Has
the presidency become too big for one person? This question was salient in the
1970s, as Americans endured Nixon’s Watergate plight, Ford’s frustrations with
stagflation, and Carter’s failure to free the American hostages being held in
Iran. Meanwhile, none of those presidents were able to take on OPEC (an Arab
Oil Cartel). Reagan’s answer was that big government, not an overwhelming
office, was the problem. Leaving aside the ideological question of whether the
U.S. Government had indeed grown too big (especially relative to the state
governments), I contend that occupants of the White House have serially
misunderstood the nature of the office. In short, the presidents have allowed their
efforts in partisan leadership to crowd out being the chief executive of the
executive branch. I suspect that the explanation involves a mix of
self-centeredness and simply wanting to shirk the boring stuff for more
exciting activities.
To
preside literally means to stand before.
In the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Ben Franklin referred to the proposed
office as sitting “in peaceful Council … merely to preside over our civil
concerns, and [to] see that our laws are duly executed” (Madison, Notes, p. 55). Referring to the first
role, which I take to be that of presiding, Governeur Morris stated on July 19 in
convention that the President should be “a firm guardian of the people and of
the public interest” (Madison, Notes,
p. 324). In this respect, the office of the American presidency is thus geared
to looking over the viability of the whole, leaving the partisanship and
legislating to the legislative branch. When these two are not left to the
Congress (the veto being originally intended to protect the whole rather than
for ideological purposes), the credibility
of presiding is compromised. Further, the administrative tasks in seeing
that “our laws are duly executed” are unduly delegated or simply ignored.
In
presiding, the president stands for the Union, which includes protecting its
system of governance at the macro level and
the Union itself, whether from internal dissolution (e.g., Lincoln) or foreign
invasion (e.g., FDR). The Presidential leadership that is most credible is at
this “high altitude” level. Because the office is not primarily oriented to
partisanship on every single issue before the Congress, partisan leadership,
such as on a garden-variety issue, is ultimately bad for a president both in
terms of credibility and opportunity cost (i.e., the value of tasks closer to
the office that are crowded out).
George
Washington can be cited to support the thesis that the office is oriented to
flying above all but the highest storm clouds. The first president had both Thomas Jefferson and James Hamilton
in his cabinet. Listening to the two men
debate, the presider could discern where the national interest lay rather than
risk ideological group-think oriented to using the office to push an agenda.
President Jackson was oriented to the good of the whole rather than a partisan
ideology when he opposed Congress funding roads entirely within a given state
(Missouri) and yet sent troops to South Carolina after it passed the
Nullification Acts that purported nullified federal laws that hurt the state’s
interests. It is not clear if the president was a federalist or an
anti-federalist, as his focus was on keeping federalism in balance because that
would support the viability of the Union.
The
results of a 2010 focus group reported by the New York Times indicated that Americans
wanted a president who resists the temptation to engage in partisan fighting.
They wanted a leader who would stand for things on which most Americans agree,
such as that American society should be more civil. Such leadership is oriented
to a vision of the whole that transcends partisanship. For example, Barak Obama
could have run in 2008 explicitly as a multiracial (rather than black) candidate
capable of personifying what America was rapidly becoming: a true melting-pot
wherein multiracial persons are seen as the leading wave of the future. Taking a
partisan stand on virtually every issue that come out of Congress so as to have as much as possible his way undercuts
the credibility of “personification leadership” because people on the other
side of a given issue will resist accepting the president as personifying
anything involving themselves. In other words, Obama’s political opponents will
not buy into any America that he personifies—period.
As
a general principle, partisanship
undercuts presiding. Paradoxically, a president wanting to maximize his
influence on every issue winds up undercutting his influence that is most in
line with the design and nature of his office and thus effective. In wanting so
much to go his way, a president’s ego obstructs his performance on tasks that
only he is in a position to accomplish. Lost in the backwash of partisan spit
is not only presiding, but also executing the law as the chief executive. It is counterintuitive to
conclude that a sort of presidential leadership (i.e., the partisan or
ideological variety) is bad because it crowds out the more fitting administrative role. Properly understood,
(presiding) leadership applies to the presidency without crowding out the
administrative tasks in holding agencies accountable. Sadly, presidents
typically try to get involved in as many issues as possible—hence the office appears to have grown too cumbersome for
one person.
Joe
Hagin, George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff, observed while still in office
that there “was much less time [under the second Bush] to catch your breath
during the day.” A constant juggling of issues—from wars down to cleaning up
after hurricane Katrina often taking place all at the same time—had exhausted
the White House staff. “There’s only so much bandwidth in the organization,”
Hagin admitted. “Can any single person
fully meet the demands of the 21st century presidency?” Doris Goodwin has argued that the growth in
the number of things expected of the president has expanded exponentially since
WWII. “The President’s inner circle can become stretched by the constant number
of things labeled ‘crises’ that land on his desk.” Just because the media
labels some issue as a crisis in order to increase viewership does not mean
that the issue measures on the “presiding” scale. Surely the Presidency, being intentionally
designed as one person rather than a presidential council, was not initially
intended to micromanage every issue in public discourse. The proliferation of
news sources has increased the pressure on the President to weigh in on more
things. Meanwhile, his administrative tasks are neglected even more.
President
Obama delivered 57 speeches in October, 2010 alone; he had seven speechwriters
at the time. It would be interesting were someone to analyze those speeches to
see how many pass muster in terms of presiding rather than being partisan on
topical issues. The opportunity costs of getting into every issue in hopes that
each one will go the way he wants include not only foregone presiding
opportunities but also administrative lapses in executive branch agencies that
the chief executive and his immediate staff could have caught and rectified at
an early stage.
In
May 2013, President Obama claimed that he had learned that the IRS had been
targeting conservative groups for audits “only with the rest of you.” This
statement “drew criticism,” according to the Wall Street Journal, by “focusing
attention on his management style and whether he has kept himself sufficiently
informed about the agencies under his authority.” I suspect that the president
enjoys giving partisan speeches more than overseeing many agencies. In other
words, he allowed the time-expansive sort of (partisan) presidential leadership
to eclipse his administrative duties. Even the American people tend to view the
presidency as a leadership rather than administrative position—so the president
gets away with trying to get as much as possible to come out his way,
politically.
The
problem can be viewed as one of self-discipline. While in the U.S. Senate, Sen.
Obama did not enjoy the committee hearings, but attending them was part of his
job. Whereas in the Senate his leader, Harry Reid, could hold him to task on
the monotonous parts of the job, no such authority in the White House exists
over a president. To do more administratively as chief executive of the
executive branch agencies, Obama would have had to rely on his own
self-discipline, which appears to be in short supply. In regard to the partisanship
in the IRS, it could be asked why neither the president nor his White House
staff had caught the problem in their administrative capacity as the
conservative groups were being targeted. Perhaps the president had been too
busy giving campaign speeches or negotiating with Republican legislators on
legislative proposals.
Sources:
Daniel
Stone, “Hail to the Chiefs,” Newsweek, November 22, 2010, pp. 30-33.
Matt
Bai, “Voter Disgust
Isn’t Only About Issues,” The New York Times, October 6, 2010.
Peter
Nicholas, “Obama’s
Counsel Was Told of IRS Audit Findings Weeks Ago,” The Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2013.
James
Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987.