Teaching the Presidency: Idealizing a Constitutional Office

............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. SPOTLIGHT ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. Teaching the Presidency: Idealizing a Constitutional Office Louis Fisher, The Constitution Project ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. rom World War II to the present, prominent scholars what damage was done to the American constitutional system placed their hopes in the presidency to protect the that depends on separation of powers and checks and balances? nation from outside threats and deal effectively with ROSSITER’S SCHOLARSHIP domestic crises. Their theories weakened the constitutional system of separation of powers and checks Clinton Rossiter’s The American Presidency, published in 1956 fol- and balances by reviving an outsized trust in executive power (espe- lowed by a paperback edition in 1960, promoted an idealized image F of executive power. Insisting that he was not recognizing some- cially over external affairs) that William Blackstone and others promoted in eighteenth-century England. The American framers thing new, he borrowed this 1861 praise from an Englishman, of the Constitution studied those models with great care and fully John Bright, about the US president: “I think the whole world rejected those precedents when they declared their independence offers no finer spectacle than this; it offers no higher dignity; and from England. there is no greater object of ambition on the political stage on Nevertheless, from the 1940s through the 1960s, Clinton Ros- which men are permitted to move.” In Bright’s estimate, “there is siter, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Henry Steele Commager, and nothing more worthy of reverence and obedience, and nothing Richard Neustadt built their professional careers by arguing that more sacred, than the authority of the freely chosen magistrate of it was politically necessary and constitutionally permissible to a great and free people; and if there be on earth and amongst men transfer ever greater power to the president. The unpopularity of any right divine to govern, surely it rests with a ruler so chosen the Vietnam War caused some scholars, including Schlesinger, to and so appointed” (Rossiter 1960, 15). President Abraham Lin- rethink the wisdom of vesting such power in the executive branch. coln might have been amused by this flight of rhetoric, and there Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, studies on the is little reason to think that southern states in 1861 shared Bright’s presidency have been divided between those who urge the con- admiration for Lincoln. centration of power in the president in times of emergency, and Rossiter defined the purpose of his book: “to confirm Bright’s those who insist that the executive branch lacks both the compe- splendid judgment by presenting the American Presidency as what tence and the authority to exercise power unchecked by Congress, I honestly believe it to be: one of the few truly successful institu- the courts, and the general public. tions created by men in their endless quest for the blessings of In the years prior to World War II, there was little effort by free government” (Rossiter 1960, 15). Conceding that the office of social scientists or the public to lionize the American president the presidency had “its fair share of warts,” he wanted “to make and manufacture heroic properties. The president was not placed clear at the outset my own feeling of veneration, if not exactly on a pedestal and clothed with wondrous qualities, acting instinc- reverence, for the authority and dignity of the President” (ibid., tively for the “national interest” and surrounded by advisers with 15–6). Veneration? Reverence? Those words typically express unrivaled expertise and unerring political judgment. Beginning respect, awe, and devotion, describing an office as holy and sacro- with World War II and continuing into the Cold War, social sci- sanct. Nothing in the American presidency from 1789 to 1956 jus- entists increasingly singled out the president as the political branch tified that level of flattery and idolatry. best equipped to protect the nation, not only from foreign threats Rossiter assigned to the president a number of impressive hats: but in confronting and settling domestic dangers. How well did Chief of State, Chief Executive, Commander in Chief, Chief Dip- those evaluations satisfy professional standards of objective and lomat, Chief Legislator, Chief of Party, Voice of the People, Pro- accurate analysis? By concentrating vast power in the presidency, tector of the Peace, Manager of Prosperity, and World Leader (Rossiter 1960, 16, 19, 23, 25, 28, 30, 32, 34, 37, 39). He referred to Louis Fisher, Scholar in Residence, joined The Constitution Project in August 2010 the decision of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957 to appoint after retiring from the Library of Congress, where he served for four decades as senior spe- James A. Killian, Jr. to the post of Special Assistant to the Presi- cialist in Separation of Powers (Congressional Research Service) and Specialist in Con- dent for Science and Technology. Rossiter preferred a more per- stitutional Law (Law Library). Many of his articles, books, and congressional testimony manent post to “acknowledge the President’s central position and are available on his webpage, http://loufisher.org.This article draws from the author’s key- draw authority directly from his prestige. If we have to have a note address presented at the American Politics Group Annual Conference, Rother- mere American Institute, St. Anne’s College, Oxford University, January 2011, “Presiden- ‘czar of science’ in Washington in the years ahead, the only can- tial Power: Real and Imaginary. Why Do Social Scientists (and the Public) Prefer the didate I can imagine our swallowing would be the President him- Latter?” self” (ibid., 239). The president as chief scientist? Few social doi:10.1017/S1049096511001673 PS • January 2012 17 Spotlight: Teaching the Presidency: Idealizing a Constitutional Office ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. scientists in 1956, or today, would conclude that presidents mer- rior, without autonomy or independence, easily cowed by the pag- ited that position or the many other titles chosen by Rossiter. eantry and trappings of a patriarchal king” (Wood 1993, 11–12). Rossiter was the last doctoral student to work under Edward There was no comparable reason for Americans to fawn before S. Corwin, the dean of presidential scholars and the public law a US president. Values drawn from the Enlightenment and the school. It is puzzling that Rossiter seemed entirely uninterested colonial experience of struggling for self-government necessarily in placing the president within a system of three coequal branches, meant the rejection of Blackstone’s model. To protect the sub- each with its own array of checks and balances, each with a duty jects, Blackstone transferred all external powers to the king: declar- to fight off encroachments. For Rossiter, the checks that operate ing war, making treaties, appointing ambassadors, raising armies on the president are “internal rather than external,” controlled by and navies, and issuing letters of marque and reprisal (Black- his “conscience and training, his sense of history and desire to be stone 1765, 1: 233, 244, 249–50, 254). The Constitution does not judged well by it ....”Ifapresident “knows anything of history or give a single one of those prerogatives to the president. They are politics or administration, he knows that he can do great things either vested exclusively in Congress by Article I or shared between only within ‘the common range of expectation,’ that is to say, in the president and the Senate (making treaties and appointing ways that honor or at least do not outrage the accepted dictates of ambassadors). constitutionalism, democracy, personal liberty, and Christian Unlike England, with its history of monarchy over which Par- morality” (Rossiter 1960, 70). liament gradually gained some control, America as a national gov- Rossiter died in 1970. We will never know how his innate trust ernment started with a legislative branch and no other. After America in presidential power, judgment, and competence might have declared its independence from England, all national powers changed by observing the performances of Lyndon Johnson in (including executive) were vested in a Continental Congress. The Vietnam, Richard Nixon withWatergate, Ronald Reagan’s involve- ninth article of the Articles of Confederation provided: “The ment in Iran-Contra, the performances of Jimmy Carter and Bill United States in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclu- Clinton, George W. Bush’s policies against terrorism after Sep- sive right and power

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