Job Specs for the Oval Office
By Hedley Donovan
By HEDLEY DONOVAN
What does it take to be a good President? The former Editor-in-Chief of Time Inc., who spent a year in the White House as senior adviser to Jimmy Carter, offers some suggestions
The U.S. is halfway from the presidential election of 1980, which offered us the choice of Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter, to the election of 1984. With the midterm elections out of the way, and Ted Kennedy removing himself, the 1984 campaign is on. Various preliminaries have been visible for months, in the speaking schedules of the various Democratic possibles. If any Republican other than the incumbent entertains thoughts of 1984, he would be foolhardy to say so; the obligatory sentiment is that Reagan will run and be reelected.
Still, many citizens of this populous Republic cannot help wondering if Reagan-Mondale, for instance, is the best we can come up with. This is not to deny the several estimable qualities of the President or the former Vice President. We could do worse; arguably we have, within the past 20 years; quite possibly we will again, within the next 20.
The question is: How did the machinery for identifying potential Presidents, nominating candidates and choosing winners come to be so seriously out of sync with the modern requirements of the office? Compare the political leadership we are producing in this literate democratic society of some 230 million people with the leadership of the Thirteen Colonies in the late 18th century. For all its familiarity, the point is still a painful one. From 3 million people living on the edge of a wilderness: Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, the Adamses. (Would these men have survived the scrutiny of a Mike Wallace or Ben Bradlee? Probably so. The press was much more savage in those days.) But perhaps, out of all the mysterious historical chemistries that can produce a golden age--the Athens of Pericles, Renaissance Florence--the America of two centuries ago was a golden age for political thought and political leadership. Perhaps we should simply be grateful for the founders, not haunted by them.
If so, we could better be bothered by a comparison from our own time. The modern presidency begins with Franklin Roosevelt, and nine men have held the job. In the 28 years from 1933 to 1961, we had one great President, F.D.R., and two very good ones, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. None of the next six could be put in either of those categories. John Kennedy perhaps had a potential for greatness; the actual accomplishments of his presidency were meager. However, his short presidency and Gerald Ford's short presidency, for all the differences of style, were the best, or least unsuccessful, of the 1960s and 1970s. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation was a noble achievement (though the programs went wildly out of control). But the L.B.J. presidency is forever blighted by the tragic failure in Viet Nam. Richard Nixon was our best President of foreign policy since Eisenhower, not just because he had the wit to employ Dr. Kissinger, but his presidency will never recover from Watergate. The returns are not yet in on Jimmy Carter's foreign policy. His economic policies were an unsuccessful muddle; it is not yet clear that Reagan's very different policies will work out better.
It is not an inspiring roll call. The gap between electability and the capacity to govern seems to be growing. No American under 40 has any adult experience of a reasonably successful and "normal" presidency. The country and the world have changed profoundly since the successful presidencies of the 1940s and 1950s. The job has surely grown more difficult and more important, even as the quality of the incumbents has fallen off. Since the mid-'60s, the U.S. has declined in relative military power, drastically. We have declined in political and economic muscle vis-a-vis our allies. We have lost some cohesiveness and social discipline within the U.S. We have lost, at least for the time being, the economic momentum that produced steadily higher living standards and steadily growing tax-funded entitlements. We are still, all in all, the strongest nation and society, but it is a very tough time to be President.
Yet our democracy cannot allow the failed presidencies of the 1960s and 1970s to foster the view that the job has become impossible. It hasn't. It isn't. If we can arrive at a better understanding of what the job requires today, and what it does not, we may arrive at ways of finding better candidates.
Lion or Prisoner? The abiding paradox of the U.S. presidency is that it is the most powerful political office hi the world--hedged about by a mighty host of contending powers: Congress, the bureaucracy, the press, business, the courts, lobbies, the great American electorate and then all the other countries on earth, at last count 167. Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter could both be excused for feeling that checks and balances can be overdone.
Students of the modern presidency have tended to stress either its powers or its limitations. The living, changing amalgam of authority and constraints is perhaps too subtle to capture in any theoretical model. Bryce Harlow, a wise counselor to all the recent Republican Presidents, saw the powers of the office as so great, even in the hands of the prudent Ike, as to leave Harlow hi "almost fearful awe." The late Clinton Rossiter of Cornell took an equally sweeping view of the power, but rejoiced in it with a romantic fervor. He saw the President as "a kind of magnificent lion who can roam widely and do great deeds so long as he does not try to break loose from his broad reservation."
The heroic view of the presidency is powerfully fortified by modern U.S. journalism, with its insatiable demand for personalities, action and movement, and its versatile technology. TV, in particular, gives new dimensions and intensities of exposure that are a priceless opportunity, and ever present danger, to a President. The heroic view of the presidency of course includes the possibility of failure on a grand scale.
Richard Neustadt of Harvard, in his classic Presidential Power, stressed the limitations. The most concise presidential summary of the "limited" view came from Truman, a strong President who didn't always get his way: "The principal power that the President has is to bring people in and try to persuade them to do what they ought to do without persuasion." Truman affected a view of the presidency as a kind of martyrdom and called the White House "a prison." In fact, he relished the job and, aside from his intense partisanship and flashes of pettiness, performed well at it. Lyndon Johnson, when the self-pity was running strong, could say, "Power? The only power I've got is nuclear--and I can't use that." This was silly, and Johnson's record didn't suggest he believed it.
Rossiter was closer to the truth, but the danger in the heroic view of the presidency is that it can lead to vastly inflated public expectations. Two generations of historians and their readers were prepared to be disappointed with anything less than a Roosevelt--Franklin or Theodore. The leading historian of the New Deal, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., saw F.D.R. in an exalted light and later found enough activist electricity around J.F.K. to want to work for him. Only during the Nixon Administration did he begin to worry about the excesses of an "imperial presidency." James S. Young of the University of Virginia argues that there must be a "retrenching" of presidential power "to save the presidency for the things only it can do." The President can and should restrain public expectations of his office and distinguish between "threats to the Republic and mere problems for the Administration." Young and other advocates of a smaller presidency might have relished a comment in the White House the morning after a bad Carter primary hi 1980: "I understand," confided one of the young Georgians, "that the leader of the Free World took quite a chewing out from his wife last night."
Even without war or depression, the times are sufficiently difficult to test Presidents as severely as ever in our history. To be a "good" President hi the 1980s may be even harder than to be a "great" President hi the days of Antietam or Pearl Harbor.
Ideally . . . So what are we looking for? Always, of course, enough of a good quality but not too much. With almost every presidential virtue, a little too much becomes a defect, even a danger. The President must be "a good politician" but not "too political." The President should be decent but not "too nice." Etc. To start at the easy end of the check list:
> The Body. We prefer Presidents to look like Presidents. F.D.R. did (supremely so), also Ike, J.F.K., Reagan. Other recent incumbents, through no fault of their own, didn't.
A President needs tremendous physical stamina (though George Reedy, one of L.B.J.'s press secretaries, has noted that "no President ever died of overwork"). The 36-primary campaign, whatever else may be said of it, is a rigorous physical exam. We, at least, know that anybody who can get nominated and elected is in good shape.
The President ought to be an athlete (Ford, J.F.K., Ike) or at least an outdoorsman (Reagan), not just because it appeals to voters but because it helps make a rounded man, capable of relaxing. Carter, after that ruinous jogging photo, took up trout fishing in a big way. L.B.J. poured all his volcanic energies into politics; his was the youngest natural death (at 64) of any postwar President. Nixon is an essentially sedentary man. Truman's sports were walking, poker and bourbon.
> Character and Temperament. The presidential bedrock must be integrity, perceived and real. (Integrity includes an honorable private life.) There is an unavoidable tension between this necessity and the political necessities of maneuver, indirection and calculated ambiguity. Of the two masterly political operators among the modern Presidents, F.D.R. was frequently dancing along the ethical borderline, and L.B.J. was often well across it.
The President needs perseverance, and personal ambition within healthy Limits. A fashionable cynicism is that anybody so ambitious that he would put up with what it takes to get nominated and elected is morally disqualified for the presidency. Neustadt puts it more sensibly: Presidents need "drive but not drivenness." L.B.J., Nixon and Carter were all driven. Henry Graff of Columbia notes that we like a presidential candidate to look "called," though it is hard to achieve this effect when you are trying to sell yourself on TV.
A President should be "fair" and look fair, magnanimous, willing to give trust, compassionate. No very high marks for any recent President. Reagan gives the impression of insensitivity to the poor. Liberal politicians for some reason can be highly compassionate about "the people" and insensitive to individuals.
The President needs presence, dignity, a certain touch of distance and even mystery; he is also expected to be "human." F.D.R. and Ike set a high standard. The aloofness of a De Gaulle would not sit well in the U.S. He needs courage, physical (just to go outdoors) and moral. He must be tough, even ruthless, but not find sick enjoyment in ruthlessness. He needs a deep self-confidence, stopping short of a grandiose sense of destiny.
He must be steady and stable, housing his exceptional combination of gifts within a personality approximately "normal." Among the modern Presidents, the most nearly "normal" personalities are probably Truman, Ike, Ford, Reagan. "I am disgustingly sane," said Ford. It may be significant that Ford and Truman had not aspired to the presidency, and Ike began to think of it only in his late 50s, when he had already won world fame in a job about as big as President. Reagan had had two satisfying careers in the public eye, as actor and after-dinner free-enterprise speaker, before turning to politics.
> Brains. Justice Holmes called Franklin Roosevelt "a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament." The President needs superior intelligence (at least a B from Holmes) but need not be brilliant, deep or bh'ndingly original. He needn't be an intellectual, and we have not been threatened with one lately.
The President must be a simplifier. Reagan is rightly criticized when he oversimplifies, which is often, but some of his simplifying is just right, not unlike good teaching or preaching.
In abstract intelligence it could be that L.B.J., Nixon and Carter would rate highest among the modern Presidents. All suffered from a lack of judgment and proportion, which does not show up in IQ tests.
A President needs a sense of history, including a feel for the situations where history does not apply. Jimmy Carter, despite his speed-reading studiousness and remarkable memory, was strangely deficient here. The present incumbent seems relatively innocent in the field. Truman and J.F.K. were well-steeped in history. From a sense of history (preferably not just American) flows an informed patriotism, a feel for the powers of an office unique in the world, the restraints upon it, and the tempo of a presidential term, including the special opportunities of the first twelve to 18 months and the special learning-curve problems of these same months.
A President must offer the country vision, and he must animate his Administration with purposes larger than the enjoyment of office. A visible zest for the job is perfectly legal, even desirable. But the love of the job can contribute to a certain blurring of the national interest and the personal interest. F.D.R. doubtless convinced himself in 1940 that it was for the good of the nation and the world that he should be the first three-term President. It would be refreshing some time to hear a politician admit he wanted to be President simply because it is the top job in his business. (The motivation of J.F.K., Nixon, Carter.) But it is not an auspicious basis for a presidency. It suggests a lack of idealism and of a coherent political philosophy. Reagan and L.B.J., whatever their shortcomings, must be credited with a vision of using the presidency for the country. Walter Mondale puts it this way: "The candidate must know the mandate he wants from the people, and they must understand the mandate he is asking."
The President's political philosophy needs to be earned, hammered out in some detail, tested intellectually and in experience. It is good for the stability of the country that the American center, which is essentially where we want our Presidents to be, is so spacious. But there are drawbacks in this vast and vague consensus; presidential candidates and Presidents can evade the hard work of thinking out policy specifics and confronting the harsh choice between two good things.
As to the roots of a President's philosophy, a religious affiliation is necessary for a major-party candidate, but is religious conviction necessary in a President? Certified historians and political scientists shy from such an embarrassing "value judgment." But the voters know they would not want a nonbeliever President, and their instinct is correct. It has been settled that a Catholic can be President. The droll Bob Strauss goes about asking whether the country is grownup enough for "a Texas Jew."
The President must be a communicator. Reagan, by general agreement, is the best since F.D.R. Indeed, for a time in 1981, when he had Congress eating out of his hand, it seemed as though mastery of TV and one-on-one charm had become the very key to the presidency. Events and realities of 1982 suggest some limits on what a President can accomplish by communicating. TV is still a major resource for a President, more important in governing than in getting elected. Carter, Nixon and L.BJ. all won elections (two of them landslides) without being compelling TV personalities. Nixon was excellent on radio. L.B.J. was an overwhehning persuader close in, a gripper of elbows, clutcher of lapels. We have not had high presidential eloquence since Ted Sorensen was writing for J.F.K., though Ford (speechwriter: Robert Hartmann) came close at times, and Reagan, a heavy contributor to his own speeches, can be forceful and moving. The arts of presidential communicating should also include a sense of when to keep quiet. No recent outstanding examples.
For his own sanity, a President needs a sense of humor. Reagan and J.F.K. get high marks, Ford soso. Carter and Nixon each had a lively wit, on the biting side, but never developed an attractive way of showing it, just the right amount, in public. L.B.J. had little public humor and in private leaned heavily on the set-piece joke ("There was this colored boy once up in front of this judge in Panola County ...").
The President needs to be an optimist. Ford: "You just can't sit back and say this is wrong, it is terrible, that is wrong... and I can't do anything about it." But the President should not be so optimistic that he cannot face unpleasant facts, and spot them early. Reagan doesn't seem to have much of a built-in early-warning system, and neither did Carter.
A President must be capable of thinking in contingencies: What if? Some of the biggest contingencies (What if the Soviet Union did A or B?) get steady attention at the White House. But many scarcely less important possibilities don't.
A President needs an ever fresh curiosity about this big and complicated country. He can help overcome his isolation by seeking and taking advice from a broad circle. But many otherwise courageous people will simply not talk candidly to a President. He may be a very courteous listener, as Carter was, and still be incapable of any real exchange except with a very few intimates.
Reagan is more open as a personality but not notably open to "new" facts.
We want the President to be flexible, pragmatic, capable of compromise--also firm, decisive, principled. Carter was hurt by zigzags. Reagan advisers are said to worry about their man being "Carterized" if he compromises too readily. Conversely, many Republican Congressmen worry about his being "mulish." This is a tough one to win. The President should be able to admit error to himself, once in a while out loud. Theoretically, the public confessions could become too frequent, but that is not a real-life danger.
A crucial executive ability, above all for the Chief Executive of the U.S., is perceptiveness about people. This will bear heavily on the quality of the President's appointments and his ability to mold his people into an effective Administration. He must be shrewd enough to see when infighting is unavoidable, even useful, and when it is destructive. F.D.R., Truman, Ike, J.F.K. and for a time L.B.J. were good managers and motivators of people. Nixon's management methods brought us Watergate. Ford and Carter were weak as people managers. Reagan presided over some outlandish administrative arrangements last year, but the machinery is now running better. An awareness of gaps in his own knowledge and concerns should enter the President's criteria for his staff appointments. Self-knowledge without self-doubt is admittedly a lot to ask.
The President must manage more than people. The fearfully complex systems and institutions in his care need executive oversight and control. It is not enough to say a President "can hire managers"; as he delegates, he must know how to keep track of the delegated work; he must understand what his managers are managing.
A President needs a clear sense of priorities. Reagan has the ability to concentrate his energies and the country's attention. Detractors might say this was because he has less energy to deploy. Carter had prodigious energy and diffused it too widely. Presidents should have the knack for keeping three or four balls in the air, but not the urge to toss up ten.
Well, we have proposed no fewer than 31 attributes of presidential leadership. There could be longer or shorter lists, but they would all have this in common: no one of the cited qualities is by itself rare, and indeed we all know people who possess a number of them. The problem is to find somebody with all these qualities, or all but a very few, who is willing and able to seek a major-party nomination. Better yet, to find a dozen such people, so each party can choose from among first-class candidates before presenting the electorate the final decision.
The Resume Just to read the resumes of the modern Presidents, you would have had a hard time predicting their effectiveness in office. The only fairly safe guess would be that one term as Governor of Georgia is not ideal preparation.
(This is a retroactive guess; in 1976, some 40 million voters, including the writer, didn't think the point mattered that much.)
Two of the modern Presidents were two-term Governors of our two most populous states: F.D.R. and Reagan. Many students of politics think the Governor's job in a big complicated state is the closest thing there is, though nothing is very close, to the presidency.
Truman has become a kind of democratic legend of the "common man" rising to lofty challenge. He came to the White House from out of the seamy politics of Kansas City and two terms as a "machine" Senator.
When Ike was elected some of his critics were genuinely concerned about a "military mind" in the White House. Admirers who understood Ike's extraordinary kind of command success, at least as much political and diplomatic as military, may have expected a presidential greatness he did not quite achieve.
One might have expected less, or more, than we got from Kennedy and Ford. J.F.K. had spent 14 years on Capitol Hill, though he was not particularly diligent or influential there. Ford called himself "a child of the House," where he had spent 25 years, always in the minority; he served eight months as our first appointed Vice President.
Probably the best resumes of all were Lyndon Johnson's (federal bureaucrat, Navy, Congressman, Senator, majority leader, three years as V.P.) and Nixon's (federal bureaucrat, Navy, Congressman, Senator, eight years as V.P).
Eight of the nine were college graduates, and the list of their institutions evokes the American dream. Harvard, Yale Law and Michigan are there, and the senior service academies. But a fellow from Southwest Texas State Teachers can grow up to be President (and boast of the Ivy Leaguers working for him). So can a young man from Whittier, or from, perfect name, Eureka. Truman held no degree but had studied law at night school in Kansas City.
The academic performances are not very revealing. F.D.R. tended to the "gentleman's C." Nixon was No. 3 out of 25 in his class at Duke University Law School, Carter was 60 out of 820 at Annapolis, Ike an unostentatious 61 out of 164 at West Point.
Only three of the nine earned law degrees (F.D.R. and Ford as well as Nixon), a lower proportion than in the membership of Congress (still about half lawyers). Apart from the lawyers, none of the nine held an advanced degree.
Lateral Entry It will be interesting to see whether a Ph.D. can be elected again (Woodrow Wilson is the only one so far) before a woman or a black. Possibly a black female professor of economics who had become a university president (we could really use some good economics) in 1996. Meanwhile, the U.S. is conferring about 400,000 advanced degrees a year, lawyers and doctors, M.A.s, M.B.A.s, Ph.D.s, etc. These people are a formidable talent pool.
This brings us to the perennial question: Isn't there some way to get good people from "outside" politics into politics--at the level where they might be considered for the presidency? The answer remains: probably not. Wendell Willkie in 1940 was the last major-party nominee from totally outside politics.
In 1975 TIME published an Essay, "New Places to Look for Presidents." Out of reports from the TIME news bureaus around the country, about 150 names made the working lists. Last month TIME again asked its news bureaus for lists of people outside politics who might be presidential. The exercise yielded a national total of only 21 names. Among them: two former astronauts, Frank Borman, president of Eastern Airlines, and Neil Armstrong, oil-equipment executive; Chairman Robert O. Anderson of Atlantic Richfield; Lee lacocca of Chrysler; James Bere of Borg-Warner; Thomas Wyman of CBS; President Hanna Gray, University of Chicago; Marvin Goldberger, Caltech; Bartlett Giamatti of Yale; and, inevitably, Walter Cronkite.
TV is all over the place. The two former astronauts owe their high "name recognition" in good part to TV, and Borman helps keep his alive with TV commercials. lacocca also gives himself heavy exposure as TV pitchman; it is an expressive face, an appealing tough-guy personality and, who knows, if he could pull Chrysler out of the hole, save American jobs ... The president of CBS is an unknown face, but any heir apparent who can avoid being fired by Bill Paley has undeniable political talents.
"It's lists like this," says Jonathan Moore of Harvard, "that make you think the people inside politics aren't so bad after all." Nothing personal, he hastens to add, but the outside types tend to be "onedimensional in experience."
How to give them another dimension?
Most private institutions are proud when one of their people is offered a prestigious appointive job hi Washington. Depending on the man's age and length of absence in Washington, the organization is glad to welcome him back, sometimes in a higher job than he left; and if that cannot be done, the individual will usually be snapped up elsewhere. There is no taint to Cabinet or sub-Cabinet experience under either party; it is highly marketable.
What is needed is for some courageous corporations, universities, foundations to give "electoral sabbaticals." A promising 40-year-old corporation V.P. or university dean could try for a nomination to Congress (or indeed the state legislature). If he wins, he is now in politics, and if he has the talents that would have made him an impressive figure in private life, at 55 say, he may at 55 be a Governor, Senator or Cabinet officer with a shot at President. If he loses, he gets his old job back, and his organization learns not to be embarrassed that one of its people is an openly confessed Republican or Democrat. One of the reasons Congress and the state legislatures are so loaded with lawyers is that they can run and, win or lose, benefit from the publicity and contacts.
Why Not the Best? More urgent than the "outside" talent question, however, is the inside talent question: Do the best people in politics get to the top?
As compared with the six Presidents from Kennedy through Reagan, you can draw up a list of defeated candidates and defeated contenders for nomination that may well include some better presidential material than some of the Presidents we actually got. On the Democratic side: Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson, Adlai Stevenson (still a factor in 1960). Republican: Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton, Howard Baker, George Bush, John Connally.
For the Republicans, Bush and Baker are still available, for 1988 if not 1984, and perhaps Senator Robert Dole, steadily positioning himself toward the center, and Congressman Jack Kemp, steadily holding to the right. Also: Richard Thornburgh, Governor of Pennsylvania; Robert Ray and William Milliken, retiring Governors of Iowa and Michigan; and two attractive political alumni now hi industry, former Congressman and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, chief executive officer of Searle, and William Ruckelshaus, former Deputy Attorney General, now senior vice president of Weyerhaeuser.
In the last poll of Democratic preferences before Kennedy withdrew, he had a huge lead: 43% to 13% for Mondale and 7% for Senator John Glenn. Senators Alan Cranston and Gary Hart of California and Colorado are cranking up to run, also former Governor Reubin Askew of Florida and Senator Fritz Rollings of South Carolina. Some impressive Democratic Governors: Robert Graham of Florida, just elected to a second term, and James Hunt of
North Carolina and Richard Lamm of Colorado, now in their second terms. One suspects the veteran Indiana Congressman and former Majority Whip John Brademas, now president of New York University, has not forsworn politics for all time.
These are strong lists, for both parties.
Many of these people will end up being "merely" vice presidential, but remember four of our nine modern Presidents came from V.P.
Henry Graff points out that we have had no ex-mayor as President since Grover Cleveland. "Mayors deal with garbage and garbage rubs off." Hubert Humphrey (Minneapolis) came close, however, and Senator Richard Lugar (Indianapolis), one of the biggest Republican winners on Nov. 2, gets talked about.
Refining Expectations Several changes would help the best of these people get serious consideration for the presidency:
> Shortening the marathon campaign for the nominations would reduce the numbing effect on the electorate, perhaps lead to higher voter turnout and, conceivably, more thoughtful voting. Shorter campaigns would be somewhat less expensive and might help the working officeholder get as much attention as the full-time presidential candidate. Senate Majority Leader Baker has complained of the difficulty of running against an "unemployed millionaire." In 1980 he was up against three of them: Reagan, Bush, Connally. Carter in 1976 was approximately a millionaire, and had been running full time for two years; all his rivals had demanding jobs.
> Speaking of money, the game is still heavily stacked toward those who have it, or whose policies (on the subject of unionism, insurance, Israel, oil, whatever) attract plentiful contributions. Once a candidate is rated as having a serious chance, the money tends to flow, but some first-class people never get sufficiently funded to be seen as "serious." Mainly because of the price of TV ads, it can cost millions to run for Governor or Senator in a populous state, a serious constriction on the size of the pool from which presidential possibilities are drawn. Republican Lew Lehrman spent about $7 million of his own money running this year for Governor of New York. Democrat Mark Dayton spent about the same (but four times as much per voter) in his run for Senator from Minnesota. Both lost, to be sure, and in Dayton's campaign in stolid Minnesota, the lavish spending may have hurt him. But adding up all 33 Senate races, we find 27 of the winners were the bigger spenders. Total spending on the 1982 congressional races exceeded $300 million. The cost of 1984, presidential and congressional, could hit $1 billion. This is not an excessive advertising budget for the most important act a democracy performs (Procter & Gamble spends $600 million a year on ads). The question is whether the money is fairly distributed, and whether contributors in effect can buy a politician's vote. But campaign financing is a very complicated thing to regulate. Freedom of speech is involved, also the law of unintended consequences: past "reforms" have often created whole new sets of problems.
> Perhaps the greatest stroke in behalf of better Presidents would be for the incumbent President, starting with Ronald Reagan, to consider as one of his major responsibilities the identification and grooming of possible successors. (One of his close associates says he has never heard Reagan mention the subject.) A corporate C.E.O. would be considered shamefully derelict if he did as little about his successor as the President of the U.S. does. We do not want the President decreeing his successor, which he couldn't anyway, but he could do far more than most recent Presidents have done to see that strong people are in the right places to get serious consideration. Ike gave fitful attention to the problem, and kept lists. He thought Robert Anderson, Texas businessman, his Secretary of the Navy, then of the Treasury, was best qualified to succeed him. But when Anderson was not interested, Ike seemed to lose interest. He was not a great Nixon fan, but would not move against his Vice President.
Nixon as President came to think John Connally would be his best successor, toyed with the thought of moving Spiro Agnew to the Supreme Court (!) and making Connally his running mate in 1972. He could have commanded that, but backed off. Then, when Agnew had to quit in disgrace in 1973, Nixon was in enough trouble himself that he did not want to risk a congressional fight over the controversial Connally and chose the safe and well-liked Jerry Ford.
Not only in the choice for V.P, but hi his major Cabinet appointments, a President has the chance to put good people into the running for the future. Some can be from the "outside." The President needs to be big enough, of course, not to feel threatened or upstaged by strong people around him.
> There is more the sitting President can do. He can fight the idea that the presidency is unmanageable, for the sake of his own place in history, but also for the sake of the office and the appeal it could hold for others. There has been far too much lamentation about the President's helplessness vis-a-vis the bureaucracy. J.F.K. called the State Department "a foreign power." Presidents use the power of the permanent bureaucracy as an alibi for their own nonfeasance in the managerial role, and this encourages their Cabinet officers to adopt the same attitude within their departments. When a candidate runs "against Washington," as Carter and Reagan did, this mind-set continues long after the candidate has himself become "Washington." Plenty of people will always seek the presidency, but we may be losing some principled people who have been persuaded by Presidents that the job is hopeless.
>Finally, along with thinking of the presidency as manageable, we need to learn not to expect too much of the President. This is a difficult balance, but justly so, because we want equally delicate balance within the mind and temperament of the President: just enough of this or that quality, but not too much.
We are a profoundly democratic people but deeply susceptible to heroes and leaders. TV can confer a celebrity that may be confused with leadership quality. TV also contributes, in these dragged-out campaigns, to the steady inflation of political promises. As the talking goes on and on, presidential candidates seem drawn to grander and grander claims of what they are going to do. You could cry or laugh or both on rereading some of the promises of Reagan, Carter, Nixon, Kennedy. The apparent necessity of talking such nonsense is one of the things that keep some good people out of politics. A presidential candidate who won on reasonably sober rhetoric might encourage good people for the future, and along the way save himself some trouble in office. For that to happen, the voters--the audience--would have to want it that way.
Thomas Cronin of Colorado College, one of the most perceptive of the new generation of presidential scholars, puts it well: "We must refine our expectations of the President and raise our expectations of ourselves."
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