The President and His Inner Circle

Leadership Style and the Advisory Process in Foreign Policy Making

Thomas Preston

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9780231506106
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Few would argue that presidential policies and performance would have been the same whether John F. Kennedy or Richard Nixon became president in 1960, or if Jimmy Carter instead of Ronald Reagan had won the White House in 1980. Indeed, in recent elections, the character, prior policy experience, or personalities of candidates have played an increasing role in our assessments of their "fit" for the Oval Office. Further, these same characteristics are often used to explain an administration's success or failure in policy making. Obviously, who the president is—and what he is like—matters.

This book, a new approach to the study of the personal presidency, links the characteristics of six modern American presidents—their personalities and their prior policy-making experience—to their leadership styles, advisory arrangements, and decision making in the White House. Thomas Preston uses M. G. Hermann's Personality Assessment-at-a-Distance (PAD) profiling technique, as well as exhaustive archival research and interviews with former advisors, to develop a leadership style typology. He then compares his model's expectations against the actual policy record of six past presidents, using foreign policy episodes: Korea (1950) for Truman, Dien Bien Phu (1954) for Eisenhower, Cuba (1962) for Kennedy, Vietnam (1967-68) for Johnson, the Gulf War (1990-91) for Bush, and North Korea/Haiti/Bosnia (1994-95) for Clinton.

1. Presidential Personality and Leadership Style

“FOLLOW THE LEADER”

The “Enabler” of Presidential Power

Richard Neustadt observed that due to the inherent limitations on their institutional powers, presidents are forced to rely upon their interpersonal skills and arts of persuasion to carry out their policies. Although this description of presidential power appears to place individual presidents squarely into an institutional context that constrains most of their freedom of action, Neustadt’s depiction of presidential power emphasizes the fundamental importance of the personal presidency as well. Neustadt views the personal characteristics (or qualities) of presidents as critical to successful presidential leadership—and to the ability of presidents to obtain the kind of “personal influence of an effective sort on governmental action,” which he defines as presidential power.¹ However, before they can persuade, presidents must formulate and develop their policies, gather and analyze immense amounts of information, adapt their strategies and policies to a rapidly changing political environment, and surround themselves with advisers and advisory systems capable of dealing with all of these difficult tasks effectively. Across all of these areas, the individual characteristics of presidents play a critical role.

For Neustadt, the personal qualities necessary for successful presidents were those traits found in “experienced politicians of extraordinary temperament”—ones possessing political expertise, unpretentious self-confidence in their abilities, and who are at ease with their roles and enjoy the job.² Noting that the presidency “is not a place for amateurs,” Neustadt points to the importance of prior policy experience or expertise.³ Further, Neustadt emphasized the need for presidents to be active information-gatherers and to seek out multiple sources and differing perspectives on policy problems. This involves leaders cultivating enhanced “sensitivity” to the policy environment through both “sensitivity to processes” (who does what and how in the political environment) and “sensitivity to substance” (the details and specifics of policy).⁴ The clear message from Neustadt’s work is that the personal qualities of leaders play a significant role in successful (or unsuccessful) presidential leadership—and that presidents who fail to effectively utilize their advisory systems, or who lack appropriate sensitivity to the policy context, are unlikely to develop the foundations of power necessary to persuade anyone.

This chapter presents a new typology of presidential leadership style that builds upon Neustadt’s emphasis upon the importance of the personal qualities (or temperament) of presidents to policy making, an area he left largely unexplored. First, the relevant existing literature on leadership and personality is briefly reviewed. Next, a brief discussion of the research approach taken here is offered, followed by a presentation of the presidential leadership style framework itself. Finally, the application of this framework (linking the personal characteristics of presidents to their subsequent leadership styles in office) is illustrated in subsequent chapters through examination of the foreign policy decision making and leadership styles of a number of modern American presidents (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Bush, and Clinton). Using a combination of archival, interview, and secondary source materials, these case studies clearly demonstrate the value of the theoretical framework and, more importantly, the utility of improving our understanding of the personal qualities of presidents.

Although there has been much debate over the merits of “president-centered” vs. “presidency-centered” research, I do not seek to fit into either camp directly, but to bridge the gap between them.⁵ I take a “contingency-based” approach that accepts both president- and presidency-centered explanations (as Neustadt does implicitly in his definition of presidential power) and seek to establish criteria for determining when one type of explanation would be more appropriate than another. As Hargrove observes, the issue for presidential scholars should not be whether individuals make a difference, but under what conditions they make a difference.⁶ In this sense, the framework presented here depicts the personality characteristics and styles of presidents as critical “enablers” of presidential power in the Neustadt-sense—that serve either to add or detract from the ability of presidents to perceive their policy environments and to navigate the treacherous shoals of the policy process.

The Political Psychology of Presidents, Leadership Style, and Individual Differences

Presidential Leadership

Research on the impact of presidential personality or leadership style upon advisory arrangements and decision making in the White House has taken on many forms. Some scholars have focused upon aspects of the individual personalities of presidents to understand their behavior in the White House.⁷ Such treatments of the presidential personality range from early psychoanalytic studies exploring the “character” or psychological development of individual leaders⁸ to more recent, nonpsychoanalytic techniques of content analysis that measure specific traits or characteristics of leaders derived from modern social psychological research to explain their behavior.⁹ Others studies have developed portraits of presidential style through the use of archival evidence and interviews that combine the personal qualities and backgrounds of leaders into distinctive styles in office.¹⁰ Still other research, focusing more upon the differing organizational preferences of presidents, has analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of different kinds of organizational arrangements.¹¹ A common thread connecting these works, however, is the notion that what individual presidents are like matters and that their personal qualities can significantly affect decision making and policy.

Individual Differences and Leadership

A wealth of research also exists regarding the individual characteristics (or traits) of leaders and how these shape (both within and outside of groups) their styles of decision making, interpersonal interaction, information processing, and management in office.¹² For example, among the psychological studies of the characteristics of leaders are ones examining personal needs for power,¹³ personal needs for affiliation,¹⁴ conceptual complexity,¹⁵ locus of control,¹⁶ achievement or task/interpersonal emphasis,¹⁷ and self-confidence.¹⁸ My recent archival research found that three individual characteristics in particular—need for power, complexity, and prior policy experience—played a critical role in the shaping presidential leadership style.¹⁹ The framework presented in this chapter builds upon these findings.

Power

The need for power (or dominance) is a personality characteristic which has been extensively studied and linked to specific types of behavior and interactional styles with others.²⁰ Specifically, one would expect leaders with progressively higher psychological needs for power to be increasingly dominant and assertive in their leadership styles in office and to assert greater control over subordinates and policy decisions. For example, Fodor and Smith found that leaders high in need for power were more associated with the suppression of open decision making and discussion within groups than were low power leaders.²¹ Similarly, a number of studies have found high power leaders requiring a far greater degree of personal control than do low power leaders over the policy process and the actions of subordinates.²² In terms of interpersonal relationships, studies have also found that leaders high in the need for power exhibit more controlling, domineering behavior toward subordinates than do low power leaders.²³

Further, a study examining the characteristics and leadership styles of past U.S. presidents in cases of foreign policy decision making found that leaders high in the need for power preferred formal, hierarchical advisory system structures designed to enhance their own personal control over the policy process.²⁴ These leaders tended to centralize decision making within tight inner circles of trusted advisers and to insist upon direct personal involvement and control over policy formulation and decisions. Their policy preferences tended to dominate both the policy deliberations within advisory groups and the nature of the final policy decisions. In contrast, low power leaders preferred less hierarchical advisory system structures and required less personal control over the policy process. Their policy preferences tended not to dominate advisory group deliberations or final decisions. As a result, the input of subordinates played a far greater role in policy making. Unlike these low power leaders, high power leaders were found to possess assertive interpersonal styles in which they would actively challenge or seek to influence the positions taken by their advisers; further, these leaders were also more likely to override or ignore the conflicting or opposing policy views of subordinates.

Complexity

The psychological literature has long argued that the cognitive complexity of decision makers is another individual characteristic which has a significant impact upon the nature of decision making, style of leadership, assessment of risk, and character of general information processing within decision groups.²⁵ For example, Vertzberger, among others, has noted that as the cognitive complexity of individual decision makers increases, they become more capable of dealing with complex decision environments and information that demand new or subtle distinctions.²⁶ When making decisions, complex individuals tend to have greater cognitive need for information, are more attentive to incoming information, prefer systematic over heuristic processing, and deal with any overload of information better than their less complex counterparts.²⁷ In terms of interactions with advisers and the acceptance of critical feedback, several studies have shown that complex individuals are far more interested in receiving negative feedback from others—and are more likely to incorporate it into their own decision making—than are those who are less complex.²⁸

Complexity has also been linked by scholars to how attentive or sensitive leaders are to information from (or nuances within) their surrounding political or policy environments.²⁹ Hermann notes that the more sensitive the individual is to information from the decision environment, the more receptive the leader is to information regarding the views of colleagues or constituents, the views of outside actors, and the value of alternative viewpoints and discrepant information.³⁰ In contrast, leaders with a low sensitivity to contextual information will be less receptive to information from the outside environment, will operate from a previously established and strongly held set of beliefs, will selectively perceive and process incoming information in order to support or bolster this prior framework, and will be unreceptive or close-minded towards alternative viewpoints and discrepant information. Vertzberger and Glad have noted that low complexity individuals tend to show symptoms of dogmatism, view and judge issues in black-and-white terms, ignore information threatening their existing closed belief systems, and have limited ability to adjust their beliefs to new information.³¹

One study found that highly complex leaders preferred more open advisory and information processing systems than did leaders lower in complexity—no doubt reflecting different needs for both information and differentiation in the policy environment.³² High complexity leaders were far more sensitive than others to the external policy context, as well as to the existence of multiple policy dimensions or perspectives on issues. During policy deliberations, they also engaged in broad information search routines that emphasized the presentation of alternative viewpoints, discrepant information, and multiple policy options by their advisers. Such leaders focused substantial discussion within their advisory groups upon future policy contingencies and the likely views or reactions of other policy actors in the environment. In addition, they were less likely to employ simplistic analogies, “black-and-white” problem representations, or stereotypical images of their opponents during policy deliberations. However, complex leaders had less decisive and more deliberative decision-making styles in office—a finding consistent with the heavy emphasis placed by such leaders upon extensive policy debate and information search within their advisory groups.

Less complex leaders—with their lower cognitive need for extensive information search and examination of multiple policy perspectives—tended to be far less sensitive to both information and the external policy environment. This reduced sensitivity to information and to context manifested itself in limited information search and in limited emphasis upon the presentation by advisers of alternative viewpoints, discrepant information, and multiple policy options. Such leaders were more likely to rely upon simplistic analogies, “black-and-white” problem representations, or stereotypical images of their opponents during their policy delib...