Tough Times for the President: Political Adversity and the Sour ...

What is to account for this fact? The answer, we contend, lies in moving away from the prevailing understanding of presidential power—as influence obtained through the “power to persuade”—and examining unilateral strategies that presidents have employed to shape policy and revive their political fortunes.

Exploring the Nature and Sources of Presidential Power

In the single most influential book written on the American presidency, Presidential Power, Richard Neustadt declared, “Presidential power is the power to persuade.”⁸ Neustadt saw the institutional power of the presidency as weak, characterizing the office as a “clerkship,” but tended to see the personal power of the incumbent as strong. That personal power rested on bargaining and persuasion, which presuppose a combination of political skills and political capital necessary for the president to be compelling in bringing other political actors to see things as the White House sees them. Neustadt disdained unilateral assertions of presidential power—such as Truman’s firing of General Douglas MacArthur in 1952, Eisenhower’s dispatch of federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 to enforce desegregation of public schools, and Truman’s 1951 seizure of the steel mills because he thought a strike by steelworkers threatened the credibility of America’s commitment in the Korean War—because these cases of “command” were signs of failure at persuasion and were ultimately self-defeating exercises.

Neustadt’s characterization of presidential power highlights the fact that presidents do not exercise these powers in a vacuum. It is not enough to say that the chief executive has the power to veto, to command the armed forces, to propose legislation, or to direct the executive branch. What also matters is how those powers are used and how that use affects the goals and political standing of the nation’s highest officer. Neustadt wisely taught that presidential power is embedded in a political context,