Presidential Leadership Style Research Articles

Voters' HEXACO personality traits as predictors of their presidential leadership style preferences

Previous followership research has focused on relations between voters' personality and preferences for actual politicians' personality traits, but there is a lack of research on the relations between voters' personality and preferences for ideal political leadership styles. The aim of this research was to explore – during a presidential election – the relations between voters' HEXACO personality traits and their leadership preferences based on the circumplex leadership model. In a sample of 233 voters from Serbia, we investigated preference for presidential (charismatic, avoidant, autocratic, and democratic) leadership styles using a vignettes-based measure. The results revealed that a charismatic style (high communion and high agency) was – in line with our proposed functional principle – the most preferred style. Furthermore, HEXACO Emotionality and Honesty-Humility were most consistently related to preferred presidential leadership styles. Emotionality was positively related to a preference for a charismatic and democratic style and negatively to a preference for an autocratic style. Honesty-Humility was negatively related to a preference for an avoidant and autocratic style. We propose that the results for Emotionality may be explained by the need fulfillment principle, whereas the results for the remaining traits may be explained by the similarity principle.

Analysis of relationships between presidential leadership styles and peace policies in Colombia (1982–2017).

Analysis of relationships between presidential leadership styles and peace policies in Colombia (1982–2017).

Placing Camelot: Cultivating leadership and learning in the Kennedy presidency

The concept of ‘place’ can play a powerful role in understanding how leadership is socially constructed. This article explores the geographic, symbolic and mythic uses of place in the cultivation of a distinct leadership style around the Presidency of John F. Kennedy. It focuses on the history of a social and learning event that today might be called a leadership development programme: the ‘Hickory Hill Seminars’ of 1961-4, named after and mostly held at the specific location of Robert F. Kennedy’s home. These seminars – only lightly touched on in Kennedy-era history and leadership literatures – were semi-formal occasions organized by the historian Arthur Schlesinger that brought eminent public intellectuals of the day to present their work to the assembled group of insiders. The seminars functioned as a network in action, both cultivating and projecting certain cultural formations of leadership. Bounded by the geographic places inhabited by Washington elites, the seminars formed part of the broader construction of the symbolic place of the ‘New Frontier’ and the mythic place of ‘Camelot’. The Hickory Hill seminars were one part of a broad metaphysical canvas upon which a distinct presidential leadership style and ‘legacy’ was created. Building on critical and social constructivist perspectives, we argue that geographic, symbolic and mythic notions of place can be central to the social construction of particular leadership styles and legacies, but that these creations can be deceptive, and remain always vulnerable to critique, co-optation and distortion by opponents and rivals.

Presidential leadership styles and institutional capacity for climate policy integration in the European Commission

ABSTRACT Climate policy integration (CPI) is a key strategy for implementing climate policy action, spanning policy sectors and levels of governance. As a central agenda-setting actor in the EU, we argue that understanding the institutional capacity for CPI inside the European Commission is especially important for understanding the advancement of CPI in the EU overall. We focus on the inner workings of the Commission, and we ask: what role does the leadership style of the Commission President play in advancing institutional capacity for implementing CPI? We assess the institutional capacity for CPI in the Commission during the Barroso and Juncker Presidencies, which display characteristics of bottom-up and top-down leadership styles, respectively. While we do not find that one presidential leadership style is necessarily ‘better’ than the other at enhancing institutional capacities for CPI, we highlight important differences along four key factors, namely: (1) political commitment to overarching climate objectives and to the necessity of implementing CPI; (2) recognition of functional overlaps between policy objectives and compatible beliefs for implementing CPI among policymakers; (3) an opportunity structure for innovative policy development and policy entrepreneurship; (4) and meaningful coordination and consultation mechanisms.

U.S. Presidential Leadership Styles and Media

U.S. presidential leadership styles speak to us today as we seek to understand the dynamics of the current political universe. The stances adopted by especially twentieth-century U.S. presidents point to certain norms being upheld by the nation’s chief executives. Some were more talented in exercising the rhetorical presidency, while others were more successful in achieving policy goals. These presidents operated under the technological mechanisms of their time. In the twenty-first century, new social media technologies are emerging that challenge previous orthodoxies. The presidency of Donald J. Trump differed significantly from previous presidencies. Identity politics that predated the twitter presidency shaped the Trump years. Does the Trump model represent the future of presidential communication? This essay concludes that future U.S. presidents will face new challenges as a result of the fractured social contract, a legacy of identity politics.

Confronting Rebellion in Weak States: Government Response to Military Mutiny in Benin

Abstract Military mutinies are a serious threat to peace in Africa, as they may be a catalyst for large-scale civil violence. Unlike most studies that solely focus on the causes of military revolts, this article explores both cause and government response by examining a 1992 military sedition in Benin. Relying on interviews and government archives, Codjo uncovers the sources of the revolt and compares two consecutive administrations in their management of the crisis. The main takeaway is that presidential leadership style and antecedents of elite consensus on governance rules are sometimes critical in rallying support for a lasting solution to mutinies.

Presidential Leadership Style and the Political Use of Force

A growing body of work seeks to explain the lack of clear evidence for the diversionary use of force by casting doubt on such strategies' attractiveness for policy makers: while domestic political and economic problems may provide incentives for diversion, such strategies involve political and military risks that frequently outweigh these incentives. Such theories correctly identify the objective risks involved in diversion but do not account for variation in leaders' risk‐taking propensities. We develop a “first image” theory of diversion that suggests a key psychological variable (locus of control) shapes leaders' willingness to engage in risky diversionary strategies. A statistical analysis of the American use of force, 1953–2000, finds strong support for this model. We conclude that the lack of clear evidence for diversion in general is a reflection of the contingent nature of the phenomenon and call for greater attention to how agents and structures interact to produce policy behavior.

Advancing diversity agendas on campus: examining transactional and transformational presidential leadership styles

This study draws on the experiences and insights of current college and university presidents to understand whether transactional, transformational or a combination of these leadership strategies advances an institution‐wide diversity agenda. The qualitative elite interview study demonstrates that both styles of leadership appear important and that most presidents used both approaches to reach different audiences and with different effects, but both are necessary. Certain presidents may be more successful using transactional leadership, based on their race, while other presidents may have a personal preference for transactional or transformational leadership or be in a culture that suggests one over the other at a particular point in time.

Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush: Faith, Foreign Policy, and an Evangelical Presidential Style

In this article, we argue that Presidents Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush share a distinctive approach to politics and governing: an “evangelical” style of presidential leadership. Though they differed in terms of party and ideology, we claim, using examples from their foreign policies, that the evangelical faith of Carter and Bush provided them with a particular vision of the presidency and the global role of the United States. Richard Neustadt argued that aptitude for politics is the most essential attribute for contemporary presidential success and that the evangelical approach will inevitably lead to political failure. From our analysis of the Carter and Bush approaches to foreign policy, we conclude, however, that in certain circumstances, the evangelical style can contribute to successful presidential leadership and is worthy of further serious study by presidential scholars.

Ruling with decrees: presidential decree making in Russia and Ukraine

THERE IS A GENERAL UNDERSTANDING IN THE LITERATURE on post-communist transition of the importance of presidential decree making for explaining the nature of the political process and policy-making outcomes both in Russia and Ukraine. 1 At the same time, there have been very few studies dealing specifically with this aspect of presidential activity. Remington et al. 2 and Parrish 3 analysed how presidential decree-making powers were used in Russia during the first years of democratic transition and Mishler et al. 4 discussed in great detail the patterns of use of one type of presidential decree, defined as normative decrees, during the 1991–98 period in Russia. While these studies examined only certain types of presidential decrees, this article attempts to provide a detailed overview of the total decree output across six presidential terms in Russia and Ukraine between 1991 and 2002. It examines the temporal evolution of decree-making practices over time and analyses differences between countries in the patterns of use of decree powers by the presidents. It also discusses political factors that contributed to differences in the frequency of use of decree-making powers and to variation in the substantive focus of the presidential decrees across countries and over time. It contributes to the existing literature by addressing some of the major issues raised in these studies, such as the policy scope and policy relevance of presidential decrees, the evidence for the existence of a political business cycle in decree use, and the expectation of a gradual decrease in the use of policy-related decrees over time. Expanding the scope of research on presidential decree making both thematically and temporally also allows me to draw attention to some aspects of decree authority use that have been overlooked, such as the effects of differences in presidential leadership style and the level of institutionalisation of the presidency, the increased salience of unpublished decrees in overall decree output that offsets some of the decline in numbers of policy-related decrees, the large magnitude of appointment decrees and their critical importance for maintaining huge patronage systems and securing the presidents’ ability to shape political and policy processes.

Presidential rhetoric and the strategy of going public: President Clinton and the health care reform.

Going public represents a new style of presidential leadership in which the president sells his programs directly to the American public. Several scholars have argued that presidents need to go to the public more often and make skillful use of public rhetoric to galvanize public support for their policy agenda. This article examines President Clinton's public rhetoric and his failed strategy of going public to rally support for his health care reform proposal during 1993-1994. It concludes with a discussion of factors that help explain President Clinton's failure to rally public support for the Health Security Act of 1993 and secure its passage in the Congress.

The President and His Inner Circle (review)

The introduction of Thomas Preston's book concisely sums up the questions that he is asking throughout his study. Preston asks, "Can subjective, impressionistic accounts of presidential personality and style be replaced by approaches allowing for clear and consistent measurement and comparison across presidents?" Can a model be developed for predicting presidential behavior? His answer is that a model can be developed, and in chapter 1 he does so, adding to the growing body of literature on both presidential personality and presidential leadership style.

The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Clinton. By Fred I. Greenstein. New York: Free Press, 2000. 282p. $25.00.

The overriding theme of this very insightful work from distinguished presidential scholar Fred I. Greenstein is stated in the opening pages: “The United States is said to have a government of laws and institutions rather than individuals, but as these examples remind us, it is one in which the matter of who occupies the nation's highest office can have profound repercussions” (p. 2). Greenstein's analysis of presidential leadership styles from FDR to Clinton corroborates his theme by demonstrating the extent to which the aggrandizement of the presidency since the New Deal has left the American polity at the mercy of the skills and personalities of the holders of the office. As Greenstein himself points out (p. 3) parliamentary systems, with their more collective leadership, place more partisan and institutional constraints on the head of government. In contrast, the centrality of the presidency to the American system of government since the New Deal and the extent to which the institution is driven by the individual style of respective officeholders provide a recurrent and pervasive element of instability in American national government. Yet this very instability is also perhaps the office's most useful attribute. In a system characterized largely by gridlock it provides intermittent and necessary innovation and dynamism. The presidency's' greatest shortcoming, its highly protean nature, is also, ironically, its greatest value as a political institution.

The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, Vol. 9: September 1791-February 1792

The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, Vol. 9: September 1791-February 1792. Edited by Philander D. Chase, Dorothy Twohig, et al. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000, Pp. 672. $ 62.50.) The Papers of James Madison, Secretary of State Series, Vol. 5: MayOctober 1803. Edited by J. C. A. Stagg, et al. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000, Pp. 704. $67.50.) These two carefully edited and annotated volumes provide splendid windows into the early national statesmanship of founding fathers George Washington and James Madison. During the time periods covered, both men demonstrated remarkable political acumen, but with different results: in 1791-1792, President Washington experienced growing difficulty and frustration over domestic issues, while in 1802-1803, Secretary of State James Madison enjoyed remarkable diplomatic success. Three issues in particular dogged President Washington from October 1791 to February 1792: conflict among those responsible for developing the Federal District, General Arthur St. Clair's defeat by the western Indians, and a contest with the U. S. Senate over foreign policy powers. Volume 9 of the Presidential Series illustrates Washington's constant involvement with the laying out and building of the District of Columbia. Indeed, the president became much more involved than he wanted or expected to be, thanks to the refusal of planner Pierre Charles L'Enfant and his subordinates to work under direction of the Federal District Commissioners. Rather than obey his superiors, the planner hoped to answer directly to the president. L'Enfant differed with the commissioners, preferring to finance construction through foreign loans rather than through land sales and favoring an ambitious building schedule. Determined to control events, he obstructed the sale of lots and even demolished a private dwelling being built in the path of a projected District street without authorization. Washington closely followed the controversy, exchanging a stream of letters with all parties to the dispute, patiently trying to achieve a reconciliation. Hoping to retain the talented but ungovernable planner, the president nevertheless insisted on obedience to the commissioners. When L'Enfant refused to accept these terms, Washington fired him. Even more disheartening, the president in December 1791 received the shocking news that General Arthur St. Clair's party had been defeated by the western Indians the previous month on the Wabash River. The administration responded to this crisis by proposing to Congress a new and more vigorous military campaign to subdue the frontier foe. When several congressmen voiced opposition to what they considered an immoral and bankrupt policy, Washington took his case to the public, an unprecedented step. Secretary of War Henry Knox published a defense of the administration's actions in the newspapers, along with Washington's carefully drafted cover letter. In making overdue diplomatic appointments, Washington clashed with the Senate over foreign policy powers. The issue involved whether the Senate should specify the location and grade of diplomats, leaving the president merely to fill the openings it created, or whether the executive possessed the authority to recognize overseas nations, and the Senate merely the power to confirm nominees. The upper house approved the appointments of Thomas Pinckney to Great Britain and Gouverneur Morris to France only after the administration convinced it of the need for such representation abroad. The larger constitutional question of whether the president or Senate should recognize foreign nations remained unresolved, however. Washington's handling of these and other events illustrates his presidential leadership style, an area where historians only recently have accorded him the high marks he deserves. To address thorny issues, he began, late in 1791, to summon his department heads for group consultations. …

John F. Kennedy and the Limited Test Ban Treaty: A Case Study of Presidential Leadership

John F. Kennedy's foreign policy leadership style has evoked contradictory historical evaluations. The early assessments written by administration officials like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Theodore Sorensen, and Roger Hilsman depicted Kennedy as a consummate pragmatist, skilled crisis manager, and, more generally, a great world leader.(1) Kennedy's almost heroic reputation as a foreign policy leader came under attack for the first time in the early 1970s with publication of works by David Halberstam, Louise Fitzsimons, Richard J. Walton, and Henry Fairlie.(2) Whereas Halberstam put at least some of the blame for America's unfortunate involvement in the Vietnam War on Kennedy's shoulders, the work of the three other writers referred to Kennedy as the great cold warrior and considered his foreign policy as imperialist in fact, if not in intent. Neither the portrayal of Kennedy as a decisive and courageous statesman nor his depiction as an irresponsible and dogmatic cold warrior went unchallenged in light of growing insight into the U.S. policy-making process during the Berlin crisis of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Emerging from the new body of sources and literature of the 1980s was a far more ambiguous Kennedy, whose foreign policy decisions were often characterized by vacillation and indecisiveness, marked by rhetorical overkill on one hand and restrained pragmatism on the other. At the same time, it became clear that Kennedy's ambiguity often had to be attributed to the interplay of domestic and foreign concerns and their influence on Kennedy's foreign policy.(3) Despite the considerable number of books and articles written about Kennedy, his foreign policy achievements and presidential leadership style still await a balanced assessment.(4) This article contributes to our understanding of Kennedy's foreign policy by examining Kennedy's leadership in successfully concluding the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT). The authors conclude that Kennedy pursued the goal of signing a nuclear test ban with vigor and persistence from his first days in office through the trilateral debate of the treaty's language among American, Soviet, and British representatives in July 1963. Before the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, however, Kennedy felt that his domestic as well as his foreign policy position was too weak to take on arguments of those opposed to negotiating a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union. Kennedy's room for maneuver expanded with successful conclusion of the Cuban missile crisis. The months leading up to the final, two-week-long negotiation of the LTBT were marked by Kennedy's willingness to use his greater political freedom and take the lead in pushing the test ban. In doing so, he was prepared to take considerable risks both domestically and in terms of U.S. relations with its allies. The test ban case reveals Kennedy as an active and flexible but still cautious president. His personal leadership and flexible organization of the policy process features that might have been a weakness regarding decision making on other issues formed the basis for successful negotiation of the first effective arms control agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. While Kennedy was clearly not the cold warrior that Fitzsimons, Walton, and Fairlie accused him of being, his foreign policy decisions were subject to political considerations related to domestic and foreign pressures to a far greater degree than Schlesinger, Sorensen, and Hilsman lead the reader to believe with their emphasis on Kennedy's personal skills as a foreign policy leader and crisis manager. Senator Kennedy, a Nuclear Test Ban, and Nuclear Nonproliferation The issue of a nuclear test ban was not a new one in the 1960s. American, Soviet, British, and French delegations had discussed draft agreements to end nuclear weapons tests as early as the Truman administration. But during the early years of the cold war, the arms control and disarmament talks in Geneva never really left the realm of propaganda, and no substantive progress on the test ban issue was achieved. …

Presidential Leadership and Civil Rights Policy

Introductory Comments by James W. Riddlesperger, Jr., and Donald W. Jackson The Public, the President, and Civil Rights Presidents, Public Opinion, and Civil Rights: An Agenda-Setting Perspective by Jeffrey E. Cohen Presidential Rhetoric in Civil Rights Policymaking, 1953-1992 by Steven A. Shull and Albert C. Ringelstein Moving with the Grain of History: An Examination of Presidential Action in the Civil Rights Domain from 1892 to 1968 by Ronald E. Brown Institutions, the President, and Civil Rights Presidential Leadership Style and Civil Rights Legislation: The Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by James D. King and James W. Riddlesperger, Jr. Affirmative Action and Business Deregulation: On the Reagan Administration's Failure to Revise Executive Order No. 11246 by Robert R. Detlefsen A Transformed Triangle: Court, Congress and Presidency in Civil Rights by Stephen L. Wasby Policy Arenas, the President, and Civil Rights Presidential Decision-Making in Two Desegregation Crises: Little Rock Central High School and the University of Mississippi by Mark Stern John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Civil Rights by Donald W. Jackson and James W. Riddlesperger, Jr. Decentralizing Fair Housing Enforcement During the Reagan Presidency by Charles M. Lamb and Jim Twombly Modeling Presidential Influence in the Civil Rights Policymaking Process by Steven A. Shull and Dennis W. Gleiber Bibliography Index

William Friday: Power, Purpose, and American Higher Education (review)

402Southern Cultures William Friday: Power, Purpose, and American Higher Education. By William A. Link. University of North Carolina Press, 1995. 494 pp. Cloth, $29.95. Reviewed by Clarence L. Mohr, Tulane University Throughout much of the present century, the University of North Carolina has been a crown jewel of southern higher learning. Embodying the substance of things hoped for in neighboring states, the North Carolina system eclipsed all regional competitors in the decades surrounding World War II and acquired a powerful and lasting mystique. The university 's standing owed much to such legendary figures as Howard W. Odum, the modernizing academic entrepreneur whose Institute for Research in Social Science financed and gave legitimacy to regional scholarship in a number of disciplines, and historian Frank Porter Graham, the crusading liberal who, in 1931, began an eighteen-year tenure as president of the newly consolidated University of North Carolina, a three-campus entity that included, in addition to Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University in Raleigh and Woman's College of North Carolina in Greensboro. The closing years of Graham's presidency overlapped briefly with the early academic career of William Clyde Friday, another figure destined to shape the course of higher education in North Carolina and the South. At first glance, Friday would seem an unlikely candidate to assume the mantle of Odum or Graham. Neither a scholar nor a promoter of controversial causes, Friday would come to be known for his skill as a behind-the-scenes mediator who worked to reconcile the priorities of the modern research university with the demands of a conservative and often intolerant state political establishment. As skillfully explored by William A. Link, Friday's accomplishments, including his rise to a position of genuine national influence during the 1960s, are seen to derive in part from his upbringing —a Depression Era childhood in Gaston County suffused with moral and religious influences from the maternal side of his family together with competitive expectations Reviews403 on the part of his father, an executive and salesman for a firm that manufactured textile machinery. At the professional level, Friday's overarching concern with public service owed much to the inspiring example of Frank Graham and to the distinctive "culture of civic responsibility" that prevailed at the University of North Carolina from the 1930s onward. The personal traits that would distinguish Friday's style of presidential leadership —integrity, indirect persuasion, a disarming sincerity, and a preference for consensus building through personal interaction in small groups—manifested themselves during his undergraduate days at North Carolina State University, where he sought to enrich the campus cultural climate as a partial antidote to the school's narrowly vocational curriculum in such fields as textile engineering, his own undergraduate major. Known as a "quiet motivator," Friday nonetheless displayed an instinct for power that placed him within a small inner circle of campus leaders and resulted in his election as senior-class president without the political advantage of fraternity membership or participation in intercollegiate athletics. His broad involvement in extracurricular activities relating to student government and institutional enhancement did not pass unnoticed by university officials. In 1941 Friday became the first student ever to speak at the school's commencement, and after graduation he returned to work briefly for the dean of students before marrying and joining the navy the next spring. Friday's direct involvement with the Chapel Hill campus began in 1946 when he entered law school following a stressful wartime stint as production manager for the naval ammunition factory in Virginia. Law school brought Friday into contact with future North Carolina governor Terry Sanford and a number of other returning veteran classmates who were destined to wield political influence over the state's system of higher education. Never more than an average student, Friday completed his legal studies in two years and accepted a position as assistant dean of students at Chapel Hill, thus beginning what Link aptly labels a "meteoric rise to power." Inducted into the mysteries of university politics while serving as a chauffeur and traveling companion for President Graham in 1948-49, Friday became the chief protégé of Graham's "right hand man," University controller William D. Carmichael...

Presidential Leadership Style, Advisory Systems, and Policy Making: Bill Clinton's Administration after Seven Months

How does President Clinton's leadership style influence the nature of the White House and its organization? This paper presents a framework that links leadership style to patterns of authority and coordination in advisory systems and explores how the early Clinton administration fits within this framework. In making judgments about Clinton and his advisers, the analysis builds from a personality profile of him done by the author as well as descriptions and observations by journalists and associates during the campaign, from the time he was governor of Arkansas, and during the first seven months of his presidency.

The Presidential Leadership Style of Bill Clinton: An Early Appraisal

My aim in what follows is to delineate the leadership of President Bill Clintonthat is, the outer pattern of his political behaviorso far as it has been evident in the first year of his presidency. It is outside of my scope to speculate in any extended way about Clinton's interior qualities-. Nevertheless, the aphorism style is the man serves as a warning that it is not possible to take account of an individual's characteristic mode of action without some reference to its inner wellsprings. Any analysis of Bill Clinton's White House performance must surely come to grips with the puzzle of how and why such an intrinsically attractive individual with such advanced political skills can have presided over an administration that got off to such a conspicuously uneven start and should stand so low in the esteem of the American people. I will proceed in something of a trait-psychological fashion, enumerating various of the more conspicuous qualities Clinton brings to his presidency, reflecting on how they fit into the larger pattern of his leadership, and comparing his leadership to that of various of his predecessors.

Passing the President's Program: Public Opinion and Presidential Influence in Congress

Correlations between legislative support scores and presidential popularity do not accurately reflect the relationship between opinion and presidential influence in Congress. Presidents make strategic choices to expend their to obtain congressional approval of programmatic initiatives. Previous studies have ignored such choices as well as other features of the strategic environment which tend to lower the apparent legislative success rates of popular presidents. A model of presidential and congressional behavior is proposed, and it is estimated that a 1 percent increase in a president's support level increases the president's legislative approval rate by approximately 1 percent (holding program size fixed). Elections, it has long been recognized, do not provide U.S. presidents with clear policy mandates. In part this is because the voice of the electorate is often ambiguous. Elections are a good indicator of voters' general state of mind whether they are pleased or displeased by the overall course of government policy-but they give legislators little specific guidance on how existing programs should be changed or what new programs are needed. Presidents will read into their electoral majorities what they like, but Congress is under no obligation to take the same interpretation. The president's legislative program represents one interpretation of what the demands; the congressional response to it represents another. Political scientists have traditionally shown a healthy skepticism toward the claims of congressmen that they merely give the what it wants, but this impulse does exist and is reinforced by certain institutional arrangements - most notably, but not exclusively, elections. In this paper we will try to determine how and to what extent the fate of the president's legislative program rests on opinion. We argue that previous studies have understated the extent to which congressional support of presidential policy initiatives depends on the president's standing, but have also neglected some of the perils inherent in a presidential leadership style that rests on the president's personal popularity. Much of the argument is familiar. Twenty years ago Richard Neustadt (1955) identified public prestige as a source of presidential influence in Congress. While Neustadt (1980) has pointed out that support for a president operates mostly in the background as a conditioner, not the determinant of what