Hmmmmm - "Presidents Can't Lead" - analysis by a political scientist & presidential scholar

[Pirate Smile]

Presidents Can't Lead
Sep 13 2010, 12:10 PM ET | Comment

A particularly insightful analysis of Obama's leadership style comes from political scientist George C. Edwards III of Texas A and M University, a leading presidential scholar. Edwards presented this in a paper at the 2010 meetings of the American Political Science Association in Washington, DC.

First, the paper establishes that presidents have a limited ability to direct the nation's agenda:

Presidents cannot reshape the contours of the political landscape to pave the way for change by establishing an agenda and persuading the public. Instead, successful presidents facilitate change by recognizing opportunities in their environments and fashioning strategies and tactics to exploit them.

Second, even with a supportive Congress, presidents can't consistently direct change:

There is not a single systematic study that demonstrates that presidents can reliably move members of Congress, especially members of the opposition party, to support them. The best evidence is that presidential persuasion is at the margins of congressional decisionmaking. Even presidents who appeared to dominate Congress were actually facilitators rather than directors of change ... Working at the margins, they successfully guided legislation through Congress.

Third, presidents can't reliably change public opinion through their rhetorical efforts:

It is a mistake for presidents to assume they can lead the public. There is nothing in the historical record to support such a belief. In earlier research ... I found that public opinion rarely moved in a president's direction.

Edwards argues that Obama has conducted his presidency as if none of the above is true, by assuming he could lead public opinion and direct Congress. Neither has proven possible. The administration assumed early successes with the stimulus and health care would pave the way for greater presidential popularity and political clout. Instead, both the stimulus and health care have proven unpopular and their great cost and big scale has turned the public against other policy initiatives of Obama's presidency.

Edwards concludes:

Barack Obama is only the latest in a long line of presidents who have not been able to transform the political landscape through their efforts of persuasion. When he succeeded in achieving major change, it was by mobilizing those predisposed to support him and driving legislation through Congress on a party-line vote. Moreover, it is entirely possible that the president's failure to understand the nature of presidential power has undermined his ability to govern in the remainder of his term.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/09/presidents-cant-lead/62866/

The author (who I know nothing about - I found this over at The Atlantic's Politics website) - Steven E. Schier is the Dorothy H. and Edward C. Congdon Professor of Political Science at Carleton College. His columns have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Washington Monthly, Brookings Review and other publications.


I think the idea that President Obama has "undermined his ability to govern in the remainder of his term" is idiotic - although I guess the author only says that this is "entirely possible" which leaves enough wiggle room to drive a truck through.

This reminded me of a line or two from one of the very long articles by reporters during the campaign where they go through his earlier work & thinking (maybe a Chicago Reader piece but I'm not sure). In it they said that Obama said that movements - political, civil rights, etc. - only work if the people are ahead of the leaders and the leaders move with the people. If leaders get too far ahead of the people, a movement fails. The point was that leaders don't actual lead. It is more like knowing how to ride & direct the wave that is already moving. I've searched for the article where I initially read this but can't find it now :shrug:. Of course the Civil Rights movement of today is GLBT and the people certainly seem to be moving ahead of the political structures but it looks like a lot of the progress is coming to a head in the relative near future.

edit to add - I actually think that his argument supports the idea that President Obama has gotten an enormous amount done with the current Congress - probably about as much as he realistically could have hoped for considering how massive the actual tent of the Democratic Party is right now.

[Recursion]

1. Presidents administrate and execute

I suppose that's often called "leading", though I'm not sure why.

I think people get confused by the corporate analogy in which the "president" of a company (this is usually a huge misnomer, when you think about what "president" really means) actually does set the goals and allocate the resources to meet them. The President of the US does that for the individual executive departments (or rather, hires the people who do that), but not for "the country".

[Pirate Smile]

2. I suppose the big difference is foreign policy vs domestic policy. They have historically been

given more leeway to "lead" in foreign policy. Bush showed how disastrously that can be when you get an idiot surrounded by warmongers in office.

[Pirate Smile]

3. kick