Presidents and Political Thought

Conclusion: Dear Mr. President

Conclusion Dear Mr. President I beseech you Gentlemen, are not we the Writers of Politics somwhat a ridiculous sort of People? Is it not a fine piece of Folly for private men sitting in their Cabinets to rack their brains about Models of Government? Certainly our Labors make a very pleasant recreation for those great Personages, who, sitting at the Helm of Affairs, have by their large Experience not only acquir’d the perfect Art of Ruling, but have attain’d also to the comprehension of the Nature and Foundation of Government. —Matthew Wren, Considerations on Mr. Harrington’s . . . ”Commonwealth of Oceana” (1657) To say that a man may not write of Government except that he be a Magistrat, is as absurd as to say, that a man may not make a Sea-chart unless he be a Pilot. It is known that Christopher Columbus made a Chart in his Cabinet, that found out the Indys. The Magistrat that was good at his steerage never took it ill of him that brought him a Chart. —James Harrington, reply to Wren As evidenced by Wren and Harrington’s exchange, we have been arguing about whether political theory is of any real value for centuries. Unfortunately, this argument has not often progressed much beyond the blanket accusation that theorists (or professors) have little or no realworld experience and therefore cannot offer valuable suggestions, and the equally weak counterargument that those who have studied something systematically have greater expertise and therefore offer more valuable advice than those who have not. This book attempts to move this argument to a more realistic and nuanced understanding of the relationship between political theory and political practice by looking at real ev180 181 Conclusion idence in the cases of six presidents who possessed an outlook derived from political theory. A brief recapitulation is in order. There is a latent but important dispute revolving around the value and usefulness of presidents’ having an acquaintance with political theory. James Bryce believed that someone with this kind of knowledge might be able to govern in a way which transcends doling out patronage and satisfying group interests, even though in the presidency’s late nineteenth-century incarnation he was by no means optimistic that such a person could gain the office. Kenneth Thompson articulates a similar point: we rely on presidents to offer a coherent public philosophy; without a theoretical understanding of politics, a president is unlikely to do this well. Other scholars disagree. Richard Neustadt stresses that the presidency is “not a scholar’s job.” Once someone becomes president , what we most often associate with political theory, ideal scenarios and long-range plans, gives way to strategic bargaining and the need to pragmatically “ride events.” Being savvy at these latter two is far more important than possessing a theoretically inspired plan. Daniel J. Boorstin went significantly further than Neustadt, suggesting that by its very nature, political theory tends to become a dangerous obsession. He believed that politicians espousing a theory of government should be scrupulously avoided. The cursory look at presidents in Chapter 1 indicates that a healthy percentage of them have had some acquaintance with political theory. An in-depth examination of such figures promised to grant insight into how theory and practice interact in the hands of a president and to help sort out these various claims. Thus we have become acquainted with six presidents along three dimensions related to political theory: how the individual approached political theory—including his attitudes about its value, what he read in the field or knew about it, and how he sorted what was valuable in it from what was not; the ideas the individual internalized and the thinkers he admired or ones he disliked and oriented himself against; and the impact that this array of interests, disinterests, enthusiasms, and antipathies had on the subject’s presidency. We have seen that John Adams was virtually obsessed with political theory, reading it constantly throughout his adult life and believing that it possessed answers to the question of how to order politics. He placed faith in the venerable tradition of the mixed constitution, which he found to be the only manner of ordering institutions which would produce a stable government. This commitment induced a very specific response from him when he was president: Adams felt compelled to chart his own way, exerting judgments independent of the legislative branch. At a critical time in the nation’s history, Adams chose to keep the nation out...