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Barack Obama and the strategic presidency
George C. Edwards III
In 2008, America suffered from war and economic crisis. Partisan polarization was extraordinarily high, while faith in government was exceptionally low. In such times, the reflexive call is for new ā and better ā leadership, especially in the White House. Barack Obama answered the call, presenting himself as a transformational leader who would fundamentally change the policy and the politics of America.
Even though both the public and commentators are frequently disillusioned with the performance of individual presidents and recognize that stalemate is common in the political system, Americans eagerly accept what appears to be the promise of presidential leadership to renew their faith in the potential of the presidency. Many Americans enthusiastically embraced Obamaās candidacy and worked tirelessly to put him in the White House. Once there, the new president and his supporters shared an exuberant optimism about the changes he would bring to the country.
There is little question that Obama was sincere in wanting to bring about change. So were his followers. Yet, a year into his administration, many were frustrated ā and surprised ā by the widespread resistance to his major policy proposals. The public was typically unresponsive to the presidentās calls for support. Partisan polarization and congressional gridlock did not disappear. As a result, the promised transformation in energy, environmental, immigration, and other policies did not occur. When the president succeeded on health care reform, it was the result of old-fashioned party leadership, ramming the bill through Congress on a party-line vote. Even worse, from the Democratsā perspective, the 2010 midterm elections were a stunning defeat for the presidentās party that would undermine the administrationās ability to govern in the succeeding years.
How could this bright, articulate, decent and knowledgeable new president have such a difficult time attaining his goals? Did the president fumble the ball, making tactical errors in his attempts to govern? Although no president is perfect, the Obama White House was not severely mismanaged, politically insensitive or prone to making avoidable mistakes. Ineffective implementation of a strategy was not the explanation for the lack of progress in transforming policy and politics.
Instead, the problem was in the strategies themselves ā in the belief that they could succeed. A common premise underlying the widespread emphasis on political leadership as the wellspring of change is that some leaders have the capability to transform policy by reshaping the influences on it. The Obama White House believed in the power of the bully pulpit. The president and his advisers felt that he could persuade the public to support his programme. They also believed that the president could obtain bipartisan support in Congress through efforts to engage the opposition. As a result of these premises, the White House felt comfortable advancing an extraordinarily large and expensive agenda.
Presidential power is not the power to persuade, however. Presidents cannot reshape the contours of the political landscape to pave the way for change by establishing an agenda and persuading the public, Congress and others to support their policies. Instead, successful presidents facilitate change by recognizing opportunities in their environments and fashioning strategies and tactics to exploit them.1 In other words, presidents who are successful in obtaining support for their agendas have to evaluate the opportunities for change in their environments carefully and orchestrate existing and potential support skilfully.
These conclusions lead us to predict that governing strategies dependent on employing persuasion to create opportunities for change will fail. The Obama administration provides an excellent test for these predictions, because it adopted two governing strategies highly dependent upon persuasion: going public and bipartisanship in Congress.
Before analysing these strategies for governing, we need to consider the nature of the presidentās agenda. The more ambitious the presidentās agenda, the more likely it will meet with intense criticism and political pushback. A White House strategy built on the assumption of persuading the public or members of Congress to support the presidentās programmes can lead to an overly ambitious agenda that lacks the fundamental support it needs to weather the inevitable attacks from the opposition.
The Obama agenda
Given the policy environment he inherited, the president often declared that he did not have the luxury of addressing the financial crisis and issues such as health care, education or the environment one at a time. āIām not choosing to address these additional challenges just because I feel like it or because Iām a glutton for punishmentā, he told the Business Roundtable. āIām doing so because theyāre fundamental to our economic growth and ensuring that we donāt have more crises like this in the future.ā2 He wanted a more sustained approach than patching the economy until the next bubble, like the technology bubble of the 1990s and the housing bubble of the 2000s.3
In Obamaās view, it was impossible to deal with the economic crisis without fixing the banking system, because it was not possible to generate a recovery without liquid markets and access to capital. He insisted that the only way to build a strong economy that would truly last was to address underlying problems in American society like unaffordable health care, dependence on foreign oil, and underperforming schools. Reducing dependence on foreign oil required addressing climate change, which in turn required international cooperation and engaging the world with vigorous US diplomacy. His appointment of five prominent White House āczarsā with jurisdictions ranging across several departments reflected this syncretic outlook.
Moreover, the president had little patience for waiting to act. āThere are those who say these plans are too ambitious, that we should be trying to do less, not moreā, he told a town hall meeting in Costa Mesa, California on 18 March 2009. āWell, I say our challenges are too large to ignore.ā The next day in Los Angeles he proclaimed:
It would be nice if I could just pick and choose what problems to face, when to face them. So I could say, well, no, I donāt want to deal with the war in Afghanistan right now; Iād prefer not having to deal with climate change right now. And if you could just hold on, even though you donāt have health care, just please wait, because Iāve got other things to do.
Later, on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, he repeated his standard response to critics who charged he was trying to do too much: āListen, hereās what I say. I say our challenges are too big to ignore.ā4
There was also an elem...
