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1990

The State of the Modern Presidency: Can It MeetOur Expectations?Stuart E. Eizenstat

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Recommended CitationStuart E. Eizenstat, "The State of the Modern Presidency: Can It Meet Our Expectations?," University of Chicago Law OccasionalPaper, No. 26 (1990).

Occasional Papers fromThe Law SchoolThe University of Chicago

Number 26

The State of the ModernPresidency: Can It MeetOur Expectations?Stuart E. Eizenstat

Copies of Occasional Papers from the Law School areavailable from William S. Hein & Company, Inc.,1285 Main Street, Buffalo, New York 14209, towhom inquiries should be addressed. Current num-bers are also available on subscription from WilliamS. Hein & Company, Inc.

The State of the Modern Presidency:Can It Meet Our Expectations?

Stuart E. Eizenstat*

I. INTRODUCTION

Ronald Reagan understood that a successful Presi-dency depends on understanding some basic truths:a strong economy is the single most important ingre-dient to sustaining the presidential popularity nec-essary to govern effectively; a President must con-centrate on accomplishing a few big items ratherthan dissipating his energies on many smaller issues;time and energy spent on enhancing the image of thePresident as Head of State can provide the publicsupport essential for him to function as the Head ofGovernment.

And yet, the institution which Ronald Reaganturned over to George Bush remains the most mysti-fying in the country. The Presidency is at one andthe same time the most powerful political position inthe world and one of great fragility. It equally com-bines the ceremonial functions of a monarch with thenominal authority as head of government-anAmericanized king and prime minister rolled intoone. It occupies a platform with unparalleled oppor-tunity to reach the American people and the world.But the Presidency has limited power to accomplishwhat that very opportunity presents. It creates theillusion of far greater power than it actually pos-sesses, even to its occupants. It tempts Presidents totry to accomplish too much in too many arenas andleads them to dissipate their energies and resourcesin too many directions with too little to show.

Since the modern Presidency was created byFranklin Roosevelt out of the crucible of the GreatDepression and the Second World War, the Ameri-

*Mr. Eizenstat was Assistant to the President for DomesticAffairs and Policy and Executive Director of the White HouseDomestic Policy Staff from 1977-81. He is now a partner in theWashington office of the Atlanta-based firm of Powell, Gold-stein, Frazer & Murphy, and an adjunct lecturer at the John F.Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Mr.Eizenstat wishes to acknowledge with appreciation the researchassistance of Steven Sloan, Trinity '88, and a research assistantat the law firm. This article was first given, in a slightly differ-ent version, as the Ulysses and Marguerite S. Schwartz Lectureon April 18, 1989, at the University of Chicago Law School.

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can people have assumed the President is responsiblefor things never dreamed of by the Founding Fatherswho created the office-the stability of the economy,the welfare of the poor, housing for the homeless, thehealth of the American psyche, peace around theworld. The President has come to be the embodi-ment of the nation, his mood the nation's. The Presi-dent must lead or no one can. Only he can set anational agenda and a course for the country. Pre-cisely for this reason, the public can become frus-trated and disappointed with the inability ofPresidents to get things done.

The Presidency was created under the U.S. Con-stitution to share power, not to exercise it unilater-ally. But an institution created in the eighteenthcentury when far less was expected of a Presidentmust be able to handle the complex problems ofthe twenty-first century. The Presidency must bestrengthened for the United States to deal effectivelywith the challenges that face this country as we lookinto the next century.

II. CONSTRAINTS ON PRESIDENTIAL POWER

The powers delegated to the President by the U.S.Constitution are pitifully few and almost all must beshared with other institutions. As James Polklamented, "The President's power is negative andnot affirmative. He can enact no law." His power ofappointment is conditioned by the need for Senateconfirmation. His actions and those of his top offi-cials can be enjoined by a single U.S. District Courtjudge. He can negotiate treaties only with the sharedconsent of the Senate. He is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, yet his ability to deploythe troops he commands is severely circumscribed bythe constitutional requirement that only Congresscan declare a war and appropriate funds. He cannotpass his own budget nor effectively oversee the veryExecutive Branch officers he appoints.

The President finds his decisions are often dic-tated not by what is on his agenda, but what ispressed upon him by others-it may be the priorityof an advocacy group which was a part of his elec-toral coalition and whose support he must retain togovern effectively; it may be the agenda of his ownCabinet officers; it may be legislation initiated by theCongress; and, most certainly, it will be in a series ofexternal events to which he has no choice but torespond. Indeed, the mettle of a President is often

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tested less by what he does on the agenda he hasplanned for himself than by how he responds to un-anticipated events at home and abroad.

A. Precedent as a Limit on Presidential Power.

The power of a president is circumscribed not onlyby constitutional limitations, but also by the deci-sions made by his predecessors.

Prior commitments by previous Presidents act asprecedents which can be ignored only at a Presi-dent's peril, in much the same way that a judge isbound by legal precedent in deciding the case beforehim. Thus, for example, there can be little doubtthat President Reagan strongly opposed the PanamaCanal Treaty. He railed against the proposed Treatyin 1976 when he challenged President Ford in theRepublican primaries and contended during the1980 presidential campaign that it was a giveawayafter President Carter negotiated it. Yet while hecould have attempted to renegotiate the Treaty whenhe came into office, Reagan's ability to do so wasseverely limited by the uproar it would have causedin Central and Latin America, and the solemn com-mitment it represented to the Panamanians.

Actions taken by Presidents can bind their succes-sors even when those actions have no legal force inlaw. This is because they create a set of expectationson the part of other parties or countries which, ifdashed, would hurt the credibility of American com-mitments across the board. Every President recog-nizes that the Presidency itself will be diminished ifactions taken by previous holders of the office arelightly abandoned. There can be little doubt thatPresident Reagan and his first Secretary of State,Alexander Haig, had little use for anything JimmyCarter had done as President and wished to fashiontheir own Middle East policy. Yet the President's1982 initiative and the 1988 Shultz plan and now theevolving Bush Administration Middle East policywere carefully drawn to be consistent with the CampDavid Accords, even though these had no legallybinding effect on the United States. Even more dra-matic was President Reagan's decision to complywith the strict terms of the SALT II agreement nego-tiated by President Carter but never ratified by theSenate and therefore of no legal value, even thoughhe had personally opposed SALT II. President Car-ter had created a precedent upon which the SovietUnion relied and which was difficult for PresidentReagan to overturn.

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President Reagan had been a sharp critic ofJimmy Carter's handling of the Iranian hostage cri-sis, yet he did nothing as President to upset the set-tlement, which led to the partial unfreezing ofIranian assets in the United States once the hostageswere released. Legally, he could have said, "We haveour hostages, we will use the Iranian assets to repaythe hostages and their families, their pain and suffer-ing, and put the balance in the Federal Treasury."Yet to do so would have undercut a solemn obligationby his predecessor, even one made to an outlaw gov-ernment, with negative ramifications on other coun-tries relying on presidential commitments.

In the domestic arena, Presidents have greaterflexibility to change the priorities of their predeces-sors, particularly on discretionary programs paid forby general revenues, as shown by President Reagan'sdramatic domestic budget action in 1981. But Presi-dents have much less flexibility to change entitle-ment programs such as Social Security, earlyMedicare, and unemployment insurance, funded byearmarked payroll taxes. These represent virtualcontract rights to the contributors, which permitonly marginal changes by Presidents. Howevermuch Ronald Reagan may have wished to privatizeSocial Security, he was constrained not only by polit-ical opposition, but by the expectations contributorsto Social Security had that their reliance would behonored.

None of this is meant to suggest that a President istotally a prisoner of the decisions of his predecessors.Ronald Reagan ended the 1980 grain embargoimposed by President Carter in retaliation for theRussian invasion of Afghanistan. President Bushhas moved away from military aid to the Nicaraguancontras, a centerpiece of Ronald Reagan's CentralAmerican policy. And he has renegotiated, thoughnot abandoned, the agreement the Reagan Adminis-tration made to co-produce the new FSX fighterwith Japan. But each comes with a price, which canbe afforded only so often.

B. Campaign Promises: Opportunity and Constraint

A Presidency really begins during the presidentialcampaign. It is here that a future President begins toimpart his own world view, to make decisions towhich he will be bound if elected. Indeed, it may behis greatest opportunity to do so. It is essential that apresidential candidate know why he is running for

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President and what it is he wants to accomplish whenhe is elected. Generally, only if he can claim a man-date on certain issues can he make his critical firstyear in office a success. A President's ability to legiti-mately claim a policy mandate from his election bythe American people is his greatest weapon in con-vincing the Congress to support his program. Inmany ways, the major difference between RonaldReagan's first and second terms was that he sought aspecific mandate in the 1980 elections-for budgetcuts and tax reductions, combined with a defenseincrease-but was content to seek reelection in 1984with no specific policy mandate. He was able toachieve much of what he campaigned for in 1980 buthad a relative paucity of accomplishments in his sec-ond term, due in no small part to the absence of apolicy mandate in the 1984 election.

But campaign promises can also restrict and limita President. Indeed, the sheer length of the cam-paign, the number of states in which one mustcompete, and the constituencies which must beassembled to win a nomination, guarantee that cam-paign promises will act as a restraint on Presidentsonce they are elected. Thus, for example, in the 1976presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter made a pledgeto create a Department of Education, in significant

part to obtain the endorsement of the National Edu-cation Association, which was critical to his primaryvictory. While he first had to be convinced that thiswas not a totally unsound idea and was moved by thefact that education did not have a seat at the Cabinettable, the NEA endorsement was a key consider-ation. He asked that the issue be revisited early in histerm, but his campaign commitment was too firm togive him latitude to change. Likewise, during theWisconsin primary, he felt impelled because ofintense competition from Congressman Udall topromise Wisconsin dairy farmers 80 percent of par-ity for milk price supports. He felt compelled,despite misgivings, to follow through on this promisewhen elected. So, too, in the 1988 elections, VicePresident Bush made specific commitments onissues such as gun control which markedly limit hisability to act otherwise as President in the face of agun onslaught in the drug war.

The difficulty with campaign promises is two-fold. First, they often conflict with the realities ofgoverning. In a well publicized letter written to Gov-ernors Born and Briscoe of Oklahoma and Texas inOctober 1976, Jimmy Carter had promised to dereg-

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ulate the price of natural gas over a five-year period.Yet, as President, because of the strong opposition ofCongressman John Dingell and the late SenatorScoop Jackson, the energy chiefs of the House andSenate, and the recommendation of his energyadviser, James Schlesinger, he decided to continuecontrols on natural gas. At the same time, he deregu-lated crude oil prices, which he had promised in thecampaign to control, because this was the price ofgetting the Germans and Japanese to stimulate theireconomies at the 1978 Bonn Summit.

The Bush no tax increase pledge-"read my lips"-is another example of realities conflicting withpromises. It is virtually impossible to reach the $100billion deficit figure mandated by Gramm-Rudmanfor fiscal year 1990 without tax increases. Having tomaintain a campaign promise in order to keep hiscredibility will force the President and ultimately theCongress into making overly optimistic economicassumptions and into accounting legerdemain inorder to appear to stay within the Gramm-Rudmanfigures.

The second problem is the remarkably haphazardway in which campaign promises are made. Even awell financed presidential campaign, particularly inthe primary phase, has very few staff resources, littledata at its disposal, and is under enormous time andpolitical pressures to make decisions. President Fordused to be the butt of jokes for saying how glad hewas to be in one state when he was actually inanother. But anyone involved in the continentalchase which passes for a presidential campaignknows precisely his dilemma. On the sixth stop ofthe day, a candidate may answer a question on whichhe is inadequately briefed, only to find, because ofthe presence of an AP stringer, that he has madetomorrow's campaign headline and the day aftertomorrow's presidential decision. No one wouldwant their President to make decisions under thesecircumstances, yet the decisions they make as candi-dates are often binding on them as President. Thus,Ronald Reagan had little hard, well thought out dataat his disposal when he pledged a three-year across-the-board tax cut during the 1980 campaign. We arestill living with the consequences in massive deficitswhich now constrain President Bush and the Con-gress from increasing needed expenditures in a vari-ety of areas.

There is a conundrum. Presidential candidatesare constantly forced to make promises so that their

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campaign can claim a mandate for something spe-cific. Yet they make them under the worst possiblecircumstances.

C Financial Markets

Yet another factor that constrains presidentialaction is the operation of free financial markets, bothin the United States and in our increasingly globaleconomy. While Presidents affect financial marketsby their actions in the economic area, the degree towhich financial markets constrain and limit a Presi-dent's freedom of economic action is much less wellunderstood. Thus, between January 1977 andNovember 1978, the American dollar was devaluedby 17 percent against other major currencies, in partthe product of a conscious effort to stimulate exportsand eliminate the vestiges of the 1975 recession, butin part because financial markets lacked confidencein the Administration's economic policies, fearing aweakened resolve to fight inflation. To prevent afreefall of the dollar occasioned by a loss of investorconfidence, President Carter followed Secretary ofthe Treasury Blumenthal's recommendations for amajor rise in interest rates in late 1977 to stabilizethe value of the dollar, an action the President tookcontrary to his own instincts as a small businessmanand as a supporter of low interest rates.

To be blunt, financial markets have an implicitveto on a President's economic policy. In manyways, financial markets serve as a daily barometer ofconfidence in the President's economic policycourse. In 1982, President Reagan sent up a pro-posed budget which was dead as a doornail when itarrived in Congress. Only a year after signing thebiggest tax cut in history, he signed into law the larg-est income tax increase in history-just under $100billion-taking away many of the cuts he made theprevious year. The reason again was the reaction offinancial markets to the yawning deficit created bythe initial tax cuts. The threat was that an economicrecovery would be aborted by continued high inter-est rates without a greater show of determination toreduce the deficit. Then in 1983, this anti-tax Presi-dent sent up a budget with contingency taxesbecause of continued lingering high interest rates.His willingness to support large increases in SocialSecurity taxes was necessitated by the crisis in theSocial Security trust fund and the belated recogni-tion that budget cuts alone would not do the trick of

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closing the gap between spending and revenues inthe fund.

The new, interdependent world economy furthercomplicates presidential decision making. Thehealth of the American economy is dependent onglobal financial markets. Decisions made thousandsof miles away not only by foreign governments butby investors in foreign markets profoundly affect aPresident's ability to make economic policy. Con-sider the following:- U.S. debt issued to finance our deficit is held sub-stantially in foreign hands. Today, one out of everythree dollars of U.S. Federal debt is financed abroad.In 1987, the U.S. economy owed foreign lenders$368.2 billion. From 1980 to 1988, the U.S. wentfrom the world's greatest lender to its biggest debtor-bigger than the debt-ridden economies of Mexico,Brazil, and Argentina combined.- The largest stock market in the world is not theNew York Stock Exchange, but the Tokyo StockExchange.- In 1986, foreign investors bought and sold over$275 billion in U.S. domestic corporate stocks, andU.S. bond issuers raised $43.7 billion through inter-national bond issues.- In 1988, for the first time, the Japanese gavemore money in foreign aid than did the UnitedStates. With greater economic power comes greaterpolitical power.

D. Press

The press has a great deal to do with the shape of aPresident's agenda. By focusing attention on a par-ticular issue, the press can virtually force the Presi-dent to address it.

It is instructive to look at the difference in presi-dential action by President Johnson toward theNorth Korean capture of the American military shipPueblo and its sailors in 1968 and President Carter'shandling of the Iranian hostages in 1979-80. Presi-dent Johnson was able to negotiate patiently for therelease of the hostages over the course of a year withlittle public pressure, in significant part becausethere were no cameras to film the incident and nodaily press attention. The same is true of the lack ofpressure on President Reagan to free the Americanhostages in Lebanon. Their capture was notrecorded and the event had a faraway quality.

In contrast, daily press attention given to the Ira-

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nian hostage crisis, with its glaring films of Ameri-can hostages carried away in blindfolds against thebackdrop of burning American flags, undercut Pres-ident Carter's political standing, created pressuresfor the Desert One hostage rescue effort and, ulti-mately, was a major factor in his defeat. Indeed, the"Nightline" program was initiated by the dailyemphasis on the hostage crisis, and one eveningnews broadcast began by counting which day it wasof the hostage taking.

None of this suggests that the press should fail toreport such incidents. They are legitimate news andthe public has the right to be informed. It is to saythat the manner and method of reporting have agreat deal to say about resultant presidential action.

From the beginning of the Republic, Presidentshave always felt themselves besieged by the press. In1807, Thomas Jefferson stated that "the man whonever looks into a newspaper is better informed thanhe who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows noth-ing is nearer the truth than he whose mind is filledwith falsehoods and errors." What is new is theheightened suspicion and decline in deference forthe Presidency since the days of Watergate. Giventhe aggressiveness and, indeed, hostility of today'spress to the Presidency, it is doubtful whether a Pres-ident now would have the time within which to makethe kinds of momentous decisions President Ken-nedy made during the Cuban missile crisis. Thepress voluntarily withheld much of the detail of theCuban missile situation until the President felt thatthe public should know. This deference permittedhim to use non-military action to resolve the crisis.This cooperation with a President would be incon-ceivable today, given the enormous distrust betweenthe press and the President.

E. The Cabinet

The President is the Chief Executive Officer of theExecutive Branch. With all the institutional checkson his authority, the Executive Branch should be hisinstrument to make and implement policy, but thePresident is the Chief Executive in ways no corpo-rate CEO would ever imagine. The President's ownCabinet, rather than enhancing his power, moreoften forces him to share power with others who mayhave a different agenda from his.

Unlike a parliamentary system where a shadowCabinet has been in existence before the minority

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party is elected, every American presidential Cabi-net is jerry-built. People are appointed to top Cabi-net and sub-Cabinet positions not only because theyshare the President's ideology, but oftentimes toserve the need for ideological, racial, or geographicbalance and to reward certain constituencies. Partic-ularly at the sub-Cabinet level, the Carter Admin-istration had many people taken from the environ-mental and consumerist movement who were more"pro-regulation" than the President himself, whichled to constant tension between the President'sefforts to deregulate in various areas and his Admin-istration's appointees who were often interested inmaintaining regulation.

Presidential Cabinets are generally filled withpeople the President little knows and who haveworked with him not at all. John Kennedy namedDouglas Dillon as his Secretary of the Treasury, notbecause he necessarily shared his economic philoso-phy, but because he would be a calming signal toWall Street. He appointed Dean Rusk as his Secre-tary of State, the premier position in his Administra-tion, although he met Rusk seriously only once, daysbefore he announced his selection.

The President's Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officersare subject to centrifugal forces beyond those thePresident can generate. A President's control overthe people he brings to Washington to help him runthe Executive Branch is always shared by otherswhom his appointees see as "multiple masters." TheCongress exercises a countervailing force over thePresident's own appointees in a variety of ways,beginning with the confirmation process itself.When William Webster was named by PresidentReagan to be the new CIA Director, there was littlequestion he would be confirmed. He had passedmuster once as a Federal judge and had twice beenconfirmed as FBI Director, once under PresidentCarter and once under President Reagan. But theconfirmation process was used by the Senate Intelli-gence Committee to send a signal to Mr. Websterthat greater cooperation was expected from him onreporting on covert actions in a "timely" fashionunder the Foreign Intelligence Oversight Act thanhis predecessor William Casey had demonstrated inthe mining of the harbors of Nicaragua and the Irancontra affair.

In addition, it is Congress, and not the President,who appropriates money to run the departments andwith whom the President's appointees who run the

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departments must negotiate over appropriationsbills. It is with the Appropriations subcommittees ofthe Senate and House that the Cabinet officers nego-tiate the compromises to permit their programs to befunded. It is the rare Secretary who will urge hisPresident to veto his Department's appropriationsbill.

A Cabinet or sub-Cabinet officer is also heavilyinfluenced by the constituency groups his depart-ment is designed to serve. Congress created eachdepartment with a specific mission. The CommerceDepartment is designed to promote the interests ofbusiness and commerce, the Labor Department isdesigned to promote the interests of the workingman and working woman, and the Department ofAgriculture the interests of farmers and rural Ameri-cans. The mission for each Cabinet department isfine and good, but when issues come before the Pres-ident they inevitably involve the clash between con-flicting Cabinet mandates and interests. Eachdepartment has its own constituencies to serve basedon its mission and mandate. This is the essence of arepresentative democracy. If different interests insociety did not have powerful Cabinet Departmentspromoting their interests, they would be unrepre-sented in the presidential decision making process.They look to their Cabinet Secretaries to be advo-cates for their interests.

The permanent bureaucracies which staff thedepartments in the President's Executive Branchwere there when he came and will be there after heleaves and the next President comes. Their job is toprovide expertise and historical memory and conti-nuity. They are the institutional advocates for theDepartment's interest groups. Because a President'spolitical appointees below the rank of Cabinet officerstay in their positions on the average for less than twoyears, they must rely heavily on the expertise of thebureaucracy. These appointees are novices to theirjobs and to the multi-billion dollar programs theyare called on to manage with little or no prior experi-ence. They must rely heavily on the expertise of thecareer civil service and must adopt the elan and themission of the bureaucracy if they are to have aneffective working relationship with the people theyare to lead. It is not accidental that three of PresidentReagan's most ideological bedfellows, James Watt ofInterior, Raymond Donovan at Labor, and AnneBurford at EPA did not last. Their pursuit of policiesat variance with the interests of their bureaucracies

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ended up imperiling their ability to serve the Presi-dent effectively. A lightning rod inevitably becomestoo supercharged to be effective to the President.Their replacements were more acceptable preciselybecause they were not such passionate advocates ofthe President's program.

Over time, a President learns that the men andwomen he has brought to Washington to serve himare whiplashed between different interests. Theymust balance their loyalty to him with the competinginterests of their departments and the Congress,with whom they must stay in good grace. Regardlessof the Administration and regardless of the issue,foreign, domestic, or defense, almost every mattercoming to the President is laden with conflictbetween competing advocates within the Executivebranch, each bringing his or her own views and con-flicting data to buttress the case. The President isoften a judge, deciding between opposing advocateswithin his own branch of government.

F The Congress

The Founding Fathers distrusted concentrationsof political power and consciously sought to dividepower between the Federal and state governmentsand, within the Federal government, among theLegislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches. Theydid so out of a conviction, born of the unhappy expe-rience with the King of England, that centralizedexecutive power was a danger to freedom and indi-vidual liberty. They succeeded beyond their wildesthopes but left a legacy in the modern era of a Presi-dency often impotent to act and to respond to thevast new challenges a modern-day President isexpected to handle.

It is my conviction that a stronger Presidency thanthe Founding Fathers envisioned is essential for theUnited States to meet the global challenges of thetwenty-first century. The President is expected to domore than the limits of his powers permit. While thiscannot as a practical matter be done by wholesaleamendment of the Constitution, it must be done byworking out creative relationships with Congress inwhich the President is given more discretion to actwithin the constraints of the constitutional checksand balances. But we have been moving in the oppo-site direction, with the Presidency stripped of flexi-bility by the Congress and hamstrung in meeting theheightened expectations of the office.

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The modern Presidency truly began withFranklin Roosevelt. The emergencies of the Depres-sion and World War II forced the President toassume greater responsibilities and leadership thanever before. It was obvious that a legislative bodycould not direct the country through either a war ora Depression without strong presidential direction.From FDR through the aborted Nixon Presidency,the pendulum of power swung in the direction of thePresident. There were times when Congress failed togive the President a blank check during this era ofpresidential ascendancy, such as Congress's defeat ofFDR's court packing plan in 1937. But particularlyin the area of foreign and defense policy, the Presi-dent was given enormous discretion. PresidentEisenhower, with impunity, was allowed to land theMarines in Lebanon in 1958 to rearrange the politi-cal order there. President Truman fought theKorean War without a Declaration of War from theCongress, and Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, andNixon fought the Vietnam War with no congres-sional Declaration of War.

Ironically, it was during the Presidency of the manwho centralized presidential power more than anyother-Richard Nixon-that the decline of the Pres-idency and the reemergence of Congress began.

Three events during the Nixon Administrationdramatically shifted the balance away from the Pres-ident and toward the Congress, where the ascendantpower remains today.

The first was the secret and unauthorized exten-sion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. This led toa limitation in an appropriations bill in 1973 barringthe use of funds for bombing in Cambodia. Soon tofollow were the Clark Amendment, banning aid tothe rebels in Angola (June 30, 1976) and the passageof the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978,which prescribed guidelines for the gathering ofintelligence information through means such aswiretaps.

Second was President Nixon's impoundment ofappropriated funds. These impoundments weretaken to court by the Congress and the Congresswon each one of them.

The third event was Watergate, which seemed tounderscore the dangers of an imperial Presidencywith powers too highly concentrated in the ChiefExecutive. In fact, Watergate was more a case studyon what happens when paranoid people with a pro-clivity to dishonesty are put in power than it was an

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indictment of a strong Presidency. Watergate itselfdemonstrated how the checks and balances in thesystem work. It underscored that a President in oursystem can never become too powerful.

But these three events set in motion a cycle inwhich congressional power eclipsed presidentialpower and left the Presidency on the defensive. Con-sider the following:

1. Congressional staffs grew enormously from6,440 in 1960 to 18,718 in 1989. As Joe Califano,President Johnson's domestic adviser, told me, dur-ing his White House tenure, Congress had to relyupon the expertise of the Executive Branch agenciesto draft legislation and key amendments for the Con-gress. Now the Congress, with its expanded staff,drafts its own amendments and controls its ownagenda.

Moreover, the Congress now duplicates many ofthe institutions in the Executive Office of the Presi-dent, creating, for example, in 1972, the Office ofTechnology Assessment, to serve the same role forthe Congress as the President's science adviser andthe President's Office of Science and TechnologyPolicy, and in 1974, the Congressional BudgetOffice, to serve the same purposes for Congress onbudget making and economic forecasting as theOffice of Management and Budget did for the Presi-dent.

2. Closely related, oversight of the ExecutiveBranch has grown. Each agency now has its ownoversight subcommittee. There is greater andgreater congressional management of the ExecutiveBranch. Appropriations bills are passed withdetailed instructions on how many times ammuni-tion has to be tested before it can be deployed, andemployment floors are set on agencies for particulartasks, severely limiting the discretion of the Execu-tive Branch to manage and implement policy.

In 1978, the Inspectors General bill was passed,placing what were effectively "congressionalmoles," Inspectors General, in Executive Branchagencies. These Inspectors General were to root outwaste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in themanagement of Federal programs and to reportsimultaneously to the Congress and to the Presidenton their findings. These were not the President'svehicles to improve the efficiency of the ExecutiveBranch. Rather, they were Congress's men andwomen to help direct the Congress's oversight of theExecutive.

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3. Suspicious of Executive Branch action, Congresspassed more than 200 legislative vetoes from 1973 until1983, more than it had passed in the previous 200 yearsof the country's history. These restricted the ability ofthe Executive Branch to draft regulations implement-ing congressional statutes, if they were opposed by oneHouse or, at times, by one Committee of one House ofCongress, without giving the President the opportunityto veto that legislative action. This overreach of legisla-tive authority was finally put to rest by the SupremeCourt in the Chadha case, which held legislative vetoesunconstitutional.

But even today there are legislative vetoes in otherforms. Early in the Administration, President Bushand Secretary of State Baker agreed to an informallegislative veto arrangement to obtain bipartisan con-gressional support in Nicaragua. Under the informalarrangement, not written into legislation and there-fore constitutional, but nevertheless suspect in termsof presidential power, President Bush agreed not tospend any appropriated money for aid to the contrasbeyond February 1990 if any one of four Committeesof Congress disapproved the aid. Thus, Congresseffectively had the power to cut off aid without anypresidential action.

4. The powers of the Commander-in-Chief wereclipped by the War Powers Act of 1973, passed overPresident Nixon's veto. Under the War Powers Act,the President is precluded from maintaining troops ina potential combat area if Congress does not approvethe deployment within 60 days. Certainly there wasan abuse of presidential power in fighting wars such asVietnam without a Declaration of War. But just assurely, the War Powers Act is an unreasonable restric-tion on the powers of a Commander-in-Chief todeploy forces. President Reagan's use of force againstLibya, Grenada, and the deployment of naval powerin the Persian Gulf were all done without congres-sional approach under the Act. So too was PresidentBush's use of American military force in Panama. Allwere arguably contraventions of the Act. A Presidentought not to have to violate a congressional statute totake such necessary action as the head of the armedforces.

5. Congress took away substantial presidentialpowers over economic policy in several ways:a) Richard Nixon, in one of the most extensive exer-cises of presidential power, under the statutory autho-rization provided to him by a Democratic Congresswhich never expected him to use it, imposed wage and

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price controls in August 1971. All prices and wageswere frozen for 90 days. President Nixon, havingcalled Congress's bluff, won the battle but lost the waras Congress removed the President's authority toimpose wage and price controls.b) One of the few tools left to President Carter to dealwith raging inflation in 1980 was the authority toimpose credit control under the Credit Control Act of1969. When these controls were imposed by the Fed-eral Reserve, interest rates declined. When credit con-trols were removed a few months later, interest ratesrose again. Congress eliminated this use of presiden-tial authority in 1980, thereby depriving the Presidentof yet another instrument over economic policy.c) In 1973, President Nixon temporarily embar-goed soybeans to Japan; in 1974, President Ford tem-porarily suspended grain sales to the East bloc; and in

January 1980, President Carter embargoed grain tothe Soviets in retaliation for the invasion of Afghani-stan. After President Reagan lifted the grain embargoin 1981, Congress made sure that the authority wouldnever be used again by terminating it.d) In 1974, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment and theStevenson Amendment limited the President's abilityto provide most favored nation treatment, dependentupon a nation's human rights performance and, inthe case of the Soviet Union, its emigration of SovietJews. While I share the concerns for human rightsand Soviet Jewry and support Jackson-Vanik, thisnevertheless was one of a series of actions whichdiminished presidential discretion and authority toconduct foreign policy.

6. In a number of ways, Congress has insulated thePresident's subordinates from his authority. Thus, theCongress has required that the President's budgetchief, the head of OMB, be confirmed; it has set spe-cific terms of office for the joint Chiefs of Staff; and ithas issued periodic warnings of a desire to extend theconfirmation process to the President's NationalSecurity Adviser. Similarly, Congress has lengthenedthe time of service of certain presidential appoint-ments, such as the Director of the Tennessee ValleyAuthority, and it has required certain agencies withinthe Executive Branch, such as the National Transpor-tation Safety Board and the Consumer ProductsSafety Commission, to directly submit their budgetsto Capitol Hill, without going through the OMB pro-cess through which Presidents control their budget.

7. Nothing has changed the presidential/congressional relationship as profoundly as the Anti-

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Impoundment and Budget Control Act of 1974,creating the congressional budget process, limitingpresidential impoundments, and establishing theCongressional Budget Office. In Washington, infor-mation is power. The congressional budget processand Congressional Budget Office ended the monop-oly Presidents had on economic and deficit forecastsand projections of the cost of presidential initiatives.

The creation of the congressional budget commit-tees and the entire congressional budget process hasalso enormously complicated the President's ability todevelop a budget with the Congress. For sevenstraight years Congress failed to finish the appropria-tions process by the start of the fiscal year and had tooperate under Continuing Resolutions. More andmore congressional time is now eaten away at thebudget process, and the President has had great diffi-culty gaining control over it. In a parliamentary sys-tem, the entire government would fall if the PrimeMinister's budget were not promptly enacted by theParliament. In the U.S., impasse is now the apparentmode.

III. STRENGTHENING THE PRESIDENCY

The Presidency must be strengthened for theUnited States to meet the challenges confronting thecountry at home and abroad. Congress is not consti-tuted to provide leadership because of its disparateand divided membership.

I suggest the following ways to strengthen the Presi-dency without losing the proper relationship with theCongress and the courts explicit in our Constitution.

First, repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitu-tion which limits the Presidency to two consecutiveterms. George Washington voluntarily established thetwo-term limit which was followed until FDR. Thereis no logical reason to limit a President's term by law.No one has seriously suggested doing so for Membersof Congress. Their seniority gives them their power.To artificially limit a President's tenure is to deny theAmerican people a choice and to make the Presidentan ineffective lame duck in his last two years in office.Even if a President were to choose not to exercise theright to run after two terms, the mere option wouldstrengthen his hand.

Second, a presidential candidate's greatest oppor-tunity to implement his agenda if he is elected willcome from a clearly articulated set of campaign issueson which he can claim a mandate. President Reagan

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could claim such a policy mandate in 1980. So couldLyndon Johnson in 1964. But it would be difficult tolook at the campaign of 1988 and feel that GeorgeBush could make a commensurate claim. A presiden-tial campaign must stand for something other thanthe opponent's problems. The transition and earlymonths of the Presidency must be structured so thatthe themes of the presidential campaign can betranslated into clearly prioritized legislative initiativeswhich the President can then insist that the Congresspass to fulfill his electoral mandate. Certainly, the firstimperative of a presidential campaign is to win. But itis just as essential to win standing for somethingclearly discernible and understandable.

Third, in the course of a four-year term, a Presi-dent makes literally hundreds of significant decisions.And, yet, it is my experience that it is only perhaps ahalf a dozen decisions during a term on which hisPresidency will hang in the balance. The crucial thingis for him to recognize those decisions and to concen-trate his attention and resources on them.

There are three sets of decisions which, among themyriad ones he will make, will make or break him. Ifhe can make them correctly, he can help impose hisvision on the country, despite all the constraints on hisaction. If he fails, his Presidency will be imperiled,regardless of how well he treats the hundreds of moresecondary decisions.1. The first set of decisions involves setting the earlycourse of his Administration. The President mustprudently choose a very limited set of the most impor-tant things he wishes to achieve and for which hewishes to be remembered, devote a disproportionateamount of his energies and resources to them, andconcentrate the attention of the public and the Con-gress on these proposals. These can provide him withearly victories during the honeymoon period, buildup his public credibility, and raise his stature in theCongress for the inevitable down times when thingsget rough during a Presidency.

President Reagan learned a lesson from the Carteryears in which we overloaded the congressional cir-cuits with far too many major initiatives, which dis-pensed President Carter's energies and failed to give aclear focus to our agenda. Mr. Reagan put on theback burner many of his campaign promises on thesocial agenda of the right wing of his party andfocused instead on budget cuts, tax cuts, and adefense buildup. By concentrating his resources andthe public's attention on a few things, he was able to

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demonstrate success and bolster his strength for theinevitable ebbing of presidential power that occursover the course of a four-year term.2. A second set of decisions will be equally important-how the President reacts to unanticipated externalcrises. The real mettle of a President is judged by howhe reacts to unexpected events. It is here where truepresidential leadership can be demonstrated. It is pre-cisely in these situations that the political system givesthe President the greatest latitude, since it is recog-nized that only by unimpeded Executive action canthe external crisis be handled. President Lincoln saidit well, "Only events and a man's exertions on his ownbehalf, can make a President."

No President consciously creates such a set of cir-cumstances, but they give him an enormous oppor-tunity to demonstrate his leadership and to rise abovethe constraints of his office. John Kennedy's most shin-ing hour as President came during the Cuban missilecrisis. And when the Russians unexpectedly launchedSputnik and sent a clear signal to the United States thatthe Soviets had a lead in aerospace engineering andtechnology which could threaten U.S. national security,President Eisenhower reversed his opposition to Fed-eral aid to education and proposed the NationalDefense Education Act, which was the first modemFederal aid to education.

Of course, every external event does not lead todramatic presidential action. Indeed, sometimes "noaction" is the best decision. Thus, in September 1983when the Soviets downed KAL Flight 007, besidessome rhetorical objection and some very mild actionsuch as limiting commercial flights with the SovietUnion, President Reagan essentially chose a no actionoption. This proved to be the right option since armstalks were just starting and it was not clear that thedowning of the airline had been a command decisionfrom the Kremlin rather than the action by a trigger-happy local commander.

A President must be ever alert to external eventsbecause they do give him the opportunity for bold anddecisive action. President Bush missed a goldenopportunity to demonstrate that he really meant to bean environmentalist President after the Valdez,Alaska, oil spill. Instead, by delay and half measures,he failed to use the crisis to demonstrate decisive pres-idential leadership.3. The third set of presidential decisions, and themost important, revolves around the economy. I amconvinced that if a President makes the right decisions

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on the economy, he can suffer many mistakes or lackof success in other areas. A President's popularity isinevitably buoyed by a rising economy and depressedby economic troubles. Quite apart from the Iranianhostage crisis, President Carter would probably havelost the 1980 election because of double-digit interestrates and inflation.

A great deal is made about President Reagan'sskills as "the great communicator," but these wouldhave gone for naught had the economy not turnedaround for him in late 1982. During what was theworst recession since the Great Depression of the1930s, President Reagan's popularity plummeted wellbelow that of President Carter and his immediatepredecessors at a similar point in their Presidency.While many factors contributed to his high rate ofpopularity the last part of his first term and during hissecond term, none came close to the lift provided by asustained period of six years of uninterrupted growth.

Presidents should spend a disproportionate amountof their time on the economy. But few do. PresidentCarter spent perhaps two-thirds of his time on foreignaffairs, where the allure and greater opportunity forunilateral presidential action drew him-and drawsmost Presidents. But Presidents rarely win or loseelections and rarely can buoy up their support on asustained basis by foreign policy successes. I remem-ber being amazed, along with my White House col-leagues, at how little long-term boost in standingPresident Carter achieved following his dramatic suc-cess at Camp David. It was little more than a blipafter a few weeks. The American people still vote theirpocketbooks and Presidents will forget that at theirperil.

A President can do nothing more important toassure a sound economy than to be willing to taketough steps to keep inflation under control, regardlessof the short-term political costs. Our biggest mistakein economic policy and one for which we paid the ulti-mate price-defeat at the polls-was in misjudgingthe strength of inflationary forces in the economy,focusing excessively on stimulating short-term growthand temporizing until it was too late with inflation.

Fourth, as difficult as it will be to convince the Con-gress to do so, it is essential to restore to the Presi-dency many of the powers which have been lost overthe past two decades.

I believe it is worth a try to have a trade-off with theCongress on foreign policy, such as has been sug-gested by Senators Danforth and Boren and is implicit

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in the Nunn-Warner-Byrd amendment to the WarPowers Act. A congressional consultative mechanismwith the Chairman and ranking Members of the keyCommittees and the leadership would be created sothat Presidents would have an early opportunity toenlist congressional support for their major foreignpolicy initiatives. In return for this, Congress woulddo less micro-management and intervention in thenational security area.

A President is going to make his mark or lose theopportunity to do so in his ability to work with Con-gress. Each President must work with Congress inways that accord with his own personality. LyndonJohnson could act in one way. President Bush inanother. But every President must be willing to spendan inordinate amount of time in formal and informalsessions with Members of Congress so they areinvested with a stake in his Presidency. Nothing willpay greater dividends. This was an aspect of his Presi-dency that President Carter did not relish. Membersof Congress sensed this and it had a negative impacton President Carter's relations with the Congress.

At the same time, while cooperation and compro-mise are frequently the order of the day, Presidentsmust know when to stand and fight and when to drawthe line in the sand. Our Administration made twoearly mistakes in this regard. During the transitionbetween the 1976 election and the Inauguration, Pres-ident Carter indicated his desire to nominate TedSorensen as the CIA Director. When pressures builtup on the Hill to oppose the nomination, rather thanfight it out, the Sorensen nomination was dropped.

While many aspects of the Tower nomination weremishandled and bungled, President Bush was right tofight it out to the bitter end, rather than to withdrawat the sight of congressional opposition. This willstand him in good stead in future fights. It alsoexplains his determination to threaten a veto for anyminimum wage increase over $4.25 an hour-although only $.30 per hour less than the congres-sional bill. Winning an early fight with Congressbuilds in a success that will make Congress more will-ing to sacrifice on his next issue.

In economic policy, since a President, rightly orwrongly, is going to be blamed or praised for the stateof the economy, he ought to have the maximumopportunity to influence it. As President Hoover putit, "In the end the President has become increasinglythe depository of all national ills, especially if things gowrong." In this regard, I recommend the following:

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- A President should be given greater discretionover appropriations spending by the Congress. Whileit is not worth the effort to try to amend the Constitu-tion to provide Presidents with a line item veto, andwe should not go back to the Nixon days of outrightimpoundments, Presidents should have enhancedauthority for rescission. Currently, a President candefer spending on any particular program until theend of the fiscal year by sending up a deferral messageunless the Congress affirmatively overturns the defer-ral. However, he can rescind spending on one or moreitems in a large appropriations bill-in effect a statu-tory line item veto-only if Congress affirmativelysupports the President's action.

I would strengthen the President's rescissionauthority by allowing his rescissions to go into effectunless a majority of the House and Senate opposethem. This would modestly increase the President'sauthority over fiscal policy. To further strengthen thePresident's hand over the crucial budget process, thePresident's signature should be required for a con-gressional budget resolution to be binding.- Congress should restore to the President the creditcontrol and wage and price control authority thatwere stripped away over the last two decades. It isdoubtful that Presidents would or should use thisauthority often. But having the club in the closetwould be useful during times of economic difficultyand might give the President more leverage to takemore traditional actions to control inflation and highinterest rates. The same is true with respect toembargo authority. I am not a devotee of embargoesand believe they can often be ineffective and indeedcounterproductive. But, Presidents should be the oneswho have to make those decisions and should have thisweapon in their arsenal.- The President should have greater influence overmonetary policy. I would not put monetary policysquarely in the Treasury and under the President's

jurisdiction, for the temptation to have an easy moneypolicy would be irresistible and ultimately damagingto the economy and to the country. But the Secretaryof the Treasury should sit on the Open Market com-mittee of the Federal Reserve Board so the Adminis-tration's position can be more clearly articulated andfiscal and monetary policy can be more closely coordi-nated. Moreover, the Fed Chairman's term should becoterminous with the President's so the Presidentdoes not have to live with a prior President's holdoverin such a central position.

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- The leadership of the House and Senate shouldallow a President two or three key votes on the flooron his priority legislation so his major initiatives can-not be endlessly bottled up in committee. This couldbe done at the beginning of a congressional session. APresident may decide not to exercise this opportunityif he sees defeat coming, but it is an opportunity thathe nevertheless should have so he can at least be cer-tain of getting a vote on his key priorities.- The President's opportunity to conduct nationalsecurity policy should be as unfettered as possible.The War Powers Act has been an abject failure. It isunworkable and unreasonable. It should be repealedor significantly amended. There is a promisingamendment proposed by Senators Nunn, Warner,and Byrd, and by Congressman Hamilton, underwhich Congress would have to take affirmative actionto restrict a President's deployment of forces in a com-bat area, rather than terminate deployment by a fail-ure to act. In this way, Congress still retains a role, butmust take affirmative action to restrict a President'sdeployment of troops.

Fifth, efforts should be made to reinvigorate politicalparties. They can be an important asset in helping aPresident govern and in giving a President greater lev-erage over the Members of Congress of his Party. Ifcongressional Members of the President's Party have agreater stake in the success of his Presidency, they willmake the President more successful.

In an age of television and mass communication,with party affiliation among voters declining and thepublic voting for the individual more than for his orher party, this is a very tall order. But it is worth aneffort. to strengthen political parties relative to theinterest groups which balkanize the political process.To the extent that political parties can serve as a bufferbetween interest groups and a President and Con-gress, the President can have greater leverage over thepolitical system. There are a number of steps that areworth examining in this area. I would impose severelimits on political action committee giving to Mem-bers of Congress, but would permit virtually unre-stricted giving, with full disclosure, by political actioncommittees and individuals to national political par-ties, which in turn could distribute the funds to Mem-bers. This would give national parties more leverageover Members, and since Presidents control thenational committee of their Party, this wouldstrengthen the hand of the President.

Sixth, I would like to see four-year terms for Mem-

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bers of the House. This would serve two purposes. Itwould take some of the enormous pressure off Mem-bers who must run every two years, and it wouldrequire Members to run on the same cycle as the Pres-ident, making them realize that their success and thePresident's are more closely linked than they aretoday.

Seventh, institutionally, the Office of the Presidentmust be strengthened. In the end, government comesdown to people. The right people in key positions canmake a Presidency, as Jim Baker, President Reagan'sChief of Staff, demonstrated. The wrong people canspell disaster. It is not just a question of putting goodpeople in the government; it is putting them in placeswhere their particular skills will fit. Much of the dif-ference between the first and second Reagan termswas in having the right person as Chief of Staff in thefirst term and the wrong person, Don Regan, in thesecond. While Regan was a perfectly capable Secre-tary of the Treasury, he did not have the political skillsrequired for Chief of Staff. The inexperience of Presi-dent Carter's White House Staff was a crucial reasonfor the difficult first year we had and the early impres-sion of ineffectiveness. Had seasoned hands like LloydCutler or Anne Wexler been in the White House fromthe first day, the Carter Presidency would have beenfar different.

There are changes in the structure of the ExecutiveOffice of the President that would strengthen thePresidency. One is to reduce the number of operatingunits within the Executive Office, particularly thoseadvocacy-oriented units, such as the Council on Envi-ronmental Quality. The White House must integrateand coordinate policy. This job is impeded and thePresident's job made more difficult .when there arespecial pleaders within the Executive Office of thePresident itself. These advocacy units should bestripped out of the Executive Office of the Presidentand put in existing agencies.

The presidency would be strengthened by an addi-tion of a unit similar to that found in the Prime Minis-ter's office in Great Britain and Canada-namely, aWhite House Secretariat, a small group of top levelcareer civil servants to provide the historical memoryand continuity so lacking in the modern Presidency.

When one walks into the West Wing of the WhiteHouse, immediately after the Inauguration, for whathas to be one of the giddiest experiences a person canhave, the White House is virtually empty. All the pic-tures from the previous President have been taken

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down, his files have been removed, his staff is gone.There is almost no overlap, even in the Bush-Reagantransition, between the foreign, domestic, and eco-nomic staffs of the White House. No one could imag-ine a modern corporation functioning with this kindof discontinuity and yet that is precisely what a newPresident faces when he comes into office. With theexception of the career staff at the Office of Manage-ment and Budget and a few holdovers in places likethe National Security Council, the entire WhiteHouse Staff and Executive Office of the Presidentturn over almost 100 percent between Administra-tions. There is no one around who can tell the Presi-dent the land mines on which his predecessor mayhave already stepped.

The fact is that Presidents often make major deci-sions in ignorance of the historical background of theissue. Thus, with the Iran contra affair, PresidentReagan and his National Security Council staff failedto appreciate many of the lessons the Carter Adminis-tration learned from our own mishaps with Iran-misunderstanding the nature of its revolutionaryforces, the likelihood that secret negotiations would beleaked, the inability of the Iranian government todeliver on its promises, and the absence of any realmoderates with whom the United States could deal.Similarly, when Secretary of State Vance stated thatthe status quo was unacceptable after the "discovery"of the Soviet brigade in Cuba in 1979, it resulted froma blind spot in memory. President Kennedy had sanc-tioned the presence of a Soviet brigade as part of theresolution of the Cuban missile crisis, a fact only laterdiscovered in the State Department's records.

A President needs a strong White House staff oftrusted political aides who share his world view andwho can impart direction to Cabinet Departmentsdriven by the interests they serve. But there is anequal need for political aides to be supplemented bynon-political career civil servants who will help pro-vide a historical memory and review historical prece-dent. Thus, a White House Secretariat should becreated in the Executive Office of the President, com-posed of perhaps a dozen career government employ-ees of the highest caliber. The Secretariat would becharged with providing the President's top staff withhistorical analogies drawn from their own experienceand from the agency bureaucracies to keep the Presi-dent out of trouble.

Eighth, because there are so few inherent powers inthe Presidency, the President must make maximum

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use of the symbolic features of the office. The Presi-dency embodies the values of the country and thePresident must constantly embody those values byword and deed. In retrospect, what was most endear-ing about Jimmy Carter during the 1976 campaign tothe American people-the common touch of carryinghis own suit bag and suitcase, making his own bed inthe home in which he stayed-translated into per-ceived weaknesses as President. By a wholesale groupof actions, from selling the presidential yacht Sequoiato refusing initially to have Hail to the Chief playedwhen he entered a room, President Carter attemptedto demystify a Presidency the American peoplewished to keep on a pedestal.

In the end, Presidents can make other institutionsbend to their will only if they are successful in holdingpublic opinion on their side and mobilizing it behindtheir programs. This must be done not by simplyappealing to the head but also to the heart of theAmerican people. They must feel themselves a part ofthe direction in which the President wishes to leadthem. FDR once said, "I cannot go any faster thanthe people will let me," and Lincoln said, "With pub-lic sentiment on its side, everything succeeds; withpublic sentiment against it, nothing succeeds."Americans, preoccupied with keeping their ownheads above water and with the everyday responsibili-ties of life, cannot be expected to follow and supportthe myriad decisions a President must make. Thepeople must be given a sense of a larger whole, of aPresidency that is more than the sum of its parts. Apoet once said, "The fox knows many things, but thehedgehog knows one big thing." A President mustknow and articulate a few big things for the public, fora Presidency cannot be supported in a conglomera-tion of a great many marginal ones. He must ruth-lessly set his priorities so that those big things are notoverwhelmed by other issues, so that he is not bled todeath by a thousand small wounds. He must con-stantly reiterate what those big things are, and whythey are important to the country. This is the essenceof presidential leadership. It is what enables a Presi-dent to rise above all the conflicting forces and institu-tions which pin him down, hem him in, limit hispower.

In the end, no one leads if the President does not.The Congress, the Cabinet, the bureaucracy, theAmerican people, and the world itself-foreign lead-ers, leaders on the Hill, leaders in the corporate sector,leaders of interest groups, and average citizens-all

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look to the President for leadership. It is his responsi-bility to send a clear signal and to sound a certaintrumpet. President Wilson said it well: "The Presi-dent is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be asbig a man as he can."

A President can-and should-enlarge the visionof our citizens. But it is our responsibility as citizensto give the President the tools he needs to meet ourexpectations; to give him the benefit of the doubt; torecognize the limitations under which he must oper-ate; to be educated and to be informed. The Ameri-can people have a right to expect a great deal from thePresident. But if we expect the impossible, if webelieve the President can solve every social ill, foreignproblem, and economic difficulty, we will inevitablybe disillusioned.

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Occasional PapersfromThe Law SchoolThe University of Chicago1111 East 60th StreetChicago, Illinois 60637

No. 1. "A Comment on Separation of Power"Philip B. Kurland, November 1, 1971.

No. 2. "The Shortage of Natural Gas"Edmund W. Kitch, February 1, 1972.

No. 3. "The Prosaic Sources of Prison Violence"Hans W. Mattick, March 15, 1972.

No. 4. "Conflicts ofInterest in Corporate Law Practice"Stanley A. Kaplan, January 10, 1973.

No. 5. "Six Man Juries, Majority Verdicts-What Difference Do They Make?"Hans Zeisel, March 15, 1973.

No. 6. "On Emergency Powers of the President:Every Inch a King?"Gerhard Casper, May 31, 1973.

No. 7. "The Anatomy ofJustice in Taxation"Walter J. Blum and Harry Kalven, Jr.,October 1, 1973.

No. 8. "An Approach to Law"Edward H. Levi, October 15, 1974.

No. 9. "The New Consumerism and the Law School"WalterJ. Blum, February 15, 1975.

No. 10. "Congress and the Courts"Carl McGowan, April 17, 1975.

No. 11. "The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxationin 1976"WalterJ. Blum, November 19, 1976.

No. 12. "Making the Punishment Fit the Crime:A Consumers' Guide to Sentencing Reform"Franklin E. Zimring, January 24, 1977.

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No. 13. "Talk to Entering Students"James B. White, August 15, 1977.

No. 14. "The Death Penalty and the Insanity Defense"Hans Zeisel, April 15, 1978.

No. 15. "Group Defamation"Geoffrey R. Stone, August 10, 1978.

No. 16. "The University Law School andPractical Education"Carl McGowan, December 20, 1978.

No. 17. "The Sovereignty of the Courts"Edward H. Levi, July 15, 1981.

No. 18. "The Brothel Boy"Norval Morris, March 15, 1982.

No. 19. "The Economists and the Problem of Monopoly"GeorgeJ. Stigler, July 1, 1983.

No. 20. "The Future of Gold"Kenneth W. Dam, July 15, 1984.

No. 21. "The Limits of Antitrust"Frank H. Easterbrook, April 15, 1985.

No. 22. "Constitutionalism"Gerhard Casper, April 6, 1987.

No. 23. "Reconsidering Miranda"StephenJ. Schulhofer, December 15, 1987.

No. 24. "Blackmail"Ronald H. Coase, November 14, 1988.

No. 25. "The Twentieth-Century Revolution in FamilyWealth Transmission"John H. Langbein, December 8, 1989.

No. 26. "The State of the Modern Presidency: Can It MeetOur Expectations?"Stuart E. Eizenstat, March 10, 1990.

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