The Modern American Presidency by Lewis L. Gould & Richard Norton Smith

Author:Lewis L. Gould & Richard Norton Smith [Gould, Lewis L. & Smith, Richard Norton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, History & Theory, American Government, United States, 20th Century, Political Science, Executive Branch, History, 21st Century
ISBN: 9780700616831
Google: 5WkrAQAAIAAJ
Goodreads: 9989791
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2003-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

8

The Modern Presidency under Siege

Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter

In the evolution of the modern presidency, the administrations of Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter seem a six-year pause between the dark passages of Richard Nixon and the conservative tumult of Ronald Reagan. Because of the circumstances in which they found themselves and their own limitations as leaders, Ford and Carter slipped into the damning category of one-term failed presidencies. Their years in the White House have been regarded as virtual primers in how not to be effective modern presidents.

Ford and Carter were held back because they did not govern in the mode that had emerged during the 1960s of conducting a permanent campaign and playing down the importance of substantive policy decisions in office. In the case of Gerald Ford, who was thrust into the office after Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, he devoted the remainder of 1974 and most of 1975 to foreign and domestic problems, with only modest attention to renomination and election a year later. By the time he turned his attention to the quest for the GOP nomination in 1976, he faced a serious threat from Ronald Reagan on his right.

Jimmy Carter came to the White House in 1977 with the sensibility of a man who saw a bright line between politics and governance. He did not just discourage the injection of politics into presidential decisions; he abhorred it as a governing approach. When he too realized that he would have to fight for the Democratic nomination against Edward Kennedy in 1980 and then face the candidacy of Ronald Reagan on the Republican side, his political position had deteriorated to such a degree that his administration closed after a single term. In the end, what made Ford and Carter failed presidents was their inability to meet the basic standard for success as a modern chief executive—the capacity to win and serve more than a single term. In that respect, both men were seen as lacking in the strength and ruthlessness to succeed as presidents.

Both Ford and Carter had to deal with the residual effects of the Johnson-Nixon years on the presidency itself. Though Americans would soon return to their admiration for the strong chief executive, for the rest of the 1970s they indicated that they wanted to see restraint in the use of presidential power and modesty in the way the office was conducted. Congress asserted itself to limit presidential authority and in the process gained a major voice in what the White House could and could not do. Whoever followed Nixon into the presidency would have faced the consequences of the overreaching that had occurred between 1963 and 1974.

Gerald Ford did not have time to put his own stamp on the White House, and his brief tenure reflected Nixonian policies without his predecessor’s conspiratorial spirit or indulgence in criminality. Ford’s approach grew from his experience as an electoral politician and a legislator who had labored in the House Republican minority for most of his twenty-five years in Congress.

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