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  • The “Bobby Problem”:Intraparty Presidential Rivalry and Factional Challenges
  • Philip Abbott (bio)

After he left office in 1968, Lyndon Johnson recounted his difficult political situation to Doris Kearns Goodwin. He mentioned Vietnam, inflation, urban unrest, and student protests, but what he claimed was most “unbearable” was something he “feared from the first day” of his presidency: “Robert Kennedy had openly announced his decision to reclaim the throne in the name of his brother. And the American people, swayed by the magic of the name, were dancing in the streets.”1 Johnson’s concerns were referred to by both his aides and by the president himself as the “Bobby problem.” One aide, in fact, contended Robert Kennedy received more attention than any other single issue in the Johnson White House.2 The animosity between LBJ and RFK had major ramifications for party unity and domestic and foreign policy. The “Bobby problem” is not an isolated phenomenon. Intraparty competition that reaches this level of intensity is a recurring feature of presidential politics in America. Several other presidents have confronted similar challenges. Although the sources and characteristics of faction differ, it is possible to identify common dynamics in these conflicts as well as strategies employed by presidents to deal with factional challengers.

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LBJ’s “Bobby problem” was a manifestation of factional competition within the Democratic Party, in this case over leadership of the same faction. While [End Page 489] party factions are a recurrent feature of all democratic political systems, the phenomenon has been particularly difficult to define. As “semi-variable” structures beneath the level of political parties, factions can be quite durable or fleeting, based on personality, ideology, clientele groups, or combinations of each. Sometimes factions can lead to party defections, new parties, or social movements.3 Factions exist in both parliamentary and presidential political systems and in different electoral structures.4 They also appear in authoritarian regimes.5 Factional activity seems to increase with modernization, although some observers contend factions can retard further development.6 Factions appear in every kind of organization: parties to legislative committees, administrative units, corporations, and churches. Despite their varied forms, factions, nevertheless, are a fundamental feature of politics. As subunits of organizations, factions have an ideological framework, organizational capabilities, and strategic objectives and can be viable for extended periods.7 These features may be more or less pronounced, hence the permeable line between factions and terms such as “clique,” “bloc,” “tendency,” or “wing.”8 Factional leaders too may regard these units as an ad hoc vehicle for immediate political objectives or permanent base.9 Their own source of authority may be ideological, charismatic, or interest based (or as often combinations of each).

Despite Publius’s attempt in the Federalist to reduce factional influence through multiplication, factional politics was a major concern in the early period of the republic. While the founders employed the terms “party” and “faction” interchangeably and in negative terms, they frequently defined both as leader-inspired.10 Washington, in his Farewell Address, admitted that factions “may now and then answer popular ends,” but focused on their negative outcomes. Factions are led by “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men” who would cast away the “very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”11

Nevertheless, before the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment, the Constitution seemed to invite Bobby problems. As factional leaders in the new republic, the rivalry between Adams and Jefferson was institutionalized by constitutional arrangements that awarded the vice-presidency to the second-highest vote getter. Although the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804 significantly reduced one source of faction, multiple access points for factional activity remained.

Sitting presidents who are challenged by critics within their own party are a common feature in national politics. Often these challengers to presidential [End Page 490] policies offer their views from the legislative branch. Even the most powerful presidents endure these attacks. Jefferson sustained severe criticism from John Taylor and John Randolph, Jackson from John C. Calhoun, Lincoln from Benjamin Wade in the House and Charles Sumner in the Senate, FDR from Carter Glass and Burton K. Wheeler. Opposition can come too from within the executive branch. Vice presidents and cabinet members have sometimes...

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