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A New Strategy for Presidential Leadership
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15824 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1989 |
2,046 Words |
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Charles Heatherly
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An ad hoc presidency which draws its power from a series of gerry-built coalitions is no match for the permanent power and hardball politics of the liberal coalition that still controls the machinery of American government. What is needed is a presidency committed to altering this unfavorable balance of power through an ambitious and aggressive "politics of governance," a politics that seeks nothing less than control of the policy apparatus at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
What would be different about a presidency committed to the politics of governance? It would go about the serious business of government in a serious way; that is, it would undertake a long-term program aimed at winning majority control of Congress as the key to governance. Unless conservatives wish to accept the status of a permanent "opposition party," they must adopt the goal of building a governing coalition. A party that does not aim at institutionalizing its gains will always be an opposition party, never a governing party.
The President shares law-making power with Congress in our separation of powers system. But whereas the politics of governance is second nature to the leaders of Congress, it does not come naturally to the thinking of White House strategists. This is not surprising. There is little incentive--political, moral or institutional--for White House political strategists to think in long-range terms. Under the Constitution as amended in 1947, Presidents have only one election to be concerned with: their own re-election. If the President's re-election chances and the size of his election victory can be increased by focusing exclusively on that one contest, separating it from the fate of his party's congressional seats, why not do so? Both Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984 ran for re-election as though Congress were a neighboring country, and not as though the fate of supporters running for Congress had something to do with the fate of their presidencies. It is ironic that the decline of presidential power has occurred as a result of this preoccupation with the personal popularity of the President.
This combination of historical, institutional and political forces has produced a paradigm of presidential power that is myopic and insular: it does not understand or support the kind of sustained political effort needed to strengthen the President's ability to govern the country. Congress, on the other hand, has developed a finely tuned sense of its own institutional interests and seeks continually to expand its power. More significantly, it does not need or seek any political mandate to do this: Congress as an institution is beyond the control of the American people because of the nature of congressional pork barrel politics. The 435 separate congressional elections are not decided primarily on national issues of any kind, let alone an issue as remote as usurpation of presidential authority.
Shifting Power
The result of these converging forces has been a steady shift in the balance of power from the executive branch to the legislative branch. A more traditional balance of power must be restored before any President can hope to implement a program of change mandated by his election.
Surveying this political minefield, a new President should make a commitment to reverse this trend and to build a governing
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