The Presidential Leadership Dilemma: Between the Constitution and a Political Party

2Presidential Mandates and theLeadership Dilemma

2 Presidential Mandates and the Leadership Dilemma William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack H. Obama Julia R. Azari The presidential mandate involves more perception than reality. Discerning the true intentions of voters or distilling a central meaning out of millions of votes almost always proves impossible.1 As a result, presidents enjoy substantial freedom to offer their own interpretations of the electoral “mandate.” Scholars have linked the effectiveness of mandate claiming to the magnitude of the president’s election victory,2 as well as to the creation of a convincing mandate narrative by political elites and news media.3 However, examination of how Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama used mandate rhetoric to promote and frame their policy agendas reveals a more complicated story. The policy success of George W. Bush in 2001 suggests that winning a majority is not the most important factor in creating a convincing mandate narrative. Obama’s experience illustrates that mandate rhetoric may sometimes be effective in the short term while later impeding the president’s ability to redefine the terms of political conflict. As presidents seek to interpret elections and use those interpretations to frame their policy agenda, they face several choices. While it 39 40 Julia R. Azari may be tempting after a victory to claim a party mandate, presidents also face pressures to remain “above the fray” of party politics. Presidential scholar Charles O. Jones describes the “ideal conditions” for claiming a presidential mandate: “publicly visible issues, a clear difference between the candidates, a substantial victory for the president and his party in Congress, and a post-election declaration of party unity.”4 Yet, once they have taken office, presidents must also represent the entire nation. Can national leadership be reconciled with the idea of a party mandate? In addition to the party question, presidents must also make decisions about the scope of the policy issues linked to the election, choosing whether to claim that they were elected to accomplish specific, narrow policy goals, or they can claim electoral mandates for broad—even vague—agendas. These frames serve to define presidential agendas and to set the political tone for the administration. Even after historic landslide elections, different presidents have taken divergent positions on this question. After the 1936 election, Franklin Roosevelt claimed in a Fireside Chat on March 9, 1937, that his efforts to change the Supreme Court served to fulfill the mandate of the election , referring to the Democratic platform as well as the “overwhelming majority” that had elected a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress.5 In contrast, after Lyndon Johnson was elected to Congress in a Democratic sweep of similar magnitude, he proclaimed the result a “mandate for unity.”6 The contours of this dilemma are different for more recent presidents, and not only because of their more modest electoral circumstances. Polarization changes the stakes of presidential politics and makes unity more elusive. At the same time, political journalist Matt Bai recently pointed out that while politicians may perceive the elections that brought them to power as “validating an ideological argument,” voters may not share elite attachments to ideological vision. Instead, voters may view politics in terms of “competent versus incompetent,” in the words of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.7 The purpose of this chapter is to explore how presidents construct electoral mandates in the aftermath of the election. I find that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama employed three distinct strategies for linking their leadership choices to their campaigns and election results. Clinton began by arguing that the election had been a mandate for unity and gradually developed a more partisan interpretation as he encountered Republican resistance to his proposals. Bush, in contrast, combined Republican priorities with a narrative about how he had been elected to exhibit strong, decisive leadership. Finally, Barack Obama embraced a 41 Presidential Mandates and the Leadership Dilemma partisan interpretation of the 2008 election, framing it as a “rejection” of Republican ideas. These narratives were not the most obvious readings of election results. In the 2008 election, Obama won the largest share of the popular vote for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, and congressional Democrats picked up seats across the nation. The challenge for interpreting the 2008 election, however, emerged in the search for a positive story about the election as an endorsement for Democratic policies, rather than as a rejection of the Bush administration...