Changing Their Minds?

Donald Trump and Presidential Leadership

George C. Edwards III

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780226775647
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

Despite popular perceptions, presidents rarely succeed in persuading either the public or members of Congress to change their minds and move from opposition to particular policies to support of them. As a result, the White House is not able to alter the political landscape and create opportunities for change. Instead, successful presidents recognize and skillfully exploit the opportunities already found in their political environments. If they fail to understand their strategic positions, they are likely to overreach and experience political disaster.Donald Trump has been a distinctive president, and his arrival in the Oval Office brought new questions. Could someone with his decades of experience as a self-promoter connect with the public and win its support? Could a president who is an experienced negotiator obtain the support in Congress needed to pass his legislative programs? Would we need to adjust the theory of presidential leadership to accommodate a president with unique persuasive skills?Building on decades of research and employing extensive new data, George C. Edwards III addresses these questions. He finds that President Trump has been no different than other presidents in being constrained by his environment. He moved neither the public nor Congress. Even for an experienced salesman and dealmaker, presidential power is still not the power to persuade. Equally important was the fact that, as Edwards shows, Trump was not able to exploit the opportunities he had. In fact, we learn here that the patterns of the president's rhetoric and communications and his approach to dealing with Congress ultimately lessened his chances of success. President Trump, it turns out, was often his own agenda's undoing.

CHAPTER ONE

Trump as a Test

Much to the surprise of most political commentators and even the candidate himself, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. The New York real estate mogul ran an unusual campaign and possessed a unique background for a chief executive. He was a true nonpareil. No one has ever arrived at the presidency with so little experience in politics, government, or the military. He never served in any public office and was poorly informed about issues. Nevertheless, he took the oath of office as president on January 20, 2017.

Trump provides an intriguing case for the study of presidential leadership. Despite his lack of conventional credentials for the presidency, he came to the White House with two sets of skills that seemed relevant to leading the people and their government. First, he possessed well-honed promotional talents, abilities sharpened over a lifetime of marketing himself and his brand, including a stint as a successful reality television star. Second, Trump boasted of being an able negotiator. Announcing his candidacy for the presidency on June 16, 2015, he proclaimed, “If you can’t make a good deal with a politician, then there’s something wrong with you. You’re certainly not very good. And that’s what we have representing us. They will never make America great again. They don’t even have a chance . . . our country needs a truly great leader now. We need a leader that wrote The Art of the Deal.”1 Thus, the future president claimed that he was uniquely qualified to lead the country, unite the public, and overcome gridlock in Congress.

To accomplish these goals would require successful persuasion. Was this talented self-promoter able to win public support for his initiatives? Was this experienced negotiator able to overcome polarization in Congress and obtain agreement on his proposals? Was Donald Trump an effective leader?

Answering these questions is the focus of this book. First, however, we need to clarify some key concepts.

Leadership

Leadership may be the most commonly employed idea in politics. Yet it is an elusive concept. According to James MacGregor Burns, “Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.”2 Writers and commentators employ the term “leadership” to mean just about everything a person who occupies what we often refer to as “a position of leadership” does—or should do.

When we define a term so broadly, however, it loses its utility. The Constitution and federal laws invest significant discretionary authority in the president. Making decisions, issuing commands, and implementing policy are important, and doing them well requires courage, wisdom, and skill. At times, the exercise of unilateral authority may result in historic changes in the politics and policy of the country.

In the extreme case, the president can launch a nuclear attack at his discretion. The consequences would be vast. Most people would not view such an act as one of leadership, however. In exercising discretionary authority, the president, in effect, acts alone. It is not necessary for him to lead anyone to do something. At its core, decision-making represents a different dimension of the job of the chief executive than obtaining the support of others.

An important element of a chief executive’s job may be creating the organizational and personal conditions that promote innovative thinking, the frank and open presentation and analysis of alternatives, and effective implementation of decisions by advisors and members of the bureaucracy. We may reasonably view such actions as a form of leadership, and there is no doubt that the processes of decision-making and policy implementation are critical to governing. In this volume, however, I focus on the leadership of those who are not directly on the president’s team—the public and Congress—and who are thus less obligated to support his initiatives. Presidents invest a substantial portion of their time working on these tasks, and the success of their efforts has significant consequences for public policy.

It is important for all of us to understand how successful presidents actually lead. What are the essential presidential leadership skills? Under what conditions are they most effective? How can these skills contribute to engendering change? The answers to these questions should influence presidents’ efforts to govern, the focus of scholarly research and journalistic coverage, and the expectations and evaluations of citizens. Thus, we seek a better understanding of presidential leadership in order to think sensibly about the role of the chief executive in the nation’s political system.

Persuasion and Presidential Power

A second key concept is persuasion. In broad terms, persuasion refers to causing others to do something by reasoning, urging, or inducement. Influencing others is central to the conception of leadership of most political scientists. Scholars of the presidency want to know whether the chief executive can affect the output of government by influencing the actions and attitudes of others. In a democracy, we are particularly attuned to efforts to persuade, especially when most potentially significant policy changes require the assent of multiple power holders.

The best-known dictum regarding the American presidency is that “presidential power is the power to persuade,”3 the felicitous phrase that captures the essence of Richard Neustadt’s argument in Presidential Power. For three generations, scholars and students—and many presidents—have viewed the presidency through the lens of Richard Neustadt’s core premise. Unfortunately, they have frequently misunderstood his argument.

Neustadt’s first point was that presidents are week and thus have no choice but to rely on persuasion. The subtitle of Presidential Power is The Politics of Leadership. In essence, presidential leadership is the power to persuade. As he put it, “‘powers’ are no guarantee of power”4 and “the probabilities of power do not derive from the literary theory of the Constitution.”5 Presidents would have to struggle to get their way. Indeed, it was the inherent weakness of the presidency that made it necessary for presidents to understand how to use their resources most effectively.

What did Neustadt mean by “persuasion”? “The essence of a President’s persuasive task, with congressmen and everybody else,” he argued, “is to induce them to believe that what he wants of them is what their own appraisal of their own responsibilities requires them to do in their interest, not his. . . . Persuasion deals in the coin of self-interest with men who have some freedom to reject what they find counterfeit.”6 Thus, “The power to persuade is the power to bargain.”7

In other words, the president is not likely to change many minds among those who disagree with him on substance or have little incentive to help him succeed. Although Neustadt did not focus extensively on public opinion, we can generalize beyond public officials to their constituents. His endorsement of the findings in On Deaf Ears8 that presidents rarely move the public in their direction reflects his skepticism about changing public opinion.

Missing the Point

Neustadt argued, then, that presidents need to persuade—not that they will succeed in doing so. Many commentators—and presidents—miss this point. They suggest that all presidents have to do to obtain the support of the public or members of Congress is to reach into their inventory of leadership skills and employ the appropriate means of persuasion. Most presidents, at least at the beginning of their tenures, seem to believe they can create opportunities for change.

For example, public support is a key political resource, and modern presidents have typically sought it for themselves and their policies. Their goal has been to leverage public opinion to obtain backing for their proposals in Congress and, in their first term, to win reelection. It is natural for new presidents, basking in the glow of an electoral victory, to focus on creating, rather than exploiting, opportunities for change. It may seem quite reasonable for leaders who have just won the biggest prize in American politics by convincing voters and party leaders to support their candidacies to conclude that they should be able to convince members of the public and the US Congress to support their policies. Why focus on evaluating existing possibilities when you can fashion new ones?

Campaigning is different than governing, however. Campaigns focus on short-term victory, and candidates wage them in either/or terms. To win an election, a candidate need only convince voters that he or she is a better choice than the few available alternatives. In addition, someone always wins whether or not voters support the victor’s policy positions.

Governing, on the other hand, involves deliberation, negotiation, and often compromise over an extended period. Moreover, in governing, the president’s policy is just one of a wide range of alternatives. Furthermore, delay is a common objective—and a common outcome—in matters of public policy. Neither the public nor elected officials have to choose. Although stalemate may sometimes be the president’s goal, the White House usually wishes to convince people to support a positive action.

In sum, one should not infer from success in winning elections that the White House can persuade members of the public and Congress to change their minds and support policies they would otherwise oppose. The American political system is not a fertile field for the exercise of presidential leadership. Most political actors, from the average citizen to members of Congress, are free to choose whether to follow the chief executive’s lead; the president cannot force them to act. At the same time, the sharing of powers established by the Constitution’s checks and balances not only prevents the president from acting unilaterally on most important matters but also gives other power holders different perspectives on issues and policy proposals.

Thus, it is a mistake for presidents to assume they can change public opinion. There is nothing in the historical record to support such a belief, and there are long-term forces that work against presidential leadership of the public.9 Adopting strategies for governing that are prone to failure waste rather than create opportunities,10 so it is critically important for presidents to assess accurately the potential for obtaining public support.

Nevertheless, even experienced and successful politicians overestimate their persuasive powers. Bill Clinton’s aides reported that he exhibited an “unbelievable arrogance” regarding his ability to change public opinion and felt he could “create new political capital all the time” by going public.11 Similarly, Barack Obama believed in the power of rhetoric to rally the public on behalf of policy change. As he proclaimed while running for president in 2008,

Don’t tell me words don’t matter. “I have a dream”—just words. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal”—just words. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”—just words, just speeches. It’s true that speeches don’t solve all problems, but what is also true is that if we can’t inspire our country to believe again, then it doesn’t matter how many policies and plans we have, and that is why I’m running for president of the United States of America, . . . because the American people want to believe in change again. Don’t tell me words don’t matter!12

It is not surprising that the president dismissed the advice of his top assistants and pursued health care reform in his first year, confident that he could win the public’s support.13

Donald Trump wasted no time in conducting a permanent campaign for public support. Two days before his inauguration, he announced his reelection campaign slogan (“Keep America Great”). Two days later, on the day of his inauguration, Trump filed for reelection with the Federal Election Commission. Less than a month later, on February 18, 2017, he held the first of what were to be dozens of political rallies around the country.

The president’s own staff may also buy into the myth of presidential persuasiveness. One White House aide recalled how a few of his colleagues considered highlighting some pages of Robert Caro’s book about Lyndon Johnson as Senate majority leader and leaving it on Obama’s desk. “Sometimes a president just needs to knock heads,” the aide declared. As he saw it, Johnson “twisted their arm, they had no choice—he was going [to] defund them, ruin ’em, support their opponent . . . and the deal was cut.”14 The absence of evidence for this misremembered history15 seemed to be irrelevant.

Challenging the Conventional Wisdom

Writers have long debated the “great man” interpretation of history. The two sides of this issue assumed their best-known forms in the nineteenth century. In Heroes and Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, published in 1841, Thomas Carlyle argued that great men alone were responsible for the direction of history. To Carlyle, the environment of the hero was generally malleable and thus receptive to leadership.

Adopting a polar perspective, various schools of social determinists, including the Spencerians, Hegelians, and Marxists, viewed history as an inexorable and unidirectional march, with change occurring only when the culture was ripe for it. They concluded that great men could not have acted differently from the way they did. Leo Tolstoy’s portrayal of Napoleon in War and Peace is perhaps the most memorable depiction of this interpretation.

It is common to maintain that it makes a difference who the president is. For exa...