U.S. Presidents and the Image of the American Public Service

© Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue canadienne d’études américaines 33, no. 3, 2003 U.S. Presidents and the Image of the American Public Service James D. Slack, Mark Feeser, and JuLee A. Pallette One cultural factor that has shaped the American public service is an on-going concern about image—how the apparatus of government is viewed by citizens, elected officials, and appointed public servants .1 Answers to the “image question” typically are not very positive . The public service, especially when defined as the federal bureaucracy, is often depicted negatively in popular and academic cultures alike (Goodsell). This phenomenon is really nothing new. Public opinion polls, academic surveys, and scholarly studies conducted since the mid-twentieth century indicate a general pattern of distrust toward, and lack of confidence in, American governmental institutions.2 It seems that anti-bureaucratic (Karl) and anti-governmental (Stokes; Pfiffner) attitudes are intrinsically woven into the fabric of American political culture, the cloth from which many politicians are more than willing to cut to suit political needs. While public opinion polls and academic surveys offer some insight into the image of the American public service during the past several decades, they can never provide a comprehensive picture. What can shed additional light is an examination of historical documents that places the image of the public service within a longitudinal context . The purpose of this study is to explore this image through the views of American presidents over the past two centuries. Two general questions are asked: Have American presidents projected a positive or negative view of the public service? Have they advocated a larger or smaller role for government? Although the term “the public service” can be given sweeping parameters (Frederickson), presidents and the American public Canadian Review of American Studies 33 (2003) 232 alike seldom distinguish between it and “governmental activity.” As a result, the image of the public service is always blurred by, and intermixed with, generalized views of government and politics (Pfiffner). For the purposes of this study, we use the term “the public service” interchangeably with the term the (US) “federal government .” We select US presidents because, since they are the heads of the executive branch, their actions and non-actions (statements and nonstatements ) can influence the nature of the American public service and the way it is viewed by the citizenry. We use inaugural addresses because they are fairly consistent documents. In the past two centuries, only five of the total of forty-two presidents did not give inaugural addresses.3 Unlike other presidential documents, such as annual State of the Union addresses or issue-specific speeches, the messages conveyed in inaugural addresses also tend to be more generalized and “global” in perspective; a review of them reveals a unique picture of presidents’ thoughts on the state of society and on the role appropriate to the public service. Methodology This study utilizes a methodology called content analysis (see Appendix A). It consists of a set of procedures designed to categorize the content of documents into relevant and measurable variables (Weber). This methodology has been used in a wide variety of studies, including Frost’s work on Soviet party–military relations and Pomper’s work on American party platforms. It has also been used by Hinckley to examine how presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan presented themselves and their presidencies to the American people. In this study, we have four categories, or dependent variables: (1) projection of a positive view of government, (2) projection of a negative view of government, (3) advocacy of a larger role for government , and (4) advocacy of a lesser role for government (see Appendix B). The fifty-four inaugural addresses by all thirty-seven presidents, spanning a period from 1789 to 2001, are used in this study (see Appendix C).4 With the exception of the last two, all speeches were obtained from a compilation by Davis Newton Lott.5 While much of the analysis is descriptive in nature, political party affiliation is used as an independent variable.6 Data are statistically analysed using SPSS frequency analysis (histograms presented) and Revue canadienne d’études américaines 33 (2003) 233 Pearson’s r. Because the...