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Towards a Pragmatic Presidency? Exploring the Waning of Political Time

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Polity

Abstract

In his landmark work The Politics Presidents Make, Stephen Skowronek concludes that an earlier cycle of presidential politics in America is fading. Calling this phenomenon the “waning of political time,” he predicts the declining importance of the president as a source of political change in American politics, and makes the conjecture that in the future, presidents will act more pragmatically and will more frequently clash with office holders in other political institutions. Applying hypotheses recently advanced by Curt Nichols and Adam Myers, this article considers some additional challenges to presidential authority that complement Skowronek's original thesis. Through a comparison of the presidencies of Obama and Ronald Reagan, the article also illustrates the relevance of the waning-of-political-time thesis to politics today.

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Notes

  1. Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1997), 442.

  2. Ibid., 445.

  3. Curt Nichols and Adam Myers, “Exploiting the Opportunity for Reconstructive Leadership: Presidential Responses to Enervated Political Regimes,” American Politics Research 38 (September 2010): 806–41.

  4. Stephen Skowronek, The Politics, 17–32.

  5. Ibid., 33–52.

  6. Ibid., 31.

  7. Ibid., 56.

  8. Paul Light, Thickening Government: Federal Hierarchy and the Diffusion of Accountability (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1995).

  9. Stephen Skowronek, The Politics, 31–32.

  10. Walter Dean Burnham, “Review: The Politics Presidents Make,” American Political Science Review 88 (June 1994): 486–8; Barbara Kellerman, “Review: The Politics Presidents Make,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 24 (March 1994): 420–1; Richard Pious, “Review: The Politics Presidents Make,” Political Science Quarterly 109 (Spring 1994): 171–4; Mary Stuckey, “Review: Presidents and Political Contexts,” The Journal of Politics 56 (August 1994): 818–23.

  11. For example, see David Crockett, The Opposition Presidency: Leadership and the Constraints of History (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002); David Crockett, Running Against the Grain: How Opposition Presidents Win the White House (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008); Douglas Harris, “Dwight Eisenhower and the New Deal: The Politics of Preemption,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 27 (June 1997): 333–42.

  12. Stephen Skowronek, Presidential Leadership in Political Time (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008).

  13. Graham Wilson, “Review: Do Presidents Make Politics?” Reviews in American History 22 (June 1995): 352–7; Richard Pious, “Review: The Politics Presidents Make”; Donald Brand, “Republicanism and the Vigorous Executive: A Review Essay,” Political Science Quarterly 105 (Winter 1994): 895–902.

  14. In Stephen Skowronek, Presidential Leadership in Political Time, 98.

  15. Stephen Skowronek, Presidential Leadership in Political Time, 2nd edn. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2010).

  16. Ibid., 182–83.

  17. Nichols and Myers, “Reconstructive Leadership,” 806–41.

  18. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments,” in Party System and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, ed. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (New York: Free Press, 1967).

  19. Nichols and Myers, “Reconstructive Leadership,” 815.

  20. John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (London: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 689.

  21. For classic statements, see Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (Toronto: Free Press, 1990); Jeffrey Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).

  22. Robert Denton, “Rhetorical Challenges to the Presidency,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 3 (Fall 2000): 446.

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  24. Joseph Straubhaar, Robert LaRose, and Lucinda Davenport, Media Now: Understanding Media, Culture and Technology (Florence, KY: Wadsworth Publishing, 2009), 22–25.

  25. Denton, “Rhetorical Challenges to the Presidency,” 446; Steven Schier, By Invitation Only: The Rise of Exclusive Politics in the United States (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press).

  26. For an interesting empirical study, see Matthew Mendelsohn and Richard Nadeau, “The Magnification and Minimization of Social Cleavages by the Broadcast and Narrowcast News Media,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 8 (Winter 1996): 374–89.

  27. Denton, “Rhetorical Challenges to the Presidency,” 448–49; Roderick Hart, The Sound of Leadership (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 53–58; Michael Kang, “From Broadcasting to Narrowcasting: The Emerging Challenge for Campaign Finance Law,” George Washington Law Review 73 (Winter 2005): 1,070–1,100.

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  31. Denton, “Rhetorical Challenges to the Presidency,” 449–50.

  32. For more on the modern dilemma of the personal presidency, see Theodore J. Lowi, The Personal Presidency: Power Invested, Promise Unfulfilled (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985).

  33. Thomas Dumm, The Politics of the Ordinary (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 144.

  34. For an excellent empirical analysis of the changes toward increasingly abstract, trust conscious, and broad presidential rhetoric, see Elvin T. Lim, “Five Trends in Presidential Rhetoric: An Analysis of Rhetoric from George Washington to Bill Clinton,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 32 (June 2002): 328–48.

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  36. Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address (January 20, 1981), emphasis added.

  37. Gil Troy, Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 41–46.

  38. Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History 1974–2008 (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 281.

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  45. Ibid.

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  48. Robert Lieberman, “The Politics of United States Foreign Policy under Barack Obama”, Revista d Ciencia Politica 29 (2009): 832.

  49. Jon Johansson, “Obama in Political Time: Presidential Leadership in the 21st Century,” Fullbright New Zealand Association Lecture at Victoria University of Wellington (April 28, 2010).

  50. Brownstein, “Repudiating Bush.”

  51. Campbell, “The Exceptional Election of 2008.”

  52. For a policy learning perspective, see Peter Hall, “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State: The Case of Economic Policy Making in Britain,” Comparative Politics 25 (April 1993): 275–96.

  53. Scott Rasmussen and Dougas Shoen, Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System (New York: Harper, 2010); Kate Zernike, Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America (New York, NY: Times Books, 2010).

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  55. Ronald Brownstein, “Heartland Headache.” National Journal (November 4, 2010).

  56. Drew Western, “What Happened to Obama?” New York Times (August 7, 2011): SR1.

  57. Jonathan Chait, “Drew Western's Nonsense.” The New Republic (August 8, 2011), accessed at (http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/93323/drew-westens-nonsense).

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  60. Kay Schlozman and John Tierney, Organized Interests and American Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1986).

  61. Robert Kaiser, So Much Damn Money: The Triumph of Lobby and the Corrosion of American Democracy (New York: Random House, 2009).

  62. Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).

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  64. Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977); Jeffrey Berry, The New Liberalism (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute, 1999).

  65. Daniel Tichenor and Richard Harris, “The Development of Interest Group Politics in America, 603; Elisabeth S. Clemens, The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890–1925 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

  66. Martin Wattenburg, The Decline of American Political Parties: 1952–1996 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

  67. John Coleman, Party Decline in America: Policy, Politics and the Fiscal State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).

  68. Interestingly, there was also a conspicuous lack of reconstructive politics during the Progressive era, despite the rumblings of the election of 1896. Instead, there was a resurgence of Republican rule that severely weakened, if not completely smothered, the seemingly imminent emergence of a new regime. For a taste of the debate within the realignment school about the meaning of Progressive-era politics, see Richard L. McCormick, “Walter Dean Burnham and the System of 1896,” Social Science History 10 (Autumn 1986): 245–62.

  69. Stephen Skowronek, The Politics, 443–4.

  70. Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1993); George Edwards, The Public Presidency (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983).

  71. Brandice Canes-Wrone, “The President's Legislative Influence from Public Appeals,” American Journal of Political Science 45 (April 2001): 313–29.

  72. See Matthew Baum and Samuel Kernell, “Has Cable Ended the Golden Age of Presidential Television?” Political Science Review 93 (March 1999), 1–16; Garry Young and William Perkins, “Presidential Rhetoric, the Public Agenda, and the End of Presidential Television's ‘Golden Age.’ ”

  73. George Edwards, On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

  74. John W. Sloan, The Reagan Effect: Economics and Presidential Leadership (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1999), Chapter 3.

  75. Sidney Blumenthal, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: The Conservative Ascent to Power (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2008), 329.

  76. Stephen Skowronek, The Politics, 414–29.

  77. Paul Hernnson, “Assessing the Reagan Presidency,” Polity 21 (Summer 1989): 809–11.

  78. See, for example, Richard Jensen,” “The Last Party System: 1932–1980,” in Evolution of American Electoral Systems, ed. Paul Kleppner (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981).

  79. Russell D. Renka, “Going Public,” in President Reagan (April 13, 2010): 320–75.

  80. Lawrence Jacobs and Theda Skocpol, Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 56–57.

  81. Ibid., Chapter 2.

  82. Staff of the Washington Post, Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health-Care Law and What it Means for Us All (New York: Public Affairs Reports, 2010).

  83. Michael Owens, “Obamacare: An ugly process, and it will only get uglier” Cato Institute (2010).

  84. Gary Jacobson, “The Obama and Anti-Obama Coalitions,” in The Barack Obama Presidency: First Appraisals, ed. Bert Rockman and Andrew Rudelevige (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2011).

  85. William Galston, “President Barack Obama's First Two Years: Policy Accomplishments, Political Difficulties,” Governance Studies (November 2010): 1,104.

  86. Nichols and Myers, “Reconstructive Leadership,” 816.

  87. Thomas Mann & Norman Ornstein, The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get it Back on Track (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Mark Graber, “The Countermajoritarian Difficulty: From Courts to Congress to Constitutional Order,” Annual Review of Law and Social Sciences 4 (2008): 361–84.

  88. Barry Burden and Aage Clausen, “The Unfolding Drama: Party and Ideology in the 104th Congress,” in Great Theatre: The American Congress in the 1990s, ed. Herbert Weisberg and Samuel Patterson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

  89. David King, “The Polarization of American Political Parties and Mistrust of Government,” in Why People Don’t Trust Government, ed. Joseph Nye, Philip Zelikow, and David King (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).

  90. Todd Eberly, “Barack Obama and the Politics of Preemption: Finding the President's Place in Political Time,” paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Conference (Chicago, April 23, 2010); Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 9–10; see also Walter Dean Burnham, “Review: The Politics Presidents Make,” 486–88

  91. David Mayhew, Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Theodore Rosenof, Realignment: The Theory that Changed the Way We Think About American Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003); Byron Shafer, “Critical Realignment: Dead or Alive?” in The End of Realignment?: Interpreting American Electoral Eras, ed. Byron Shafer (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991).

  92. Stephen Schier, The Post-Modern Presidency: Bill Clinton's Legacy in U.S. Politics (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 256.

  93. See, for example, John W. Sloan, FDR & Reagan: Transformative Presidents with Clashing Vision (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008).

  94. Alonzo Hamby, Liberalism and its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

  95. See, for example, Gary C. Jacobsen, “The 105th Congress: Unprecedented and Unsurprising,” in The Elections of 1996, ed. Michael Nelson (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1997).

  96. Joseph Barnsley, “The Causes of Bi-partisan Votes in the U.S. Congress,” Polis (Winter 2010): 27; Ari Berman, “Triangulation 2.0?” The Nation (February 2011).

  97. Matt Bai, “Is ‘Triangulation’ Just Another Word for the Politics of the Possible?” New York Times (December 17, 2010): A26; Berman “Obama: Triangulation 2.0?”

  98. John Coleman, “Clinton and the Party System in Historical Perspective,” in The Postmodern Presidency: Bill Clinton's Legacy in U.S. Politics, ed. Stephen Schier (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000).

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  100. See James Macgregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).

  101. Stephen Skowronek, The Politics, 449.

  102. Nichols and Myers, “Reconstructive Leadership”.

  103. Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 96–99.

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    Matthew Laing

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Laing, M. Towards a Pragmatic Presidency? Exploring the Waning of Political Time. Polity 44, 234–259 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2011.24

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