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Crisis in the Presidency
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14150 |
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EDITORIAL
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1 / 1988 |
1,717 Words |
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Morton A. Kaplan
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The American presidency is widely regarded as the world's most powerful office, but it is in a state of crisis. President Kennedy was assassinated in office. President Johnson fled from a nomination that would have been his. President Nixon escaped impeachment only by resignation. His nominated successor, Gerald Ford, could not win election. Jimmy Carter was discredited and suffered resounding defeat. And the seemingly impervious Ronald Reagan has lost his Teflon and most of his influence in the wake of a series of calamities.
Is it possible to govern the nation anymore? Are the any leaders capable of doing the job? And, if there are, is there any possibility of nominating and electing them? These are serious questions and they deserve serious answers.
At the dawn of the Republic, in a simpler (and better?) age, giants were available: Washington, Adams (John and John Quincy), Jefferson, and Madison. These men were skilled in statecraft both internal and external and they possessed intellectual capabilities that would be astounding in today's candidates. Their hopes and plans for the nation were informed by deep study of ancient and modern societies. They were familiar with the scientific currents of their age, and they had linguistic skills we cannot match. I remember reading with awe the letters John Quincy Adams wrote at the age of eleven and knowing that I do not today possess comparable skills of expression.
They were aristocrats who were educated in an aristocratic school system. Their grade school teachers probably had better-trained minds than do most college teachers today. However valuable in other respects the democratization of education in the United States has been, it has simply not been possible to produce for a mass market the quality of education that an elite system could produce. In addition to the great expansion of the pool of teachers that was required, mass education has had to cope with a modernized economy that created an enormous number of roles in industry and commerce that competed for the available talent.
The democratization of the American political system also produced a new type of successful politician--the popular leader. Andrew Jackson was the first exemplar. This development is not without its virtues, but it also entails dangers for a republican form of government. However exaggerated the talk of an imperial presidency--for our popular leaders are not modern Caesars riding to power on the backs of citizens who have become as dependent upon them as the citizen-soldiers of Rome were upon their generals--the contemporary democratic political system is as finely tuned to the immediate payoff as is the American corporation, with its stockholder voters, to the yearly bottom line.
Whatever weaknesses developed from these changes, the tasks of government remained at least comprehensible and manageable for a long time. It was only at the conclusion of World War II that government became monstrous in size, a process that was accelerated by the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson. In an earlier and simpler day, Woodrow Wilson typed his own letters and made sure to incorporate an error in each letter, which he corrected by hand to show that he had read it over. Today, letters are read by clerks, and unless they come from important people, are answered from a file of form responses, signed by machine, and assembled and mailed mechanically.
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