Presidential Power and White House Lobbying

Abstract

It seems almost a law that severe political crises more often overcome than revive political institutions. So when Gerald Ford, replacing Richard Nixon, declared that he wanted a good marriage rather than a honeymoon with Congress, cynics doubted and realists wondered whether he could restore some semblance of order amid the political wreckage of Watergate. The Watergate affair was essentially a crisis of power and the abuse of power. As such, it pointed up once again the wisdom of the bedrock assumption of American government: too much power in one place is dangerous. But the long-term question from the point of view of political institutions was how Congress and the presidency would renegotiate the balance of power between them, and how long this renegotiated settlement would last when confronted by new political realities, such as the election of a Democrat to the presidency. In a decentralized system of checks and balances any theory of presidential power must perforce be dynamic. A large part of American political history could be written from the perspective of how national leaders and institutions have sought, largely without permanent success, to concentrate power in one pair of hands. Thus it is hardly surprising that students of the American presidency have developed two contrasting models of presidential power. The first, which we may call the problematic model, reflects periods of presidential weakness. The second, which we may call the supremacy model, applies in times of presidential ascendancy. The problematic model, best developed in the work of Richard E. Neustadt, holds that presidential power is essentially the power to persuade, and persuasion is essentially a bargaining process between the president and other power-