Does the revolution in presidential studies mean "off with the president's head"?

Terry Moe has written an engaging, often compelling, and assuredly provocative essay on what he calls the "revolution" in presidential studies (Moe 2009). It is a powerful piece that will surely find its way onto the reading lists of graduate seminars on the presidency. Certainly, it will appear on mine.

Moe's article develops a thoroughgoing assessment of the long march to respectability for the presidency subfield as he thinks of it. This article also represents an intriguing evolution in Moe's intellectual journey from an exclusively rational choice institutional perspective on how to study the presidency to a discerning engagement with a broader set of theoretical streams. Each of these streams--rational choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and the cognitive science of decision making--may help us solve different sets of empirical problems relating to the presidency. The cognitive science aspects especially help us unravel elements of decision making that are relevant to all presidents and all organizational leaders. They may also help us understand the limits of attentiveness, cracks in organizational communications, and other aspects of the world of imperfect knowledge confronting decision makers. Moe's essay reflects an impressive familiarity with a wide range of work emanating from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. I think this is another one of those Terry Moe pieces that we will find ourselves discussing for some time to come.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that Moe has made huge contributions to our thinking about the presidency, both directly in his own work and indirectly through the outstanding contributions of a set of superb former graduate students who worked with him and whom he cites in his essay. They are the intellectual "sons" and "daughters" of Terry Moe and have gone on to develop illustrious careers of their own.

By happenstance, I have had the opportunity to see the progression and elaboration of ideas in this manuscript over successive drafts. When I read some earlier versions, I was inclined to direct my commentary to theoretical issues that Moe has now addressed in his typically lucid style. Moreover, his assessment of these alternative theoretical streams or bodies of work--historical institutionalism and the psychology of choice--is, in my judgment, spot-on. Moe's essay deserves at least 2.8 cheers.

There is, however, a matter that he and I are apt to continue to disagree about, and that is the role of individual leaders. This is a focus that Moe tends to heavily discount or perhaps disparage. This should hardly come as a surprise to anyone who is familiar with Moe's work or his efforts over the years to set presidential studies on a more theoretical course. I think I am not stretching matters too far to say that Moe believes that theorizing and research in presidency studies ought to proceed without presidents and that the "revolution" in presidential studies has succeeded precisely because it has. Correspondingly, although Richard Neustadt's reputation scarcely needs to be defended by me, Moe's long-standing critique of Neustadt on presidential behavior is, I think, misplaced. These differences reflect conversations, panel discussions, conference repartee, and the like that have been going on between us for more than two decades. Although I doubt that we are apt to change one another's minds, the fact is that we share quite a few critical assumptions about how to peel away the hard shell of presidential studies. We apparently differ as to whether or not we get to the spongier and softer stuff inside. I cannot speak for Terry on this, but it is possible that he thinks we can forgo getting deeply inside the shell, if I may use that metaphor. I think that depends on what we want to find out. That certainly should be driven by theory, but it also may be driven by substantive importance or by a problem.

I sympathize with Moe's view that a focus on people is apt to go nowhere if we begin with it. People are the residue left over from what it is we can explain in more coherent theoretical ways. Psychologists and biologists often use the language of "individual differences" when they have no theoretically coherent explanation of why some seemingly like individuals, be they mice or men, respond differently to similar treatments or stimuli. The question is whether the residual variance is important at all. For most students of political leadership, we get to the individual only after we have gone through everything else. I would argue that this was Neustadt's premise when the iconic Presidential Power (1960) was first published. I am sure that Moe disagrees with that, and I doubt that there is any definitive way of settling this argument. Nevertheless, Neustadt begins Presidential Power with the contention that because the system denies presidents straightforward levers of power, a president had better be politically adept if he (or she) is to figure out the levers and tactics that might enhance his (or her) capabilities.

True enough, as Moe says, the insights that Neustadt gleans about the levers of power derive from no systematic theory at all. Neustadt uses observations, some of which are the product of his own firsthand perceptions of how power was exercised or frustrated. I agree fully with Moe that while there is no specific theory here--and, to be sure, Neustadt intended none--there is an effort to depart from the arid institutionalism of its day. Neustadt told us that his book was not about powers but about power. Moreover, his intent was not to build a theory for political scientists but to provide advice to a real-world occupant of the White House and, indirectly, to those who help choose new presidents. Neustadt was a fox, not a hedgehog--to use Sir Isaiah Berlin's metaphor (derived from Tolstoy) to distinguish between those who see complexity in their environment (the foxes) and those who see the big and overarching picture (the hedgehogs). He was interested in the particulars and the nuances. That, to my mind, is no criticism at all once it is placed in an institutional context--a context that Neustadt hammers home as the source of the president's power problem.

Taking him for what I believe he intended, Presidential Power remains a brilliant, if sometimes flawed, book. People, he claimed, are not just marginal elements in the successes or failures of leadership. The claim, of course, is not easily testable because it is often argued in the form of counterfactuals. We know what X did; we can only speculate as to what Y might have done. Nor, as I previously pointed out (Rockman 1984), is it at all self-evident where the politically gifted are to be found. Fred Greenstein (1994) made the point even more directly in his book depicting Dwight D. Eisenhower as an astute politician rather than the political oaf he resembles in Neustadt's characterization. Neustadt concludes his book by noting that, more likely than not, the search for the politically adept would have to focus on a small subset of the class of professional politicians. In fact, the search may have to be both more expansive and random than that. While the needle may still be tiny, the haystack is larger. Psychology (the individual) is likely to provide more clues than recruitment pools predicated on professional experiences. Neustadt thought that the adept individuals would most likely be found within the recruitment pool of professional politicians. Would that there were solid evidence of that.

Political astuteness, incidentally, is not just a matter of getting your way, as I think Neustadt meant it; it is figuring out the long run, not painting yourself into a corner, and working to keep your options open. It was not confidence that Neustadt was trying to instill in presidents; it was skepticism. Confidence can lead a president into being ambushed by reality. The second Bush presidency was a prime example of this. Skepticism about what others want and about the likelihood that if anything can go awry, it will, leads a president to look at what is at stake for him (or her). Judicious assessment of the possibilities likely leads to better decisions, and optimizing information likely reduces the prospect that someone else's "best case" scenario may become the president's "worst case" reality.

Presidential Power was not a theory of the presidency. It was a response to a problem, and thus was problem driven rather than theory driven. If one goes back to the era in which Neustadt wrote Presidential Power, very little of what we think of today as theory had actually made its way into political science. There were theoretical frameworks such as systems theory and communications theory but precious little theory, as Moe articulates that. Some middle-level theories did develop in political science, for example, pluralism stemming especially from Robert Dahl's analytic work A Preface to Democratic Theory (1963) and his empirical work Who Governs? (1961). And there were theories that drew from social and cognitive psychology that informed the studies of voting of Angus Campbell, Philip Converse, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes (1960, 1967). Some of that quartet also drew on probability theory and spatial theory, as well as the sociology of communication and the role of institutions, in producing more or less decisive political outcomes. I think it would be fair to say, however, that none of these monumental empirical studies was driven purely by deductive or axiomatic theorizing other than the borrowing of Downsian spatial theory (1957) to demonstrate its limited empirical applicability. Only William Riker and Herbert Simon, as members of that same generational cohort, might be said to have been theory driven in the fundamental sense that I think Moe means it, and Simon was certainly skeptical of the sort of assumption-heavy axiomatic theorizing reflected in homos economicus. Neustadt was problem driven, praxis oriented, and, not surprisingly, essentially focused on knowing what could affect the wisdom of choices that leaders have to make. Presidential Power was not the only volume in which that orientation was at work. His book with Ernest May (1986), for example, was an effort to apply the lessons of history to the avoidance of policy traps. For better or worse--and Moe, no doubt, believes for the worse--praxis continues to be an orientation that influences students of the presidency and undoubtedly also students of public administration, the latter of which Moe wrote about critically in his notable 1985 essay on presidential politicization.

Although Neustadt shunned theory as such, his ideas could be made testable by scholars of a more scientific bent. George Edwards (e.g., 1980, 1989, 1990, 2003) and others (e.g., Bond and Fleisher 1990) have tested Neustadt's ideas about skill and prestige translating into leverage with other actors. In this, Neustadt's ideas turned out to be wrong and insufficiently specified. We know from the work of empirical scientists that public approval (prestige) by itself does little to advance a president's agenda and that the effects of approval are most keenly felt--where they are at all--among a president's support base. We know now, too, that a president's purported skills at schmoozing, twisting arms, and congressional lobbying add virtually nothing to getting what he (or she) wants from Congress. That was a lot more than we knew prior to the publication of Presidential Power. Neustadt gave us the ideas to work with, and a newer (and now older) generation of political scientists, reared on Neustadt but armed with the tools of scientific inquiry, could put some of his propositions to an empirical test. That the empirical tests demonstrate that several of these propositions are wrong comes with the territory. That is how science progresses. But the reality is that there was almost nothing of a propositional nature prior to Neustadt.

As well, some of Neustadt's examples are also misplaced. From an organizational standpoint, Neustadt's story of Eisenhower's lack of decisiveness in getting his treasury secretary, George Humphrey, on board with the administration's budget plans or making an example of Humphrey by dismissing him highlights the wrong lesson. Humphrey was obviously not speaking alone. He had a good bit of support from the congressional wing of his party for a more austere budget than the administration recommended. Neustadt portrays Eisenhower as indecisive and incompetent at protecting his stakes by defending both his budget and Humphrey's criticism of it. Eisenhower had to contend with the Democrats' criticism of too little spending and the congressional Republicans' criticism of too much. As matters played out, Humphrey eventually left his post in less than a year's time, and Eisenhower saw no reason to heighten tensions over this controversy. Why make a bigger fuss when the objective is to reduce the fuss? Humphrey was gone after a decent interval without bloodletting. The contrast should be noted with Richard M. Nixon's firing of Waiter Hickel, his first interior secretary, after Hickel publicly protested about never meeting alone with the president. All Nixon truly achieved, in the short run at least, was more adverse publicity. Nixon may have been the more political of the two presidents, but Eisenhower probably was the more politically adept.

Moe's fundamental criticism of Neustadt and of those of us who found value in his book is that, objectively, it set presidency scholars off in the wrong direction in pursuit of the personal, the idiosyncratic, and the complex when the objectives should have been on making the long story short by pursuing the "fundamentals." Of course, the "fundamentals" may change as they run into problems they are unable to resolve. That is, in part, also the message of Moe's current essay. Nevertheless, in order to get anywhere, from Moe's perspective, the presidency needs to be depersonalized. Presidents need to be detached from the presidency. As I have indicated, I accept this notion--up to a point. Obviously, we need to know the forces that would constrain any president (and that conceivably would lead them to try to find ways to overcome those constraints), as well as the cognitive regularities that would help us understand how presidents (as would any person) assess opportunities and risks in decision making and frame incoming information. Such regularities certainly must be our starting point. Will they, in turn, be sufficient? That depends on what we want to find out.

Surely, structures and rules set limits. Political outcomes, such as elections, also set limits and, to a lesser degree, provide opportunities. In market transactions, a plethora of rules and restrictions are likely to lead either to black markets or loophole searching. When confronted with restrictions on their discretion, presidents look for the loopholes. It is important to understand what the incentives are, and that is the underlying basis of structural choice. But the incentives may play out differently for presidents with different agendas and strategic situations. Presidents of different parties, for example, tend to face different strategic situations because their agendas tend to differ, at least initially. They also tend to organize their presidencies differently at the outset. One party's presidents tend to focus on control and discipline; the other on an active flow of ideas, producing potentially less coherence and discipline. The reason mainly has to do with the parties having quite different agendas and interests in public policy. One typically wants to do less, while the other typically wants to do more (Rockman 1993).

The debate as to the extent to which leaders are incarcerated by nonmanipulables or are able to see and take advantage of opportunities is an old one, even if the language with which it is being carried out is different. In a well-aged but still superb summary of these streams of theory, published more than 40 years ago, Donald Searing (1969) divided theories of elites into ones that were organic and those that were mechanistic. Organic theories emphasized the deep structure of forces that determined elite behavior. Marxist theory fit that pattern, but so, too, did classical theories of elites set forth by Mosca, Pareto, and Michels. Alternatively, mechanistic theories provided some play for voluntaristic behavior, strategic manipulation, and leadership. Pluralism, as Dahl explained it in Who Governs? allowed for leadership. The initiatives that occurred in New Haven, according to Dahl, mainly were the product of the mayor's persistence rather than some evident pent-up demand. Alternatively, when leadership swings do bring about change, as Stephen Skowronek (2008) has pointed out, it may be principally because the leaders are the products of deeper currents in the political system rather than their being attributable to the specific skill sets of the individuals brought to power by these currents. The arguments over how much is predetermined and how much remains open to manipulation continues.

Another well-aged body of work by Fred Greenstein (1969) notes upon reviewing the research literature underlying the interplay of personality and politics that the more a person's role is structured, the less of an opportunity there is for individual characteristics to come to the fore, and vice versa. Thus, one can infer that where presidents need the help of others, such as congressional support, their personal skills or temperaments matter little. The Lyndon B. Johnson and Franklin D. Roosevelt mythologies of congressional mastery were the product of extraordinary majorities that had limited longevity. Jimmy Carter's difficulties with Congress certainly were not eased by his lack of camaraderie with its members, but they probably were not appreciably worsened by it either. In all likelihood, these problems had a lot to do with the complexity of Carter's proposed legislative agenda, the interests antagonistic to it, and his being out of step with his party's traditional labor and social welfare interests.

Nevertheless, even here, presidents have choices to make--as do other politicians. Do they try to build oversized coalitions and induce buy-in through compromises on controversial legislation? Or do they seek a minimum winning coalition strategy to preserve the essentials or the purity of their ideas? Or will they govern by veto? Or, alternatively, will they employ executive-only strategies? It is hardly clear what one might do without knowing the political circumstances. They obviously shape the choices. Does the president have majorities in his (or her) favor? How big are they? What are the interchamber differences? A president without majorities more likely will have to use the veto chip to help shape legislation. Or, plausibly, as George W. Bush did, use signing statements to avoid vetoes but also avoid legislative oversight. The structural institutional literature that Moe cites certainly defines the strategic conditions, limits, and opportunities that inform presidential choices.

Individual variability, however, remains relevant. Despite the fact that George W. Bush had working majorities in Congress for all but his last two years, and despite the fact that all presidents have resorted to unilateralism, Bush did so to an unparalleled degree (Shane 2009). Several administration officials in the Justice Department warned the White House against doing through the executive that which they could accomplish through legislative process (Goldsmith 2007). Their advice was spurned and the careers of those advisors cut short. We can only speculate as to why, and this is not the place to engage in that. My point is that even though the logic of the president's strategic situation may be clear, it may not be consistent with the logic the president is carrying in his head (or, plausibly in this case, the vice president). Drawing from cultural anthropology, Fred Greenstein comments that "[e]very human being is in certain ways like all other human beings, in certain ways more like some human beings than others, and in certain ways unique" (1992, 119). I suspect that Moe would find extending beyond the first of these conditions to be unworthy of the hunt.

There are instances in which presidents may take the advice of others and consult with others but ultimately bear the burden of making the decisions that count. In fact, the situations in which the president is the "decider" are typically matters of life and death. They are less structured than the conditions of mutual dependency that a president has with Congress. Given the constraints that otherwise govern a president's legislative agenda, here is where a president earns his (or her) spurs. How carefully does a president think about options? How open is a president to serious debate among his (or her) advisors? How likely is it that a president will think about what can go wrong and either avoid it or prepare for it? Because a president's legislative agenda can be regarded as iffy at best, it is these very limited but vitally important situations in which a president's intellect, wisdom, and temperament can make all the difference in the world. In other words, where structural constraints are limited, there is greater play for personal characteristics to influence outcomes.

Unfortunately, there is no theory that we can presently point to that helps us deal with individual differences of this nature. But it did not take a theory to observe the differences between George Bush the former and George Bush the latter. One was prudent, and the other, to be charitable, less so. One understood the limits of power, while the other tended to see the world as his oyster. Could we have seen it coming? I think we could see the characteristics of the first George Bush based on his experiences and diplomatic engagements. It was probably less plausible that we could have detected the leadership theory of the younger George Bush and the confidence he placed in his judgments, which leaned toward taking the bold stroke. His resume was thin, and he left little on the public record. Observation rather than theory will be our best bet as to how any given president is apt to pan out in the most singularly important aspects of the presidency. It may well be that our best sources for observation and clues as to future behavior will come from the journalists who covered the prior beat of the particular president, as Lou Cannon (1982) had done for Reagan. I do not pretend that this is theoretical; I do claim that it is vitally critical to understanding the most important aspects of the presidency. We are now well past the hard shell and to the squishy but vital stuff inside.

There are circumstances in which the president tends to be the exclusive decider, or at least the most critical one, and in which his (or her) interaction with others comes on his (or her) terms. These occasions just happen to be the main reasons we need a president, because this is where it counts. We have come to know more about crisis situations: fewer actors are involved, and interactions tend to have a very high density function around a core actor who just happens to be the president (Link 2000). We also know that when presidents tip their hand at the outset, the incentive for an advisor to be an outlier is exceedingly low. Thus, we do need to know more about how presidents act and, above all, think in these situations. Admittedly, theories of personality have gotten us nowhere because they tend to be overdrawn, overly simple, frequently circular, and permanently fixed. We need to be more focused, first, in understanding the organizational and communication logics of crisis situations; second, in thinking about the uniformities that influence choices; third, in thinking about the historically conditioned patterns of thought influencing responses; and finally, in considering what it is that the decision makers, preeminently the president, bring to the table. Moe emphasizes that the second and third conditions are likely to be essential components of gaining a stronger theoretical grasp. I infer that he would accept the first condition as a plausible basis for theory. I am pretty sure that he would reject the fourth. Ironically, no one has mined this condition better than Neustadt.

Perhaps this is too simple. Or perhaps too speculative. But Neustadt understood that a president had to guard his (or her) stakes. It is a recipe for prudence and care, not for recklessness.

Yes, people do have different styles and interests. Does it matter? In the context of other things, it can matter a lot. Some "deciders" like to have all the options played out in front of them; others want to cut to the quick as they see it--usually because they see it with such certainty. Does this give us a hint as to temperament? Analytic capability? Sophistication and complexity as to how things might develop? A president--like all of us--needs to guard against his (or her) priors leading to unwarranted conclusions. Neustadt, I believe, thought it was essential for a president to ferret out information--indeed, to thirst for it--and to be questioning of others' projects lest he (or she) inadvertently become the agent of someone else's agenda. Power, as Neustadt rightly understood, is not simply the ability to command, but the ability to understand what is at stake and how to guard one's options.

In sum, people matter more when other things matter less. To understand the constraints and opportunities for action, the politics of structural choice is an excellent place to begin. As well, looking for uniformities in making choices, as though individuals do not matter, is entirely appropriate to the theoretical enterprise. I concur with Terry Moe in his assessment of this, although I might be more inclined to think that the progress we have made is more evolutionary than revolutionary, and that means that the old pieces need to be fit into the evolved understandings and findings. From that vantage point, Neustadt's Presidential Power was a necessary stepping stone to the empirical work that followed and to the theoretical work that examined the strategic relations between presidents and their potential allies and adversaries.

My final observation is simply that the president is still important to the presidency. But that depends on the conditions and what it is precisely that we are trying to explain. Theoretical generalizations are derived from invariances that lead us to find the driving force for common outcomes or behaviors. But variability is also important in science. Individual variability is the last thing we should look at, but it may not be the least thing, despite the possibility that we may never have much of a theoretical hook into this aspect of the presidency.

References

Bond, Jon R., and Richard Fleisher. 1990. The President in the Legislative Arena. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Campbell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley.

--. 1967. Elections and the Political Order. New York: Wiley.

Cannon, Lou. 1982. Reagan. New York: Putnam.

Dahl, Robert A. 1961. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

--. 1963 [1956]. A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Edwards, George C., III. 1980. Presidential Influence in Congress. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.

--. 1989. At the Margins: Presidential Leadership of Congress. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

--. 1990. Presidential Approval. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

--. 2003. On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Goldsmith, Jack. 2007. The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration. New York: W. W. Norton.

Greenstein, Fred I. 1969. Personality and Politics: Problems of Evidence. Inference, and Conceptualization. Chicago: Markham.

--. 1992. "Can Personality and Politics Be Studied Systematically?" Political Psychology 13 (March): 105-28.

--. 1994 [1982]. The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Link, Michael W. 2000. "The Presidential Kaleidoscope: Advisory Networks in Action." In Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century, eds. Robert Y. Shapiro, Martha Joynt Kumar, and Lawrence R. Jacobs. New York: Columbia University Press.

Moe, Terry M. 1985. "The Politicized Presidency." In The New Direction in American Politics, eds. John E. Chubb and Paul E. Peterson. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

--. 2009. "The Revolution in Presidential Studies." Presidential Studies Quarterly 39 (December): 702-25.

Neustadt, Richard E. 1960. Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York: Macmillan.

Neustadt, Richard E., and Ernest R. May. 1986. Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers. New York: Free Press.

Rockman, Bert A. 1984. The Leadership Question: The Presidency and the American System. New York: Praeger.

--. 1993. "Organizing the White House: On a (West) Wing and a Prayer." Journal of Managerial Issues 5 (Winter): 453-64.

Searing, Donald D. 1969. "Models and Images of Man and Society in Leadership Theory." Journal of Politics 31 (February): 3-31.

Shane, Peter. 2009. Madison's Nightmare: How Executive Power Threatens American Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Skowronek, Stephen. 2008. Political Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

BERT A. ROCKMAN

Purdue University

(1.) When I discuss the effects of popularity in my courses on the presidency, I always ask students what they would recommend to a president who wanted a bump in approval ratings. Every possible alternative-launch a new policy initiative, make an appearance before an adoring crowd, give a major speech, get a big bill through Congress, go on a foreign trip, start a war--suffers from the significant problem that it almost never works or is absurd, and nobody knows what distinguishes the rare successful effort from the complete failures.

(2.) In the same volume, Gary King offered his own critique, holding that the methods of presidency research were as undeveloped as the theory: "Although probably more has been written about the presidency than all other areas of American politics combined, most work in the field is not yet to the point where concepts are to be measured and theories tested systematically" (1993, 387).

(3.) My dog-eared, marked-up, highlighted, and sticky-note-stuffed copy is by far the most frequently referenced book in my library.

Bert A. Rockman is a professor and head of the Department of Political Science at Purdue University. He is author of The Leadership Question and co-author of Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies and In the Web of Politics.