner are those impacts filtered out than the standards of evaluation themselves begin to ring hollow. The assump- tion that a system is given and that presidents make it work more or less effectively is bound to render the requisites of success elusive, for in their most precise signification, presidents diseupt systems, reshape political landscapes, and pass to successors leadership challenges that are different from the ones just faced, Finally, and to bring this full circle, by assigning priority t0 those aspects of the political situation that Truman and Eisenhower shared, Neustadt elided obvious differences in the political purposes they brought to action in the moment at hand. He speaks of the “tasks” of leadership at midcentury in generic terms, but Truman and Eisenhower set Out with manifestly different objectives in view. Afterall, one was 8 Democrat, the other a Republican. Truman was politically affliated with is predecessor and out to elaborate upon the received agenda, while Eisenhower, the first Republican to come to power since the advent of the New Deal, was the leader of a resurgent opposition out to find an alternative course that could still stand the test of legitimacy. To think thematically about tasks such as these, we have to be willing to break down the historical demarcations which Neustadt’s analysis sets up and look back to presidents his analysis would seem to consign to irrelevance. Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson's vice president and successor, might be a better reference for Truman's political dilemma than Eisenhower; William Henry Harrison, the popular general who took the Whigs to their first victory over the Jackson Democrats, a better guide to Eisenhower's political situation than Truman, Notwithstanding the limitations of the method, simple periodization schemes and modetn-traditional dichocomies structure most of what we think and write about presidential leadership today. Indeed, a sampling, of current opinion suggests that we are taking our period constructs ‘more and more seriously. One leading authority describes the changes ‘made in American government during the New Deal as the founding of a “Second Republic,” a system of government so radically different from what preceded it that all prior presidential experience pales into insignificance.” Another write ina similar vein that “the transformation Rethinking Presidential History ‘of the office has been so profound that the modern presidencies have ‘more in common with one another in the opportunities they provide and the demands they place on their incumbents than they have with the entire sweep of traditional presidencies from Washington's to Hoover’.”* This segmentation of presidential history is reinforced on the other side by scholars working on earlier periods: “The conceptions of leadership of the pre-1829 presidents,” writes a leading authority, “largely distinguish them from . .. latter day models. Because the first six presidents, quite simply, had different valuations of partisan moti- vation and of the reality of the public interest, they had different stan- dards of executive leadership.”? By calling attention to the historical demarcations that currently or- der this field, I do not wish to dismiss the important insights that have been gained. What we have learned about the distinctiveness of the presidency in different periods and about how changes in the office have accommodated transformations in the nation at large is in fact integral to the analysis to be undertaken here, that the ey <4 ipa : approach to the subject matter insights into what is crually got sd “ < ime frames given, Indeed, leaving the history of presidents in pieces—with incumbents in one period having litte in common with, or relevance to, those in the others—would sccm to be counterproduc- tive on its face. There are only some forty-odd cases in all, and with the experience as varied as its from one incumbent to the next, none can be dismissed out of hand asa potential source of insight into the significance of the rest. “Conier some een inumben, Jiny Carer, Ronald Resa and George Bush may be distinguished as a group of late-century presi ig certain resources and constraints and pursuing certain rmmerpe arse B cj how cic were ca enderaip tas these presidents undertook? Was zan simply a better politician than ‘the others, more skilled sata ea ote en presidency? Or we some yet unattended level, engaged in a Hig Lin ob PUM eee police lke Antery fck- son's than either Carter's or Bushs? Similarly, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson shared a set of institu- tional resources and presumptions about leadership that distinguishRethinking Presidential History them in important ways from presidents in later periods. Yet, Adams's presidency ruptured the politcal regime and shattered the previously dominant governing coalition, while Jefferson forged a new regime, one that would stand as the font of political legitimacy for decades to come, More curious still, Adams's shattering effect came in a rather desperate attempt to avoid national disaster and prevent his own compatriots from usurping the basic constitutional powers of his office, while Jef- ferson exercised extraordinary prerogatives throughout his tenure and passed power along to a hand-picked successor in the midst of a na tional disaster of his own making. These are stark differences in the politics presidents make. Are they idiosyncratic? Or are there other patterns at work, patterns that cue across our periods, which might help us specify the range of political possibilities further? Multiple Orders and Political Mixes Sein tis no acc hat the presidents rated rt ae of en li ve en mal re led by ly judged politcal incompetent. John Adams and ‘Thomas Jefferson, John Quiney Adams and Andrew Ja mes Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln, Herl lin Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan—this repeated dismal faiace wth stunning succes is one ofthe more srking patterns in presidential history, and accounting for it forces us to alter the way we have been thinking about that history. In the first place, we are prompted to think about what incumbents in very different historical periods have in common with one another and not with their immediate predecessors or successors. What conditions for leadership did the latter presidents in each of these pairs share; what could they do that their predecessors could not? Conversely, what conditions for leadership did the first presidents in each pair share; what did they do co open the door to greatness for their successor? Nore further that by accounting for the pattern in this way, we place the leaders themselves in a diferent light. A search for the typical effects that presidential action has in differently structured political takes us behind the familiar portraits of individual incompetence and ‘mastery, If it turns out that the “great” political leaders have all made the same kind of politics and if that politics is only made in a certain kind of situation, then our celebration of theit extraordinary talents and Rethinking Presidential History skills will be seen to obscure more than it clarifies. Indeed, if itis the potency of the office in different situations that is being picked up in historical judgments of effectiveness, chen this historiography is less a description than an extension of the politics presidents make. Finally, no sooner do we become aware of signposts directing us toward alternative assumptions about institutional polities. and presi- dential history than we are prompted to think about how the different patterns before us relate to one another. Ie wil not do merely o sub- stitute this pattern for that, presenting an alternative synthesis that tells the stories of the presidents according to a different view of order in history. Choosing one among several patterns that we know to exist is precisely what overstates the regularity and derivative character of in- stitutional politics. Ar the very least, we should want to know how the recurrent pattern we have just noted has been affected by the secular changes that others have described so clearly in the operations of the ‘government generally and in the evolution of institutional resources in the presidency in particular This last question points the way to a different understanding of institutional politics in all its various dimensions. When presidents act, they engage several institutional “orderings” simultaneously." Three are implicit in what we have observed in presidential history already. In making them explicit, we sce that each ordering has distinct institu tional referents and that each frames a distinct pattern of change over time, More important still, we see that these different patterns of change overlay one another ins time, Drawing chem out together exposes the layered structure of institutional action." First, of course, there is the constitutional ordering of institutional prerogatives. It frames the persistent pattern of political disruption, as. ‘each new president seizes control of the formal powers of his office and attempts to exercise them in his own right. Behind that lies an organ: izational ordering of institutional resources. While all presidents have had the same basic constitutional prerogatives, the practical organiza: tion of institutional relationships and responsibilities has changed sev- eral times over the course of American history as national politics itself has grown more complicated. These working modes of governmental ‘operation frame the emergent pattern of expanding resources and spteater independence in presidential action. Finally, there is a political ‘ordering of institutional commitments. The governments basic commit- ‘ments of ideology and interest have tended to congeal institutionallyRethink Presidential History Fd elatvay durable pation regimes, and thes ondedags fume Fistral ator of lading, Saamcctiog, id integrating oe Seog cdsearind porta Presidents are deeply implicad inal che various kind of changes marked along thes diferent orderings. Disaguhing the layers thas pests lang rey Soro aioe wey SN ae {> ou pols, Abraham Toca fought ell war and rected he di noe chage the pawonege bused, petaan meee of overnnztal penton she be crgebe lvtraaan!- pele te tr ta Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt made some extraordinary changes fn this Splat a pect, lip ie seen of ome, tie vith «more bareaurt and nadonally feat one: he aie at preserving commitment of ideology and intrest long extsblaed by the dominant Republican coalition. Franklin Roosevelt, like Lincoln, made extraordinary changes in the government’ basic commitments of Inet and ideology but he dso by caborag praca of gover Ate aa isa eect ine te oer ‘Our historiography has picked up this differential impact but again ina curious way it appear asthe stuff scholarly debate, Wa Lincoln the great exceyGon amen latent ory presents = founding Bebe ine Re weep, ersten: Oe apt Oa pata tncherplcalninetsertveentary presiden, maser of the mundane ars of patonage distribution?" Was Theodore Rocsreltyprsdeny the “birth of modem America" ot was i eather "slot of snd and movement signing ide?! Was FDR's presidency » pli evel tion or merely the pragmatic elaboration of a course aaa. by Theodore Rooetele, Woodrow Wison, and Herbert Hoorer" hs tunnlonal action along a afer dimension of orden history. Cues the lye are dined and we ae no longs dhating the tome of tab, diferent Linds of quetons inmedaly coms tthe fre, Gvestions that sek the ignincanc ofeach leadehip effort more dt recy in the coningeat mie.” : 7A anal of these mies doves che sandard fame of int tional sty a it has been derived from simple ptiodizaton schemes, We arent onge inolating sens of hlaory & pet a able rans in which insttutions mark order and routines we are dividing the fi Rethinking Presid ial Histor tory up in several ways and using the different periods to juxtapose contending forces of order and change. Institutions become the arenas in which these forces converge, collide, and fold back on one another Images of a coherent, ordered space bounded in time yield here to cross sections of discordant structures and transformative, though not en sirely intractable, agents. The upshor is a radically temporalized view of institutional politics: the actor shapes and drives political sequences as the different orderings impinge on one another, and order along one dimension affects change along the next. The relationship between po litical order and politcal change becomes, institutionally speaking, a ‘question of the reflexivities of time." Sorting and Comparing The bulk of this work consists of a comparison of leadership effors. By locating the presidents under examination in several different struc tures of action, I have, in effect, established for each a number of different reference sets. Each of these sets contains several cases that bear a family resemblance to one another along one dimension of presidential action in history. Looking at what the experiences of the presidents in each set have in common indicates what is “normal” politics along that dimension, and in this sense the experience of each incumbent is illuminated by the experiences of the others in that set Note, however, that the several sets bring very different kinds of politics into focus. By grouping the presidents according to different ordering principles, they provide different lenses on the politics of leadership. Furthermore, each presidents leadership effort retains significance as a unique and dynamic conjunctuse by virtue of the incumbent's member ship in several sees; his multiple memberships mark a particular histor cal/scructural moment. The contrasting rules of action found in the different sets will be seen to inform his particular leadership dilemma, and the impact of his leadership effort will be taken to reflect che interaction of those particular elements, By playing members and sets off one another, I draw general inferences about the presidency as a position of national political action and map changes in its political For an illustration of the method, consider the case of James K. Polk, president between 1845 and 1849, From one standpoint, Polk was just like every other president, out for a teem to exercise the constitutionalRethinking Presidential Flstory powers of his office in his own right and for his own purposes. His famous quip, “I intend to be myself president of the U.S.,” just about says it all from this perspective.” The remark is a pointed declaration of an impulse that all presidents share. Ie directs our attention to the basic prerogatives of the presidential office (the appointment powers, the war powers, the treaty powers, che legislative powers) that incum- bents put to the test ro realize theit ambitions within the constraints of the constitutional structure of checks and balances, We can observe here the disruptive force that attended Polk’s manipulation of these powers and the inevitable frustrations he encountered from the constraints on them. In these ways, Polk made constitutional politics. But Polk was also a president of the “party period,” a time extending from the 1830s to the end of the nineteenth century, when political parties most thoroughly organized the institutions and practical opera tions of American government.” This periodization reminds us that presidents of the latter two thirds of the nineteenth century shared similar resources and a similar policy repertoire, and that they differed. in these regards from the patrician presidents of the preparty period as well as the presidents of the more modern, bureaucratic period. Polle came to the presidency in the heyday of the party period. Indeed, he was the first “dark horse” candidate brokered by regional party leaders, and the first candidate to return a party to power after it had suffered fan interim defeat. He landed in the presidency as an archetypical man= ager of the party machinery, and proceeded true to form to fine-tune the politicaliadministrative system of spoils and rotation, As an opera- tor of this patronage-based, locally oriented system of national govern- ‘ment, Polk made party polities Beyond that, however, Polk was also a president affiliated with the dominant coalition of the second or Jacksonian “party system” (dating approximately from 1830 to 1860)" Indeed, he came to power in the heyday of this period also. Here Polk appears an orthodox-innovator, a stalwart Jackson Democrat leading his party at its most robust mo- ment since its founding. Steward of the received political faith, he worked diligently to implement the program of the Jackson coalition, to adjust that coalition to changing cizcumstances, and to try to main tain in the process its dominance in competition with the Whigs. Thus, Polke made Jacksonian politics We have here three different reference sets for the polities that Polk made—one built on what all presidents share by virtue of the formalities Rethinking Presiden of the constitutional design, another on what presidents of the same historical era share by virtue of the organization of governmental op. erations at the time and the distinctive institutional resources it lays at their disposal, and a third built on what select presidents in different periods share by virte of their political relationship to previously es: tablished commitments of ideology and interest. Nothing extraordinary appears to be happening along any of these dimensions in Polk’s case, but that is precisely what makes his example so useful as an illustration, Though the politics that Polk made appears in every respect normal politics or politics-as-usual, the politics in question is different in each, instance. Superimpose these filters on one another, and the notion of politics-as-usual under Polk dissipates. Our attention is directed instead to the dynamics inherent in the mix. Here Polk's leadership becomes transformative, the interaction of the elements working a profound, if somewhat unwitting, change in the American political landscape. [No one the least familiar with Polk’s presidency will be surprised to learn that it changed things profoundly. My objective is to explicate those changes systematically and to map them onto a larger canvas. Consider in this regard the relationship becween what this president claimed to represent in American politics and what the exercise of presidential power routinely does to American politics. Polk’s election as an orthodox Jacksonian Democrat—thoroughly submerged in the collective identity of his party and responsible for maintaining its integ rity—rubs up uncomfortably against che independent powers of his office, the exercise of which is inherently disruptive of previously estab lished political and institutional arrangements. For all his sensitivity to the problems this posed and for all his skill in trying to finesse them, Polk had difficulty reconciling his political legitimacy as a stalwart Jacksonian with his personal determination co be president in his own right, Stamping Jacksonian orthodoxy on the policies of American gov- ‘ernment quickly became a matter of stamping this president's personal will upon the party and the nation, Polk found himself caught in the conflicting rules informing his institutional position; exercising inde pendent powers and attempting to maintain control over his own ad. ‘ministration, he unwittingly but steadily undercut the contingent polit cal premise an which he hoped to rest his greatest achievements. Thus, we discern in the interaction of different institutional orderings a logic of distuption and transformation, a logic that turned the orthodox Polk, genuinely committed to party maintenance through “equal andOL eee Rethinking Presidential History ‘exact justice” to every faction, into “Polk the Mendacious,” a heretic, charged by each faction with a different betrayal and responsible in the end for sending the whole Jacksonian regime into a sectarian tailspin. The uniqueness of Polk's leadership moment is captured here in a Particular conjuncture of three relatively independent institutional or- derings. Bue because we began by sorting out these different elements, the political impact of this man on pis times also stands as a signpost (of more general dynamics of institutional action in time. As politcs-as: usual falls away and the multilayered structure of this leadership mo- ‘ment comes to the fore, the political consequences of Polk's leadership take on a more general significance, with implications ranging the entice course of American political history. A variety of comparisons and. contrasts might be ventured to tease more general lessons out of Polk's experience, First we can compare and contrast Polk's leadership moment with that of other presidents of the party period. Polk’s presidency is very much like that of Buchanan and Lincoln in terms of the organizational resources that were at his disposal in political action, but itis different by virtue of his position in the coalitional system or political regime. Unlike either Buchanan or Lincoln, Polk came to power with a potent political warrant for com pleting work on a long-established party agenda, There is no need to stop there. Polk’s leadership moment also can be compared and con trasted with presidents in different periods who were similarly situated in a political regime—for example, Lyndon Johnson. Johnson, like Polk, was a faithful son in a long-established party coalition, and he too came. to power to implement the received agenda at the most pregnant po- litical moment for doing so since that coalition’s founding, Johnson had to grapple with a dilemma that was quite similar to Polk’s—the di lemma of the orthodox-innovator—but he did so at a radically different stage in the development of the presidential office and the organization of governmental power more generally ‘The Polk-Johnson comparison broaches all the questions begged by the historical divisions between modern and premodern presidents that ‘currently demarcate the study of the presidency. To what extent are the ‘modern presidents really a group apart, sharing more with one anothee than with any presidents from Washington to Hoover? Just what dif- ference did it make that Polk confronted the dilemma of the orthodox- innovator at a time of state-based patconage machines and hemispheric ambitions, and Johnson at a time of national bureaucratic power and Rethinking Presidential History worldwide hegemony? Just how much has the advent of “the modern presidency” changed the politic presidents make? Teshould be clear by now that The Polis Presidents Make neither shout the order of things nor about the eames suceston of ios trai personales ineracting wth tet own enue cxcustanoe. is about the instiutionallogle of politcal disruption. Though the pre dency has never fit very comfortably nv standard concepons of oder arly ng, pape she premier camp of how inaions and ow sttuonal actors y engngng al thse ste nrangementssimultsnenualy, consnually re the range of poli pooabltes, The presidency n thn sens less the aka sep tthe resved categories of insttonal study than the guide toa new cole for understanding institations goal. he eatin of at tutional polities, the everyday stuggle of incumbent for conol sil a sing fore of staal change, and standard conceptions of ode in polites are but s0 many points of acces to the ongoing politcal ‘The pcrure ofthe residency that emerge hee isnot an especially rovy one. With incumbents engaged simultneooaly by very different sen of ales for venting thelr ambitions, the pollical effects of the terse of presidential power are Hely to be both willl and uni tended calculated and self-defeating. Once we ciscem a logic tothe polities presidents make, we sex jst ow cay ts for Incambents to fet themselves, andthe nation aught up inthe conliingpurpotes of the intron they inhabit, Perhaps the best to be and about the presidency from tis perspective i that, dept i propensity to foment debacle, theres something of enduring value ro» democratic society imam office tht routinely disrupes established power arrangements and Continually opens new avenac of poli activiy for others. We might Keep that value nin as we survey past experience and ienilythe ‘arlousladership syndromes that have ben with us sine the Begin hing. Before we are fnthed, we wil have to grapple with coment proces fr ing thetCHAPTER 2 Power and Authority RANKLIN PIERCE isn’t on anyone’s list of great presidents. But neither was he what we imagine most ninetcenth-century presi- dents to be, a mere clerk unchallenged by the duties of his office and content just to keep the machinery of government humming, Pierce came to the presidency in 1853 determined to leave his mark upon his time. In the first major test of his leadership, he threw his support behind a proposal that would radically alter the terms and conditions of national politics. With the resources of his office fully deployed, he secured that proposal—the Kansas-Nebraska Act—and inaugurated a new program for national action. In the process, he wrecked his presi- dency and sparked a revolution. Pierce was a failure; yet, his story is instructive. The problem was not ked the power or inclination to do great things but that he lost control over the meaning of what he did. His authority 4s a political leader collapsed in the exercise of his powers. Presidential history is littered with stories like this. As a rule, power has been less of a problem for presidents than authority; getting things done, less of a problem than sustaining warrants for actions taken and for accom: plishments realized. As most of what is written about presidential leadership takes power as the central problem, the distinction I am drawing here might at first seem strange. But consider our modern presidents. Though each has generated a long list of accomplishments, I doubt that anyone would ‘want to use the length of those lists as the yardstick of their relative success, Successful I do not necessarily do more than Bri eng OSS eis Sul depletes actions, the terms in which their places in history are understood. The 7Power ancl Authority are those who, upon leaving offic, look co some time in the stant future when people might begin to appreciate the wisdom of ‘what they did. Power and authority have a common source in the prerogatives granted to presidents in the Constitution andthe laws, Du they teach beyond these formalities indifferent directions. Power, a Iwill use the term her, refers to the resources, formal and informal, that presidents in a given period have at their disposal to get things done. Presidents exercise power by husbanding these resources and deploying them sta tegically to effect change. Authority, on the other hand, reaches to the expectations that surround the exercise of power at a particular m sent, to perceptions of what is appropriate fora given president tod. A preside’ auton hinges onthe waerans hate be dawn fom the moment at hand to justify action and secure the legitimacy of the changes effected. 7. Why has legitmation proven such a hard nut for presidents to crack? ‘The original rationale for the presidency offered in The Federalist Pa- pers was that it would routinely direc its incumbents toward the pur- suit of ther highest duty tothe nation, ‘The constitutional framework cues presidents to vindicate themselves inthe use of ther powers. They are expected 10 pursue “fame,” undertaking “great and arduous enter prises” with an eye to establishing thei legitimacy ‘And yet presidents are historical actors. Their words and deeds will transform the contexts in which they act, but they must act by thet own lights within the context given. An old adage captures the point well: presidents, we say, want to secure a place in history. Echoes of The Federalist Papers rng clear here: presidents are driven by a concern for their reputation; they ty to vindicate themselves in their steward Ship of national affairs. But the old saying hints at something more: a president comes to power at a particular moment in the course of national events, and vindication turns on the prospect for securing the ‘meaning ofthat moment on the presidents own terms. The question is, how do presidents go about the task of fashioning their places in history and how amenable are these places to being fashioned accord ing to presidental design? What I have called the polities presidents make encompasses both sides of the story: the president’ impulse to secure a certain under standing of his place in the course of events, as well as the actual political impact of his effor o do so. I seek to show how the context. Power and Authority bound struggle for legitimacy informs the president’s strategy for the cexercise of his power, and how the political impact of presidential leadership—the particular way politics is altered—follows from the ‘warrants the president can muster for disrupting the status quo ante, [As the history reveals, more often than not the logic of disruption tundercuts the agent; the leadership effort succumbs to the very changes ithas sponsored. To see the logic, however, we need t0 know a lot more action in history and the political about the dynamies of presidential parameters of the different places presidents occupy in it. ‘One of the more disturbing things co be observed in presides characters or political skills otal history is that there is lice in the perso ‘of those few who have mastered the legitimation problem that readily distinguishes them as a group from those who have not.’ Some rather ordinary men have wielded extraordinary authority, and some men of great reputation have failed miserably. Political wizards have self-de structed, and successful incumbents have not always had the most salutary effects. The chatacters and talents of che incumbents them selves tellus so little abour the political impact of presidential leadership precisely hecause leadership has not been a standaed test in which each in his turn is given an equal opportunity to secure his place in history. The Constieution impatts to each president a similar motive and a basic challenge in political action; hut, as we shal see, it leaves real historical relations of power and authority anchored in paradox. In this chapter and the next, I pursue the impulse to fashion a legit mate place in history with an eye to these paradoxes of power and authority. What are the political parameters of a presidents place in history? What are the political prospects for mastering these parameters fon the president's own terms? What are the likely political consequences of the determination to do so? Rudiments of the Leadership Problem Presidential leadership is an effort co resolve the disruptive conse quences of executive action in the reproduction of legitimate political order. Problems of historical legitimation come in a variety of forms but all of them relate the assertion of presidential control to the distup- tion of past patterns of control. The core paradox that riddles the persistent striving of presidents for mastery over their places in historyPower andl Authority is that the presidency is a governing institution inherently hostile to inherited governing arrangements ‘The roots of this paradox are not difficult to locate, They can be found in the oath of office set forth in Article Il of the Constitution. t swears both to “execute the office of President of the and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” In the first instance, he is charged to exercise expansive powers for independent action; in the second, he is charged to affirm the fundamental order of things. Somehow the order-shatter- ing implications of the exercise of power have to be reconciled with the orderaffirming expectations of is use ‘The problem of presidential action in history is compounded by the broader constitutional system in which each incumbent operates. The presidency is one of three coequal branches of government, each of which can effectively challenge the will of the others. Formally, there is no central authority. Governing responsibilities ace shared, and asser- tions of power are contentious. Practically, however, itis the presidency that stands out as the chief point of reference for evaluating the polity as it moves through time and space; itis the executive office that focuses the eyes and draws out the attachments of the people.” Unity, energy, and visibility combine in the presidency to place its incumbents four- square at the intersection of the received order of things and current demands for change; and, so exposed, the president becomes the light- ning rod of national politics, attracting and objectifying contending interpretations of the existing state of affairs. As the course of national Politics is debated and judged administration by administration, each president will seize control of the powers of his office to try, inthe face of coequal authorities, to establish order anew on his own terms. ‘The rudiments of the problem of historical legtimation are now in view. Presidential action in history is politicized by the order-shattering, corderaffirming, and order-creating, impulses inherent in the institution itso. The presidency is an order-shattering institution in that it prompts ceach incumbent to take charge of the independent powers of his office and to exercise them in his own right. Ieis an orderaffirming institution in that the disruptive effects of the exercise of presidential power must be justified in constitutional terms broadly construed as the protection, preservation, and defense of values emblematic of the body politic. It is an order-creating institution in that it prompts each incumbent to use his powers to construct some new politcal arrangements that can stand the test of legitimacy within the other institutions of government as well Power and Author as the nation at large. Getting these three impulses to work together: the political message and practical effect of each reinforcing the oth- cers—is no easy matter. That is why incumbents so often find themselves at cross purposes, As a general formulation, however, we might venture that to secure a place in history even roughly on his own terms, a president must be able to exercise his power in such a way thac these ordershattering, orderaffirming, order-creating impulses operate in tandem. These dynamics did not escape the attention of the founders. Alex- ander Hamilton, the leading defender of presidential power, worried openly in The Federalist Papers about the order-shatteting impulse. He saw “the intimate connection between the duration of the executive ‘magistrate in office and the stability of the system of administration.” ‘To reverse and undo what has been done by a predecessor is very often considered by a successor as the very best proof he can give of his own, capacity and desert; and in addition to this propensity, where the ater tion has been as the result of public choice, the person substituted is warranted in supposing that the dismission of his predecessor has pro ceeded fom a disike to his measuces, and that the less he resembles him the more he will recommend himself to che favor of his constituents? Hamilton lodged the disruptive effects of a change in presidents in the most elementary aspects of taking charge of the presidential office Disruption is not the special province of the extraordinary leader; it adheres to the most mundane tasks of running the office. Each presi dent, Hamilton continued, will naturally want to appoint his own m isters: “These considerations, and the influence of personal confidences and attachments, would be likely to induce every new President co promote a change of men co fill the subordinate stations.” Hamilton could not deny that the appointment prerogative is basic to a president's ability to fashion his own administration and exercise the powers of his office in his own right; nor was he one to begrudge incumbents any bold and ambitious projects they might undertake to establish their legitimacy in the exercise of those powers. The problem as he saw it ‘was that in a republic, where the alteration of presidents is “the result Of public choice,” these powers are also likely to promote “a disgraceful and ruinous mutability in che administration of the government.” That is what led him to put such great stock in the constitutional provision ‘of a fouryear term for the president anc! in the unlimited eligibility of incumbents to stand for reelection. Hamilton was comforted by the idea 21Power and Authority that a president could stay in office as long as he performed his duties well, that periodic elections might actually serve to hold a sitting i ccumbent to a high standard of duty and thereby extend his tenure, and that the disruptions inherent in a change of administration might thus be held to a minimum. Note further that Hamilton linked the disruptive force of the presi dency to a specific claim of political authority. Indeed, what troubled hhim most were the “warrants” for disruption that he thought any newly elected president would be likely to hold. Again his premise was that there is no legal limit on the prior incumbent’ ability to stand for reelection and that incumbents will want nothing more than to have their actions and achievements ratified by the electorate. With these assumptions, Hamilton ventured that the election of a new president is most likely to entail the “dismission” or rejection of the standing one New presidents were not to be taken lightly, because they would come ‘0 power with a potent political rationale for shattering the received order. They would assert that their election proceeded on the dislike of the current state of affairs; and, acting on that authority, they would be likely to try to change as much about it as they could. Finally, consider the historical experience. The presidency has changed hands a lot more than Hamilton anticipated. George Washing. ton established the precedent, generally followed thereafter, af a two- term limit, and the rise of a competitive party system made one-term presidents unexceptional. Only about 20 percent of our presidents have served out two full terms. About 20 percent have served less than one full term, and, taking a slightly different cut, about 20 percent have been unable for one reason or another to serve out terms for which they were elected, It is worth noting further that the Twenty-second Amendment has now formalized a strict reading of Washington's prece- dent thar excludes some presidents from pursuit of reelection altogether. Against this backdrop, the political implications of succession ran even deeper than Hamilton supposed, and they are much more complicated than he thought. The disruptions are more frequent, political relation- ships between successors and predecessors are not all of a piece, and power and authority are seldom as neatly aligned as in the circum- stances that Hamilton postulated, In fact, few presidents come to power upon an outright rejection of their predecessors. Many have taken office pledging to continue the ‘course already set. Some have been expected to act as stand-ins, ren- dering faceless tribute to their predecessors in a kind of surrogate ex Power and Authority tension of thee term, Sil others, if given their druthers, would have ited ro change course eadilly but had no clear warrants for doing to. The crux of the materi that while ll have to cope with the abeptive ects of being a president, few wil oat the instrumental ties oftheir power on a discursive fk of authority in the way Ham ton anigpeted Furthermore, while few take afc that way, the st ation that Hamiton anticipated and found so dangerous would seem tobe the only one in which the legtimation problem i readily esol thle Presidents lected upon the outright rection ofthe prdeceors nl have at ho an expnine waren for dain, The ec of ances beease the Incumbent i impicly authorized by hs election tances, however, presidents will nd themselves at cross purposes in one way or another disrupting a regime they do noc have any clear authority to repudiate. ‘The very frst presidential succession—from George Washington to John Adams—illustrates just how complicated the picture outlined by Hamilton in Federalist 72 can get, and it is no small irony that Ham= ilton himself was deeply implicated in those complications. The second president was an affiliate of the first, and though he was skeptical of the course charted during the Wathingion administration, Adams came to power dutifully affirming its policies and personnel. Adams was not free to deal with his inheritance as he saw fit and take charge on his ‘own terms, In fact, the Hamiltonians he held over from Washington's cabinet worked against his efforts to do just that, usurping in the process some of his most basic powers and turning his initial affirma: tion of continuity and stability into an impediment to his capacity to yea president at all, By the time Adams was ready to purge Hamilton's henchmen and stake out his own ground, he was all too deeply impli cated in theit controversial program, and neither they nor their strong. est opponents, the Jeffersonians, were prepared to credit the legitimacy of the new order he belatedly ventured to establish in his own right The Priority of Autbority What is the incumbent affirming? What is he repudiating? What com- :mitments are being betrayed? What orthodoxy, sacrificed? These ques tions have hounded presidents from John Adams to George Bush. Per- ceptions of propriety set an exacting standard for presidential action,Power and Authority and for all the attention we have lavished on the nuances of political skill and governing strategy, the presidency defies subtlety. The office is just too vital to the security of interests in power, and the exercise of its powers is too potent a threat to them. Presidents make choices between demands for political action in the present and existing politi- cal commitments embodied in previously established governing arrange ‘ments, and those choices are subject to ruthless serutiny by those af- fected. Every affirmation is implicitly a repudiation; every commitment made, implicitly a betrayal; every new rendition of the old faith, implic: inly a heresy. Any ambiguity in a president's political position will quickly be clarified by others at his expense, Any contradictions engen- dered in the course of acting on a position once clearly staked out will embolden and legitimize those who would oppose it. For these reasons, the question of authority holds priority in deter ‘mining the politics of leadership. Before a president ean formulate a strategy for action, he needs to construe his place in history and stake claim to certain warrants for the exercise of power within it. Lincoln ‘made the point succinctly: “IF we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it." The first thing a leader does isto situate himself in a public discourse, and construct a narrative relating what has been done pre= viously to what he proposes to do in the moment at hand. The hasie parameters of the politics of leadership are set here, in the president's initial assertions about who he is and where he sees himself fting into the nation’s history." ‘To sustain his narrative—co confirm during the exercise of his powers his own presentments about his place in history—a president must be able to preempt the authority of others to challenge what is being done and how it is being accomplished. Concrete policy accomplishments are important to the leader's prospects in this regard, as are personal set- backs and defeats, but they are important only insofar as they bear on the story being told. The solution to the problem of implementing policy preferences—that is, gamering and deploying institutional resources strategically—has no obvious bearing on the prior challenge of formu- lating a credible historical project. And conversely, the implementation of a set of preferences is no guarantee that the relationship envisioned between the established order and change—the president’ own impu- tation of meaning to hi actions and accomplishments—wil arually be m4 Power and Authority Slogans have been generated routinely over the course of the twenti eth century to label leadership projects—Square Deal, New Freedom, New Day, New Deal, Fair Deal, New Republicanism, New Frontier, Great Society, New Federalism, New Foundation, New Beginning, New Breeze, New Covenant. The list itself suggests something of the impor tance presidents attach to controlling the political definition of their actions ia the moment at hand. But what is important about labels is ‘what lies behind them—the politcal identity of the president, the war- ‘ant he can claim for changing received relationships, and the political dynamics inherent in the historical project he proposes to undertake. ‘The leadership of two familiar presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, illustrates the different political dynamics that adhere to different historical projects." Both were highly skilled, professional politicians; both enjoyed breakthrough political opportunities for the exercise of presidential power; both got a lot done; and both trans- formed American politics dramatically. An obvious difference between them, however, was their political relationship to the received order, Roosevelt came to power at one of the most desperate moments in the nation’s history as the leader of the opposition to a regime in collapse. He stood beyond the old order and against the received orthodoxies. He not only proclaimed the failure of the received dispensation, he declared its most basic commitments an insufferable perversion of the “ancient truths” underlying American civilization. Johnson, in contrast, hhad made his way up through the ranks of a long-dominant regime. At the outset of his presidency, he pledged to continue the work of his predecessors, and his election in 1964 effectively swept aside most of the obstacles to that goal. Standing at the threshold of one of the most robust moments in the history of the nation, Johnson took as his charge the implementation of the received orthodoxy and the fulfillment of its Roosevelt and Johnson claimed leadership authority by virtue of who they were politically and where they thought they fit into an ongoing history. Each articulated a cogent and compelling case for the exercise of presidential power; the warrants they claimed resonated loud and clear with basic features of their respective situations. But these war rants framed different projects, and they set up very different kinds of politics. The presidents adopted different strategies in the exercise of their power, they asserted control in different ways, and they had widely divergent political effects.Power and Authority From the stact, Roosevelt was openly and forthrightly engaged in the displacement of the received order and construction of some alternative. ‘The political dynamics thae adhere to such a project give the president a decided advantage in controlling the meaning of his actions. With the received order in utter disrepute, the disruptions inherene in the exercise of presidemtial power can be sustained with litle difficulty. Roosevelt's initial commitment—to restore in a new order “ancient” truths about American government that had been maligned in the recent course of national events—gave him an order-affirming message quite consistent with his order-shattering effects. Indeed, for Roosevelt, repudiation of the received order of things was itself a way of affirming the true order of things. This dovetailing of message and effect not only kept Roosevelt’ leadership buoyant, it also liberated him from any specific commitment to a particular the New Deal was, as we shall see later, only loosely related to what Roosevelt had proposed along the way, but by stiffening his repudiative stance to meet the resistance he encountered, Roosevelt was able to persevere through extraordinary twists and turns as master of the situ ation. In a sense, he was able to keep the ground clear of his detractors Jong enough for a new set of governing arrangements generally conso- nant with his preferences to take shape. Once this happened, the legit ‘macy of those new arrangements set anchor in his initial watrants for saving the government from bankruptcy and reclaiming the original conception of what An about all along." Now consider Lyndon Johnson. Johnson did not repudiate the prees- isting regime or set out to replace it wholesale with another. Instead, he directed his great powers toward a purely constructive purpose: the rearticulation of the existing order at a higher level of achievement. He projected a place in history in which al the commitments of the cuerent regime would be honored and all interests of significance to it served. Compelling as this conception was in the circumstances in which Johnson came to power, the maneuver contemplated is one that the ‘American presidency is hard-pressed to sustain. As his warrants for action were wholly affirmative, Johnson found himself at cross purposes in exercising the powers of his office, for no sooner was the disruptive force of his program fele than he began to lose control aver its meaning To neutralize the destabilizing effects of innovation, Johnson needed to strate the satisfaction of all commitments and interests. Thus, ternative. What actually emerged from crican government was supposed to have been Power and Authority while moving ahead on long:heralded promises regarding civil rights, the containment of communism, and social welfare, he was also trying to assert near total control over each, AAs ig turned out, the more he tried, the more his programmatic priorities became personalized; and the more personal his rendition of the received orthodoxy became, the more difficule it was for him to get the interests implicated in it to accept his package as a proper reading of their concerns. By this dynamic, the entire effort collapsed in on itself. As the President's hands-on manipu: lation of commitments began in fact to transform the regime he pro- posed to represent, the premises upon which he rested his case began to come under fire from the very interests he intended to serve. Johnson had no defense for the order-shattering effects of his actions, no re sponse to those among the faithful who rejected his particular version of orthodoxy and charged him with betrayal, no alternative in the face of his schismatic effects but to step aside. The exercise of power left him the victim of his own policies, and turned one of the most robust moments in American history into one of the most tumultuous. Roosevelt’ order-shattering warrants had a reconstructive effect, gal- vanizing support for a new regime; Johnson's purely affirmative war rants imploded, shattering the regime upon which his claims to leiti- macy rested, This reading of their experiences, preliminary as itis, squares in its hasie outlines with similar cases found throughout pres dential history. Time and again the lesson is the same: the power to recreate order binges on the authority to repudiate it, ‘The recurrent patterns of presidential politics are anchored in this paradox. The authority to repudiate is the most formidable of all political resources for the exercise of leadership. Without it, a president will have difficulty keeping the political impact of che exercise of power aligned with his ‘own definition of the moment at hand; with it, he can undergird in a coherent public discourse the most expansive and extensive disruptions of the polity. The authority co repudiate fuses language and action, intention and effect, in the reconstruction of political order. For better or worse, then, the American presidency has proven itself most effective politically as an instrument of negation. Too blunt in its dliscuptive effects co build securely on what has come before, it has fanctioned best when it has been directed toward dislodging established elites, destroying the institutional arrangements that support chem, and clearing the way for something entirely new. Our attention to nuances of strategy and the subsleties of skill misses this. The presidency is aPower and Authority bartering ram, and the presidents who have succeeded most mag. nificently in political leadership are those who have been best situated to use it forthrightly as such, What then are the implications of the priority of authority in the politics of leadership? First, though presidential power is a battering tam, embracing it forthrightly as such is not entirely a fee choice Claims to authority in the exercise of this power are embedded in political context, Though the “great communicators” of presidential history have all been great repudiators, not all presidents can be great repudiators. Lyndon Johnson was no more free to renounce his inheri tance wholesale than he was to choose to be someone else leading at a different time. Lacking the authority to repudiate, his leadership project \was far more dependent on subtlety, nuance, management, and manip lation than his own blunt actions could support. Second, the priority of authority suggests that the politcal effects of presidential action will be bound only loosely to the president's success in getting his own proposals implemented. Franklin Roosevelt was re- peatedly rebuffed on his major policy initiatives. His initial program for economic recovery was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and the great initiatives of his second term—Coure-packing, executive reorganization, and party reconstruction—all backfired badly. In light of this repeated humiliation on marters af personal initiative, ie is a wonder that Roosevelt did not lose control of the situation entirely, let alone that he stands out as the most successful president of the twentieth century. Roosevelt succeeded despite stunning defeats because he remained throughout the sponsor of an alternative to a bankrupt past. Stiffening his repudiative poscure throughout his first cerm, he forced even those who would frustrate him personally to accept the new state of affairs that was being constructed more systemically under his charge. Conversely, Johnson failed despite stunning victories because he ‘could not distance himself from the regime his actions were transfor ing. Lacking the authority to repudiate any interest of significance, he deployed his powers as strategically as he could to serve all and watched in horror as each in turn repudiated him, Finally, there is the matter of personality. To the extent that contex- tually embedded claims to authority are shown time and again to shape the strategies presidents deploy in the exercise of their powers, what We often take to be matters of personal character will turn out to reflect characteristics of the office under different circumstances. So convinced Power and Authority are we of Lyndon Johnson's perversity chat we have tended to ignore his own insights into the perversity of the situation he was charged to control. Johnson did not choose the wrong stratery for exercising power; he chose the strategy that fir the best case he had for political action at that moment. When we speak about the “tragedy of Lyndon Jonson,” we are speaking in the main about what happens to a presi dent who exercises great powers without warrants for projecting his ‘own independent course. The same is tue for the opposite view, reflected in the cule of personality that has come ¢o surround the lead: ‘ership of Franklin Roosevelt. When we speak of Roosevelt as a charis- matic leader we are speaking in the main about a historically contingent “charisma of office,” a contextual consistency in the order-shattering, orderaffirming, and order-creating impulses of presidential action." Roosevelt succeeded magnificently, but it does not follow that if we could just get more people like Roosevelt into the office, the problems and dangers the presidency poses would recede. Secular Trends The argument as it has unfolded thus far is offered as a counterweight to any simple presumptions about free agency and sel-cerermination that might inform current understandings of presidential leadership. It is not my purpose to absolve presidents of personal responsibility for their actions or for that matter to deny any credit due them. On the ‘other hand, the comparison just skerched cuts equally against the old proposition that the office is as “big” (or as great) as the person who holds it and the more modern idea that the office stifles se-expression and precludes success. My point is that the test of leadership varies widely from one incumbent to the next and that what presidents do to American politics turns in large measure on which test they are taking,"* ‘The fact that the political system does not take a more exact measure Of the capacities of the individuals we eloct—of their individual talents, their political skills, their personal characters—has led to all sorts of distortions in our politics. Some leaders have been prompted to under- take self-defeating, projects, tying themselves in knots co present their actions as technically consistent with their warrants; others, who found the game rigged in their favor, have wielded an authority quite inde- pendent of the merits of their proposals. This is disturbing, and it raises another set of questions about the politics presidents make: How have 29Power and Authority the different tests changed over the course of American history? What are the prospects for escaping these primordial logies of presidential action and political change The picture we have drawn to this point shows a blunt, disruptive force with effects that vary through shifting structures of political authority. It speaks to persistent and recurrent features of the politics presidents make, prompting us to seek references in earlier periods for the leadership struggles of Roosevelt and Johnson, Left out of this picture are the secular or emergent developments that have affected the organization and scope of presidential power. The resources available to presidents in getting things done have changed dramatically over the course of American history. Presidents in later periods exercise more power with more independence than their earlier counterparts, and these differences render the similarities notable across periods some- thing more akin to family resemblances To keep these dimensions of time in presidential politics distinct, I will call the historical medium through which authority structures have recurred political tine and the historical medium through which power structures have evolved secular time.” Presidential leadership in polit cal time will refer to the various relationships incumbents project be tween previously established commitments of ideology and interest and their own actions in the moment at hand, Presidential leadership in secular time will refer to the progressive development of the instite sional resources and governing responsibilities of the executive office and thus to the repertoire of powers the presidents of a particular petiod have at their disposal to realize theie preferences in action. The distinc tion will prove useful in keeping track of how the politics of leadership gets reshaped in the interaction of these structures. The object ult tely is to understand how contingent structures of authority have affected the reorganization of presidential power, and how changes in the organization of presidential power have affected the political range of different claims to authority. We will observe a subrle secular reshap- ing of the leadership struggles that recur in political time, a reshaping that has gradually grown more pervasive in its significance. ‘An elaboration of these emergent structures of power and recurrent structures of authority follows in Chapter 3. To anticipate how they bear on each other, we need only observe that the “rise” of the presi- dency to ever greater prominence as an instrument of American gov cernment parallels the development of a political universe which is in 30 Power and Authority every way more fully organized and more densely inhabited. Ie is not just that the presidency has gradually become more powerful and inde- pendent over the course af American history, but that the institutions and interests surrounding it have as well At every stage in the development of the executive office, a progres- sive proliferation of organized interests and independent authorities has redounded to greater reliance on the president for central management and coordination of the affairs of state. The effect of this institutional thickening on the politics of leadership has been to make those with ‘weak authority claims more potent and those with strong authority claims less so. The political discretion and governing responsibilty that have gradually acerued to the presidency as a matter of routine have bolstered those incumbents whose feeble political warrants might in earlier times have stymied their possibilities for independent action ‘uite quickly. Conversely, the progressive thickening of the institutional tuniverse of presidential action has hemmed in those incumbents who hold che most compelling warrants for independent action, making it possible for other actors to mount more formidable resistance to their will. The “rise” of the presidency has tended in this way to flatten out Jifferences in the potential political prospects for presidents, The implications of this are far-ranging, and most of this study will be devoted c0 exploring them. This fattening owt of political prospects might not be so problematic if new warrants for leadership could be generated to take it into account, The central problem today, I shall argue, is not to be found in modem conditions per se but in the classic claims of leadership authority that have endured despite their growing irrelevance. We are witness to a mounting confusion and progressive distortion of political purposes engendered by our own attraction to the very oldest warrants for the exercise of presidential power ‘When we encounter the Roosevelt-Johnson comparison again in Chapter 7, we will be fully attuned to the mix of historical patterns at issue in ity and the significance of each effort will be correspondingly altered, There we see the extent to which primordial patterns in lead- ership have been weakened and frayed by modernizing currents as well as the extent to which they have endured despite the counterforces at work, At the end of this study, when I speculate about the prospects for escaping the traditional and recurrent logics of presidential leader- ship in politcal time, the paradox implicit in the secular trends observed will come to bear most directly: As the power of all presidents to getPower and Authority things done bas expanded, the authority of those best situated to re produce political order has constricted. The “tise” of the presidency as an instrument of government has delimited its political range as an instrument of reconstruction. We shall see that no president had a freer hand in constructing a new political order than the first great repudiator, Thomas Jefferson. Jeffe son encountered only scattershot opposition to his course down to the very last weeks of his cighth year in office. By the time of the second great repudiator, Andrew Jackson, assaulting the old way of doing things had a very different effect, catalyzing the organization of a per manent opposition to the new course. Jackson broke with the received order and bolstered the institutional foundations of presidential power, bbut in the process he redivided the nation politically into two durable and highly competitive camps. By the time of Franklin Roosevelt, the President's own proposals for reconstruction were being rejected out- tight. The New Deal recast the political system and bolstered the inst tutional foundations of presidential power once again, but the new order was constructed by institutional actors who, even when they acted under the auspices of Roosevelt's reconstructive authority, thwarted his ‘own designs. In the case of the most recent leader in this mold, Ronald ng, more thetorical than institutional. The most successful president since Ransevele at breaking with the past, Reagan's achievement compares with Roosevelt’ as a further historical delimitation of what has traditionally been the most potent of all leadership postures Reagan, reconstruction was, relatively 5 CHAPTER 3 Structure and Action in American constitutional design, and there it wrestles with fear ff the degenerative propensities of republican institutions. The Contest is especially intense in the presidency. A bold celebration of the energy and independence of a unitary executive, the office charges its incumbents with great responsibility for political leadership and then circumscribes them in a host of contrivances designed to control ambi: tion and stave off the dread forces of disruption. Provisions for vigorous action press uncertainly against provisions for stabilizing the politics of Fe in the creative porential of men in office holds center stage the republic. ‘The dismal cycle of classical republican polities may have been con: trolled by this design, bur it was not stopped. In practice, the cycle became institutionalized. Presidential leadership has worked to pull the federal government ever more deeply into crises of legitimacy before suddenly swinging things around in one spectacular display of its re- ‘generative potential, A few incumbents, thrust to the commanding heights of political authority, have found new ways to order the polities of the republic and release the powers of the government; but they have done so by building personal parties and shattering the politics of the ‘past, actions the Constitution originally was supposed to guard against, “Moreover, each of these great political leaders—Jefferson, Jackson, Lin coln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Reagan—passed on a newly circum: scribed regime, so tenacious as to implicate theit successors in another cycle of gradually accelerating political decay. The few who have succeeded so magnificently are often held up to tus as exemplars of how the American political system can be made to work. Their leadership serves as a standing vindication of the possibi ties open to all, and as such, they set the standards against which the 33