Running Alone: Presidential Leadership from JFK to Bush II -- Why It Has Failed and How We Can Fix It Review

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Running Alone: Presidential Leadership from JFK to Bush II -- Why It Has Failed and How We Can Fix It ReviewBurns' short book should be a considered a good corollary to Arthur Schelsinger's "The Imperial Presidency." The authors hardly surprising thesis is that for the better part of forty years, the executive branch has usurped power from the other two branches, thus constituting, for all intents and purposes, a one branch government. Burns traces the genesis of this phenomenon to the breakdown of the party platform system and that platform being a meaningful part of a presidential campaign. Instead of running on a either right or left wing partisan stage, every President since Kennedy has instead adopted a mostly centrist message. So, if a candidate runs alone on his and his beliefs only during an election year, it does not take much for that elected President to now govern alone. Nevertheless, Burns' thesis is diffused later on in the book when he returns to his theory on the differences between transformational and transactional leadership. Surprisingly, for a person who seems, by all outward appearances, to be the paragon of the liberal intelligentsia, Burns considers Ronald Reagan to be the best combination of the transactional (the ability to work with all sides cohesively) and transformational (leading a group/branch to change the country in a profound way.) This is indeed surprising for Burns to praise Reagan when he writes that Reagan's ideological heir, George W. Bush, has "consolidated personal power to an extent unprecedented in American history, and he has used that power to evade responsibility."
Another beginning primary cause of the growing aggrandizement of executive authority was Kennedy's reliance on Richard Neustadt's theory on the Presidential power. The author writes: "In a series of memos, he (Neustadt) counseled Kennedy not on how to deal with Congress, but rather on how to master power within the executive branch." Thus, as Neustadt wrote: "a reasonable President would need no power other than the logic of his argument." Thus, what many people consider the arrogance of the current administration may have it's roots in this Neustadtian logic.
This growing Presidential power continued unabated under Johnson and Nixon but was interrupted briefly by the relatively weak administrations of Ford and Carter. Meanwhile, however, the previously marginalized right wing coalesced under Ronald Reagan, who paradoxically became one of the most powerful presidents while espousing a radical shrinking of the federal government. Reagan's successors, George H.W. Bush, however, did not govern on the conservative ideals that Reagan did. Therefore, one of the reasons for Bush's 1992 defeat was because he took a centrist stand instead of the hard right positions that his predecessor governed from. In the same way, Bill Clinton ran and governed from the classic central ideology. Clinton came to realize this of course, when he said to his staff one day that "I hope you're all aware we're all Eisenhower Republicans. We're Eisenhower Republicans here, and we are fighting Reagan Republicans...Isn't that great!!!"
Finally, the heir to the Reagan revolution, George W. Bush is a conservative in name only, Burns asserts. Burns writes that "Reagan was a strong president, of course, but for the purposes of weakening government. Now there was Reagan's heir, Bush II bulking up government and his own powers." Burns does not address the argument that maybe the reason for this power grab was a response to a massive and chaotic terrorist attack.
Overall, Burns concludes that in order to decrease the power of the executive branch, voters must be given a clear choice between ideologies on Election Day, and not two candidates that stand for the same thing. Only then, can voter apathy decrease and a rejuvenated American electorate will demand more executive accountability.
Running Alone: Presidential Leadership from JFK to Bush II -- Why It Has Failed and How We Can Fix It Overview

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