Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan

“Presidential weakness was the underlying theme of Presidential Power. This remains my theme. […] Weakness is still what I see: weakness in the sense of a great gap between what is expected of a man (or someday a woman) and assured capacity to carry through. Expectations rise and clerkly tasks increase, while prospects for sustained support from any quarter worsen as foreign alliances loosen and political parties wane.” 

This definition of the presidency as “weak” is particularly important to Neustadt’s conception of the office and his focus on the individuals who fill it because it shapes his concept that the president must bargain with others in government to secure the support necessary to achieve results in the policy arena.

“In 1960 my concern with personal power turned upon the problem of enhancing or conserving it prospectively taken in strategic terms, ‘looking toward tomorrow from today.’ Presidents, I argued, ought to think about their prospects for effectiveness as they make current choices—deriving either cautions for the future or guidance for the present. The better they think about power in prospective terms, the likelier they are to buttress future influence and also chosen policies. They need to do the thinking for themselves, since in our system they can count on no one else to do it for them in their terms. They ought to concentrate such thoughts on their own choices, since in our system these are the only means under their personal control by which they can affect the acts of government. That was and remains the skeleton of my argument.” 

This is probably the clearest statement of Neustadt’s argument that appears anywhere in the book. It also reflects his continued endorsement of his initial argument, with minor adjustments, 30 years later. In sum, presidents should carefully consider every choice they make not just because of policy but because every decision has the potential to strengthen or undermine the president’s power. Neustadt urges presidents to make decisions with a mind toward the future and how every choice will affect both their power and others’ perceptions of that power.

“I persist in the belief expressed in earlier editions of this book—namely that pursuit of presidential power, rightly understood, constitutionally conditioned, looking ahead, serves purposes far broader than a President’s satisfaction. It is good for the country as well as for him. The President who maximizes his prospective influence within the system helps to energize it in the process.” 

Neustadt expresses his firm view that what is good for the president is good for the country. He urges the individuals who occupy the presidency to pursue their own power, as a personal and professional matter, because he believes that the president is necessarily constrained in his capabilities by the need to recruit support to achieve policy goals. The president’s power is essentially a measure of how much he and the government as a whole can accomplish while he is office.

“A President, these days, is an invaluable clerk. His services are in demand all over Washington. His influence, however, is a very different matter. Laws and customs tell us little about leadership in fact.” 

This statement reflects Neustadt’s distinction between “power” and formal “powers” of the president. He begins the book by focusing squarely on the need to develop a real-world ability to lead to accomplish policy goals as president.

“The President of the United States has an extraordinary range of formal powers, of authority in statute law and in the Constitution. Here is testimony that despite his “powers” he does not obtain results by giving orders—or not, at any rate, merely by giving orders. He also has extraordinary status, ex officio, according to the customs of our government and politics. Here is testimony that despite his status he does not get action without argument. Presidential power is the power to persuade.” 

This quotation introduces one of the most important concepts in the book. The conception of presidential power as the power to persuade was an innovation that fundamentally changed the way the presidency is understood and the way presidents are evaluated.

“[A]dequate or not, a President’s own choices are the only means in his own hands of guarding his own prospects for effective influence. He can draw power from continuing relationships in the degree that he can capitalize upon the needs of others for the Presidency’s status and authority. He helps himself to do so, though, by nothing save the ability to recognize the preconditions and the chance advantages and to proceed accordingly in the course of the choice making that comes his way. To ask how he can guard prospective influence is thus to raise a further question: What helps him guard his power stakes in his own acts of choice?” 

This statement reveals why Neustadt’s book is sometimes compared with Machiavelli’s The Prince; it functions very much as a handbook for an individual president who seeks to maximize his impact in office. Further, rather than focus on any ideological platform, Neustadt instead examines the universally applicable points that relate to the power to influence the government regardless of ideological orientation.

“How does [a President] make the most he can of his own reputation? The answer returns us to his choices. His general reputation will be shaped by signs of pattern in the things he says and does. These are the words and actions he has chosen, day by day. His choices are the means by which he does what he can do to build his reputation as he wants it. Decisions are his building blocks. He has no others in his hands.” 

This statement demonstrates Neustadt’s strong belief that a president must focus on his choices as the only means of affecting the extent of power that he can wield, as well as his emphatic reminders that only the individual president will truly have his own interests as the focal point for their analysis of the situation.

“Our question has been how a President, himself, protects prospective leeway inside government by guarding his own prospects for approval outside Washington. The answer brings us to his choices once again. His prestige turns on what the members of the public think they want and think they get. He affects their thoughts by what he does. His choices of what he will do and when and how—his choices, also, of whom he will tell and in what way and words—are his means to protect this source of influence, just as they are his means to guard those other power sources: formal powers or status and professional reputation.” 

Neustadt explains the role of popular approval in the president’s power. Above all, he understands it as providing a means for other politicians to assess how working with or against the president will affect their own power prospects.

“Influence adheres to those who sense what it is made of. If choices are a President’s own means to guard his power, he is likelier to hurt than help himself unless he knows what power is and sees its shape in what he does. Before power can be served, it must be seen.” 

Neustadt highlights his view on the importance of a president understanding, in practical terms, the nature of the power that he must obtain to bring his policy goals to fruition. It also reveals exactly what the book seeks to aid presidents with: an understanding of how to acquire and manage power as a president.

“[W]hen it comes to power, nobody is expert but the President; if he, too, acts as layman, it goes hard with him. Expertise in power terms is not a substitute for expertise in policy; it offers some protection, though, from errors and from bafflements in policy appraisal.” 

This passage, a stark contrast to the description of Roosevelt in the prior quotation, stands as a warning against excessive delegation and incuriosity by a president. It also reminds the reader that a president’s staff and others around him will have their own interests at stake, such that only the president can fully assess what is in his interest.

“Not only did [Roosevelt] keep his organizations overlapping and divide authority among them, but he also tended to put men of clashing temperaments, outlooks, ideas, in charge of them. Competitive personalities mixed with competing jurisdictions was Roosevelt’s formula for putting pressure on himself, for making his subordinates push him up to the choices they could not make for themselves. It also made them advertise their punches; their quarrels provided him with not only heat but information. Administrative competition gave him two rewards. He got choices and due notice, both.” 

This excerpt reveals a major reason why Neustadt celebrates Roosevelt throughout the book as a model of a president effective at acquiring and exercising power. The description of Roosevelt offered in this passage tracks closely, perhaps exactly, with Neustadt’s advice about how a president should relate to those under him to maximize their benefit to him and his own power resources.

“Governmental power, in reality, not form, is influence of an effective sort on the behavior of men actually involved in making public policy and carrying it out. Effective influence for the man in the White House stems from three related sources: the first are the bargaining advantages inherent in the job with which to persuade other men that what he wants of them is what their own responsibilities require them to do. Second are the expectations of those other men regarding his ability and will to use various advantages they think he has. Third are those men’s estimates of how his public views him and of how their publics may view them if they do what he wants. In short, his power is the product of his vantage point in government, together with his reputation in Washington and his prestige outside.” 

This passage offers perhaps the most accessible statement of the argument in the 1960 edition that was present in the book itself. Neustadt reasserts that the presidency offers little power beyond the prestige of the office and the ability to bargain. Maintaining this abstract power requires the president to strike a careful balance between making considered choices, displaying a good temperament, and deftly managing relationships with staff, the public, and other government officials. These are all qualities by which others evaluate the president, and anything that undermines this balance or his reputation has a corresponding negative effect on his influence.

“The Presidency, to repeat, is not a place for amateurs. That sort of expertise can hardly be acquired without deep experience in political office. The Presidency is a place for men of politics. But by no means is it a place for every politician.” 

This deceptively simple quotation belies Neustadt’s belief that actually being president is exceptionally difficult, such that doing it effectively is a very challenging prospect even for the best prepared individuals. The view explains why Neustadt so firmly criticizes several presidents who seemed to fail to grasp the task before them and examines the moves they could have made to enhance their influence.

“Expertise in presidential power seems to be the province not of politicians as a class but of extraordinary politicians. What sets such men apart? Mr. Justice Holmes once characterized Franklin Roosevelt as a ‘second-class intellect but a first-class temperament.’ Perhaps this is a necessary combination. The politics of well-established government has rarely been attractive to and has rarely dealt kindly with the men whom intellectuals regard as first-rate intellectuals. Temperament, at any rate, is the great separator. Experience will leave its mark on expertise; so will a man’s ambitions for himself and his constituents. But something like that ‘first-class’ temperament is what turns know-how and desire to his personal account.” 

Neustadt identifies what he believes makes for a potentially great president. Ultimately, he points to the personal characteristics of the individual—his view of himself and ability to work with others—which is described here as “temperament.”

“The contributions that a President can make to government are indispensable. Assuming that he knows what power is and wants it, those contributions cannot help but be forthcoming in some measure as by-products of his search for personal influence. In a relative but real sense one can say of a President what Eisenhower’s first secretary of defense once said of General Motors: What is good for the country is good for the President, and vice versa. […] The way he sees his influence and seeks it will affect the rest of us, no matter what becomes of him.”

Neustadt’s view of the individual president’s power prospects as benefiting the country as a whole comes through strongly here again. This is, essentially, his statement of why it is good to encourage a president to seek power for himself while in office.

“Americans cannot escape an active federal government because so many of them want so much from it, and that activity in Washington calls for an active President: Like it or not, the governmental system will impel him to take initiatives and to render judgments.” 

This quotation signals the beginning of the post-1960 chapters and, as such, illustrates to some extent Neustadt’s responsive tone in the second part of the book. In effect, he is responding to apparent concerns of others by emphasizing that the president is a necessarily important component of the government at a time when the presidency was largely under attack due to the Vietnam War.

“What became clear with Kennedy and has remained so since is that this new dimension [of a nuclear second-strike capability] pushes Presidents of the United States into a new degree of isolation: No other American lives daily with so much responsibility for just that sort of choice. In a particularly uncomfortable way, the new dimension is theirs personally, setting them apart both intellectually and emotionally. […] And a President now faces isolation not only in these terms of mind and heart but operationally as well. […] This leaves a lot of balance in our system; indeed it may be balanced to the point of immobility. The burden on the President is in no way diminished, rather the reverse. Governance remains as much as ever, or still more, dependent on his human qualities.” 

Neustadt expresses here the widely shared existential dread felt during the Cold War, a reality that may be lost on many who did not experience the conflict firsthand. This is a particularly salient point as it relates to the president because no other individual in America had the power to effectively end the world with the push of a button.

“What makes the instability of presidential staffing seem so stark today is that this context has all but vanished, part of it declining with our party organizations and the rest of it suspended by persistent ticket splitting. While Congress and the President wear different party labels, he chooses between loyalists who are less than colleagues—lacking a sufficiency of independent power—and colleagues who in party terms cannot be loyal to him. Moreover, Congress, whether viewed as men or customs, has been changing fast since LBJ’s majorities, to say nothing of FDR’s. Now it is uncertain what a restored party tie might bring by way of powerful and loyal associates for Presidents.” 

This passage notes that, at least at the time it was written, there was no consistent pattern or agreement regarding exactly how to staff the presidency. This reflects the growing pains of the administrative state as well as the influence of changing political and technological circumstances that surround the presidency.

“[B]alancing the public and administrative feasibilities—the uses of events and the capacities of institutions—seems essential for the President who seeks to make the most of any prospects for consensus. The less he may have dealt with organizations in the past, the more he needs to comprehend. The more proficient as a user of events, the less he may conceive he has to learn. In this could lie his special innocence. It heightens both his stakes and ours in hazards of transition for a person with his talent.” 

This statement reminds the reader that the president plays multiple roles, remaining responsive to events while also managing an increasingly sprawling federal executive branch. As such, the passage emphasizes the important role a president’s experience may play in his ability to operate effectively, at least in the early days of his presidency.

“Here is a President, eyes fixed in one direction, setting himself up to be clobbered from another—without protective instincts roused by anything or anyone around him. Is that unique to Reagan? Hardly. Every illustration in this book, save for the Marshall Plan and the Cuban missile crisis, once under way, fits the description to some degree.” 

This statement captures both Neustadt’s relatively dark view of Reagan’s presidency and his recognition of the human failings of all individuals who have occupied the White House. At the same time, however, it triggers questions regarding the two examples he excepts from the description.

“If Presidents cannot count on their own experience, how do they emulate the Eisenhower of Dien Bien Phu? […] They can try to ride on other people’s experiences, whether direct through observation or indirect through study. In short, they can ask questions. And they can impress on their staffs the need, in lieu of answers (there so rarely are firm answers), for further questions, better framed, so as to yield more insights. The histories of issues, institutions, and individuals are certainly not open books, but neither are they likely to be so impenetrable that serious questions from on high cannot unlock some semblances of substitutes for Eisenhower’s relevant experience. Recall why these are needed: to add perspective to, and thereby aid in sorting through, divergent and sometimes downright contradictory clues afforded by concern for future influence. Certainty is not the issue; relative weights are the issues, perspective is the point: Insights grow all important.”

This passage expresses Neustadt’s revised (and significantly more positive) perspective on Eisenhower’s presidency, attempting to identify how someone less experienced than Eisenhower in military matters might acquire some of the advantages that experience can bestow. Neustadt’s emphasis on cultivating questions rather than answers tends to reveal his academic orientation and also highlights the indeterminacy of so many matters that require a decision by the president.

“Never let your Nancy be immobilized, could be a rule of thumb for future Presidents. And I extract from this affair another one: The moment your arrangements make ‘her’ isolation possible, you’d better dig into details yourself.” 

This quotation refers to First Lady Nancy Reagan, reported to be Reagan’s closest personal advisor and perhaps the only person near him whom he could trust. Neustadt has discussed the Iran-Contra affair at this point in the book and draws from it the lessons that a president who delegates should ensure his most trust advisors have access to accurate information. Better, Neustadt suggests, is for the president himself to be “curious” about the relevant matters all the way down to the practical details of an issue.

“I prefer Presidents of the other sort [as opposed to habitual delegators], more skeptical than trustful, more curious than committed, more nearly Roosevelts than Reagans. I think the former energize our governmental system better and bring out its defects less than do the latter. […] But this book has not been written to expound my personal preferences. Rather it endeavors to expose the problem for a President of either sort who seeks to buttress his prospects for his future influence while making present choices—‘looking toward tomorrow from today.’” 

Expressing a similar point as the preceding quotation, Neustadt here explains that his argument is not based on partisan ideas or party loyalty. Instead, much like Machiavelli, Neustadt set out to write a book that presents an understanding of the presidency that can be utilized by whoever comes to occupy the office.