Barring a dramatic uptick in the pace of global warming, we will elect a U.S. senator to the presidency this fall, the first since John F. Kennedy.
Americans tend to like a president with management experience, hence our predilection for former governors, even if their skill set is otherwise limited to peanut farming, acting or a little saxophone.
After governors, vice presidents are a solid second choice, even if their management experience is … well, usually zero.
Every once in awhile, when we’re stuck in a no-win war, when the economy is in the crapper and we fear our position in the world is slipping, we opt for what is called “real change” by electing a senator.
With all the think tankers, key advisers and cabinet members surrounding the typical president, you’d think management wouldn’t be much of a challenge, but it’s a task that has vexed many of our chief executives, says presidential scholar Fred Greenstein.
Kennedy, for one, drafted a team of incredibly bright and creative advisers, but they were “sparks that failed to create great illumination,” according to Greenstein.
And let’s not forget they thoroughly botched the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.
But good thing that disaster came first: A much-improved Kennedy team, co-captained by brother Bobby, worked flawlessly during the Cuban missile crisis the following year, avoiding what might have resulted in nuclear Armageddon.
Bill Clinton’s varied staffs suffered their own organizational pains, many of them created by the boss himself, according to David Maraniss, a Washington Post reporter and author of the Clinton biography “First in His Class.”
Impatient with paperwork and bored with daily routines, Gov. Clinton relied heavily on his public persona, once described as “equal parts revivalist preacher, snake-oil huckster and political con artist.” Maraniss calls Clinton’s management style in Arkansas a “permanent campaign” that regularly bypassed the legislature and the media and took matters directly to the people.
As a result, “The Clinton staff was like 6-year-olds on a soccer team, everybody rushing for the ball at the same time,” Maraniss says.
Clinton’s staff was so frustrated that when a deranged man came by the Statehouse seeking an appointment to kill the governor, the chief of staff suggested they try to work him in.
Clinton’s management-by-chaos style worked – barely – in Little Rock, but it marginalized the president during his first two years in Washington, at which point the Democrats lost Congress, and the administration conducted a housecleaning.
Greenstein and Maraniss, along with Condoleezza Rice biographer and New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, were on the Island last week for a panel discussion on lessons the current candidates could learn from history. The presentation was part of Educate ’08, a remarkable series of Hofstra University events that lead up to the final presidential debate, which the university will host in mid-October.
In addition to management expertise, the most important assets of the presidency are communication, vision and that nebulous thing called character, Greenstein says. No modern president has nailed them all.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, for example, ran his administration with the steely precision of the D-Day invasion, but he lacked vision. Ditto Lyndon Johnson, whose Senate experience helped him captain a tight ship but who let Vietnam sink him in the opinion polls and, ultimately, wash him out of office.
Nixon may have had the most vision. In “Asia After Vietnam,” a 1967 piece he wrote for the political journal Foreign Affairs, Nixon called for a “new world order” that included pulling U.S. troops out of Southeast Asia, establishing relations with China and signing a nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union. He accomplished all three by the start of his second term in 1973.
Of course, “Nixon was emotionally peculiar,” Greenstein reminds us.
Some presidents rise to the challenges thrust at them – Lincoln, FDR, Truman – but few actually grow during their time in office, according to the panelists. Instead, presidents “pretty much play out what their past has been,” Maraniss says.
That means voters need to scrutinize a candidate’s life and public record for clues, and we shouldn’t get stumped by all the stumping, they warn.
“Most of what happens on the campaign trail,” Maraniss asserts, “is trivial and unimportant.”
Adds Greenstein: “It’s a special problem this year with the Democratic candidates, who have minuscule differences on policy, which they try to make larger by distorting each other’s position and focusing on gaffes.”
I’m guessing he saw the last debate.
What’s in the eye of the beholder, then, is all that matters. It really is solely up to us when it comes to weighing whom we like and why, how we process the angry pastors and make-believe snipers, the misspeak, missteps and Ms. Lewinskys.
With luck, it will all amount to something more than simple grace under pressure.
As JFK once said, “That sounds a lot like a girl I used to date.”
