Presidential Leadership



Traditional Theories of the Presidency:

Presidents as agents of power

Presidents as articulators

Psychological Presidency




Skowronek’s Theory:

All Presidents aspire for a place in history.

Successful leaders control the political definition of their actions, and the terms in which their place in history is understood.

All presidents face the challenge of “Legitimation”

This manifests itself in how the President manages Power and Authority


Power – resources, formal and informal, that presidents in a given period have at their disposal.

Authority – expectations that surround the exercise of power at a particular moment. The perceptions of what is appropriate for a given president to do.







Skowronek’s argument is completely Structuralist

The author provides for “little in the personal characters or political skills of those few who have mastered the legitimation problem that readily distinguishes them as a group from those who have not.”


Agrees with Hamilton in Federalist 72, that new presidents come to power with a “rationale for shattering the received order.”

Exceptions??: John Q Adams, Benjamin Harrison, George W Bush



Thus, each President’s narrative is based on their placement in “political time”




President’s Political Identity
Previously Established Commitments
Opposed
Affiliated
Vulnerable
Politics of Reconstruction
Politics of Disjunction
Resilient
Politics of Preemption
Politics of Articulation





Politics of Reconstruction – President is from opposition to the previously established regime. Repudiates existing commitments of ideology and interests. Leverages events by fashioning an expansive authority to remake government.


Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan


Disjunction – President is affiliated with a set of established commitments that have been considered as failed or not relevant to existing challenges and events.

John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter


Articulation – Established commitments of ideology and interest are resilient. They use political action to leverage existing resources, “demonstrating the vitality of the established order.” Challenge is dealing with factional issues within the establishment.



James Monroe, James Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson,
George H W Bush



Preemption – These are opposition leaders within a resilient political order. They present a new agenda, attempt to play political divisions against each other, forging a middle ground. Tend to be disruptive to existing coalitions, sometimes leading to constitutional crisis.


John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon,
Bill Clinton