IN SEARCH OF THE PRESIDENCY

Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership From FDR to Carter.By Richard E. Neustadt. (New York: Wiley, 1980). Pp. 286.$6.95. Paper.

The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the WhiteHouse. By James David Barber. (Second Edition. EnglewoodCliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1977). Pp. 576. $11.95. Cloth. $8.95.Paper.

The Presidential Experience: What the Office Does to the Man. ByBruce Buchanan. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1978). Pp.198. $3.95. Paper.

The State of the Presidency. By Thomas E. Cronin. (Second Edition.Boston: Little, Brown, 1980). Pp. 417. $14.95. Cloth. $6.95.Paper.

We have met the enemy and they are us.-Pogo (Walt Kelly)

We give the President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than aman should take, more pressure than a man can bear. We abuse him often andrarely praise him. We wear him out, use him up, eat him up. And with all this,Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond party loyalty or na-tionality; he is ours and we exercise the right to destroy him.

-John Steinbeck

Andrea: Unhappy is the land that breds no hero.Galileo: No, Andrea. Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.

-Bertolt Brecht, Galileo

The American presidency is in a state of flux. No national politicalinstitution has been subject to such severe strain or been the ob-ject of more criticism. A succession of political shocks, notably theVietnam War, the urban violence of the Sixties, the Watergate scan-dal, the Nixon pardon, and the intractable problems of energy andinflation in the Seventies, have contributed to an erosion ofpresidential authority and political power. Greenstein points outthat between 1933 and 1961, three individuals (Roosevelt, Truman,and Eisenhower) held the office for the equivalent of seven four-year

56 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

terms. During a shorter time span from 1961 to 1978, on the otherhand, five men (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter) heldoffice for the equivalent of just over four four-year terms. "By thelate 197O's," he adds, "the rapid turnover in Presidents had becomean important quality of the presidency itself..."'

Focusing on the last two decades, James Stanley Young has notedthat "Kennedy was murdered. Johnson abdicated. Nixon was over-thrown and exiled. Ford was defeated in office, as was Carter. Wemay be in for a period where we waste every President who comesin. Perhaps we should be reconciled to a series of one-termPresidents," he observes.

The dramatic political shocks and short tenure of office need to beviewed, however, against a larger setting of . profound andwidespread changes in the American political system. These changeshave been noted frequently by various commentators in our books,scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, television, radio. Manyof them are identified by an impressive group of scholars con-tributing to The New American Political System, edited by AnthonyKing. King himself draws upon the individual chapters and addssome thoughts of his own in an able concluding chapter. 4 In therealm of political ideas, King suggests that two changes stand outsince the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and both affect notmerely the outputs of politics but the way in which politics is con-ducted as well. "The first is the decline of the ideas of the New Dealas the principal organizing themes of American political life."5 Thesecond is "the altogether new emphasis on the value of participationin politics" which is "not merely in the choice of public officeholders but in the making of public policy" as well.

Accompanying these major changes in ideas are many specific

1. Fred I. Greenstein, "Change and Continuity in the Modern Presidency, " in TheNew American Political System, ed., by Anthony King (Washington, D.C.: AmericanEnterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1978), p. 64.

2. Cited in Timothy D. Schellhardt, "Do We Expect Too Much?" Wall Street Jour-nal, July 10, 1979, p. 20.

3. See King, System. The factors of change are elaborated by Samuel H. Beer, FredI. Greenstein, Hugh Heclo, Samuel C. Patterson, Martin Shapiro, Austin Ranney,Richard A. Brody, Leon D. Epstein, and Anthony King.

4. Anthony King, "The American Polity in the Late 1970s: Building Coalitions inthe Sand," in King, System, pp. 371-95.

5. Ibid., p. 371.6. Ibid., pp. 372-73.

IN SEARCH OF THE PRESIDENCY 57

changes in the operation and behavior of our governmental, non-governmental and political institutions. Congress has dispersedpower, making it more difficult to transact business. Always adecentralized body, it has become even more decentralized as "thepowerful few have become the considerably less powerful many." 7

Television and press journalists are much more disposed to beingcritical of our national institutions, particularly the President, whilethe disappearance of the old party organization deprives the Presi-dent of a potential source of strength. The role of parties hasde"clined throughout the country and presidential politics hasbecome candidate-centered. Changes in the electorate include anerosion of party identification, increases in split-ticket voting, and aloosening of attachments to the act of voting itself. Changes in grouppolitics involve the increasing professionalization in Washingtonpolicy making, the mushrooming growth of issue groups, and theemergence of "issue networks." The latter is Hugh Heclo's phrase forthe new group life involving specialized policy expertise in federalbureaucracies, Congress, interest groups, and Washington lawfirms. He stresses that the growth of such issue networks makes thetask of presidential leadership even more difficult.

Anthony Ding observes that when the forementioned and otherchanges are identified and analyzed, certain words appear againand again: "fragmentation," "breaking up. "10 The erosion of theNew Deal ideas without the emergence of a new politicalphilosophy, the dispersion of power, the lack of internal cohesion inour groups and institutions, and the prevalence of amorphous issuenetworks are salient features of contemporary politics. Thus, to thewords suggestive of disintegration or breaking up, King adds thephrase "atomization." "American politics have become, to a highdegree, atomized." 11

King concludes that atomized politics is at the heart of our coun-try's political problems. Specifically, he argues:

7. Ibid., pp. 373-74.8. Ibid., pp. 373-95. These changes and the others that follow are mentioned in the

King Chapter.9. Hugh Heclo, "Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment," in King,

System, pp. 87-124.10. King, "The American Polity, p. 390.11. Ibid., p. 391.

58 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

American politicians continue to try to create majorities; they have no option.But they are no longer, or at least not very often, in the business of buildingcoalitions. The materials out of which coalitions might be built simply do notexist. Building coalitions in the United States today is like trying to build coali-tions out of sand. It cannot be done.'

The factors of major national shocks, high executive turnover,and major changes in our governmental and non-governmentalstructures since the time of John F. Kennedy suggest the desirabilityof reflection and reexamination of three recently revised classics onthe modern presidency. Much has changed since the first editions ofthe outstanding scholarly endeavors of Neustadt, Barber, andCronin, and recent events and changes afford them the opportunityto clarify, to amend, and to offer new thoughts. A fourth book, aslim but most original new contribution by Bruce Buchanan, is alsoreviewed because it complements quite nicely the work of Barber.

Review essays frequently tell the reader more about the reviewerthan the books under review. Moreover, they sometimes tend to oneor another extreme. Sometimes they are little more than a love feastwith the reviewer lavishly praising all facets of the work, and find-ing no weaknesses. At the other extreme is the supercritic who com-pares the works in question to some ideal research scheme, quite fre-quently his or her own, and finds them quite deficient and with fewredeeming qualities. This reviewer hopes to avoid both extremes andto find somehow the Aristotelian golden mean in reviewing. The for-mat to be adopted will first describe the approach, arguments, anddata put forth by an author, followed by an evaluation of itsstrengths and weaknesses in helping us understand the modernpresidency. The final section of this essay examines the future needsfor scholarship on what is perhaps our most important but leastunderstood political institution. In 1974 Richard Loss wrote in thisjournal about the dissolving concepts of the presidency.' 3 Ifanything, the institution has experienced even greater strain but hasnevertheless survived the trauma of Watergate and the imperialpractices of Johnson and Nixon. Now in its postimperial phase, it isan institution embedded in a sea of change and it strongly needs adelineation of its role in the new American political system. In an ef-

12. Ibid.13. Richard Loss, "Dissolving Concepts of the Presidency," The Political Science

Reviewer, IV (Fall, 1974), pp. 133-68.

IN SEARCH OF THE PRESIDENCY 59

fort to gain insights, as to what this role might be, it seems best tofirst revisit, reexamine, and reevaluate some of the classics in oursearch for the presidency.

I

First published in 1960,1 4 Richard Neustadt's Presidential Powerwas quickly acknowledged as a realistic assessment of how thepresidency actually functions. His service as an economist withO.P.A. (1942), and as a staffer with the old Bureau of the Budget(1946-50) and the White House (1950-53) allowed him to draw uponthe insig