A successful Presidential decision is one that wins White House, public, and congressional support. Politically, a decision that unites the President's party and divides the opposition is much better than a decision that splits his own party and unites his opponents. When President Bill Clinton attempted to end the military ban on homosexuals in his first week in office, he failed to gain a consensus within his own party and quickly agreed to a compromise. When he pushed for a family leave law (allowing workers to take time off from their jobs for a new baby or for a family emergency), Clinton unified his party, put the opposition on the defensive, and won a major victory early in his term.
Each Presidential decision, therefore, can be considered part of the game of politics. Decisions Presidents make not only affect the immediate problems they are trying to solve but also affect their power to make decisions on future issues, in much the same way that a move in chess or checkers affects the rest of the game. For example, when John Kennedy was negotiating with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis, his decisions had an impact on Soviet-American relations long after the crisis was resolved. Kennedy's willingness to make a deal with the Soviets paved the way for the Test-Ban Treaty of 1963.
Some Presidents make decisions based on the national interest and then work out the strategy and tactics to get Congress and the bureaucracy to implement them; others seem to make decisions by determining what is best for them. When Jimmy Carter told Congress he would veto bills containing unnecessary “pork barrel” public works projects, he was attempting to act in the national interest, yet he antagonized members of Congress (even members of his own party), who delayed working on much of his legislative program in retaliation until Carter gave in and approved their pet projects. Yet if a president does not lead the nation in the public interest, who else can or will? When President Clinton called for sacrifice from all Americans to reduce the deficit in his first address to Congress in 1993, he was not doing the popular thing, but most observers applauded him for acting in the national interest.
Some political scientists have argued that what is in the political interest of the President is in the interest of the entire nation. A President, in their view, should always do what is best for himself because that will result in the most viable public policy. This argument can be taken too far: few people would argue that Richard Nixon's actions in covering up the Watergate crimes of his aides was in the national interest. Moreover, the argument ignores the basic principles of the Constitution. Ours is a government of separate institutions sharing the power of decision in making public policy. If the President acts unilaterally and claims he has done so in the public interest, what role is there for Congress or the courts? In any event, Congress does not accept the idea that the President's decisions are the last word on the public interest. And the Supreme Court, at times, has checked Presidential assertions of power, as it did when it ordered Harry Truman to return to their owners the steel mills he had seized during the Korean War.
Presidents do not always act rationally when they make decisions, nor do they always make decisions in their own interest, let alone the national interest. A President might ignore, discount, deny, or misinterpret information that contradicted his own beliefs. John Kennedy, in the first stages of the Cuban Missile Crisis, simply could not believe the Soviets would go back on their promises to him and place missiles in Cuba. The Soviets had several additional weeks to construct their missile facilities until reconnaissance photos convinced the skeptical President. A President might procrastinate to reduce the stress of having to make hard decisions, as George Bush did in dealing with the economy in his fourth year in office—a delay that cost him a second term, as his inaction became an election issue. Alternatively, a President might push his administration to meet self-imposed deadlines to make a decision and be done with it. And once the decision is made, the President might not reconsider it, even if he obtained important new information casting doubt on his original decision. Lyndon Johnson, for example, paid little attention to advisers, including top officials in the Central Intelligence Agency, who warned him that his escalation of the war in Vietnam could not lead to a military victory, once he had made his decision to use 500,000 troops. It was not until the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked for an additional 200,000 troops that Johnson realized he could not win the war.
A President might miscalculate the costs and benefits of a decision, as Ronald Reagan did when he agreed to sell arms to Iran in return for the release of U.S. hostages held in Lebanon. His decision led to the release of three hostages—but three new hostages were taken so the Iranians could obtain even more arms from the United States.
A President might make decisions based on “lessons” of history when these lessons may not apply. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson compared the civil war in Vietnam to World War II. In their view, a communist victory in South Vietnam would result in other nations in Southeast Asia turning communist. Yet after 1975, when Vietnam was unified under communist rule, noncommunist nations in the area, such as Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, and Singapore, did not find their security threatened by the Vietnamese government.
A President must guard against “groupthink,” a situation in which consensus, or agreement, is prized and dissenters are frozen out and their potential contributions minimized. Indeed, one tip-off that decision making is poor is early agreement among advisers on the nature of the problem and the preferred solution. If debate fails to cover the full range of options, and if there is no advocate for the unpopular options, the President is not well served. The President, in turn, must encourage debate and dissent, must seek advisers who will be candid with him, and must be suspicious of premature consensus. Lyndon Johnson was not happy with advisers who disagreed with him about the Vietnam War. He cut Vice President Hubert Humphrey out of his inner circle over the issue and replaced Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara when he became skeptical about the war. The role of Presidential staffers, when they perform their jobs correctly, is to explore all the options and let the President know the full range of choices, but no adviser can force a President to listen to unpleasant truths.
Successful Presidents, much like unsuccessful Presidents, make mistakes. The big difference is that successful Presidents know when to extricate themselves from failing policies, as Franklin Roosevelt did on many occasions with his New Deal domestic programs. Any army, it is said, can learn to advance; the best armies also know when and how to retreat. The same maxim applies to the White House: a decision to undo a bad decision may sometimes be the best decision of all.
See also Camp David peace talks; Cuban Missile Crisis; National security adviser; Steel seizure (1952); Treaty of Versailles; Watergate investigation (1973–74)
Sources
- Alexander George, Presidential Decisionmaking and Foreign Policy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1980).
- Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (New York: Free Press, 1991)
