THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607250513
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 175 lines
The president of the United States submits budgets to Congress, appoints Supreme Court justices, and makes the State of the Union address, among other duties. That's the law.
He represents us at important funerals and other ceremonies, addresses the nation in times of crisis, and opens baseball games, among other things. That's tradition.
But what makes or breaks a president? Often it's a third role, that of fulfilling Americans' expectations.
Those expectations change with the times and conditions - the economy, foreign threats, the national sense of well-being. And they tell us as much about the American public as they do about the president.
Sometimes the man and the expectations of the moment fit, sometimes they don't. Americans expected Herbert Hoover to act in the early years of the Depression; he didn't. They elected Franklin D. Roosevelt; he did.
In the 1970s, Jimmy Carter tried to be a moral voice for the nation. But Americans, buffeted by Watergate, the oil crisis and the Iranian hostage taking, weren't in a mood to accept that. They certainly weren't expecting it.
Some consider it an impossible job to meet the public's expectations along with the president's other responsibilities.
``Too much is heaped on the president's desk,'' said Doris A. Graber, political scientist at the University of Illinois-Chicago. ``He is in many ways the symbolic president, expected to carry out the ceremonial duties. But he is also expected to be the supervisor and chief policy maker.''
Drastic change in the office isn't likely, so how do we best work with and understand what we've got?
James David Barber of North Carolina, who has studied and written about the presidency for more than 20 years, wrote in ``The Presidential Character'' that expectations fall into three categories:
Reassurance. Americans expect the president to tell us that everything will be all right and that things are under control, and to remind us of the positive aspects of our nation. Although all presidents do this to some degree, the obvious examples are Gerald Ford in the wake of Watergate and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, with his ``Morning in America'' theme.
Action. Americans expect the president to act in times of economic or military crisis, by enacting legislation, using executive powers, and possibly sending soldiers to war. Franklin Roosevelt, the very best example, did all three of those in the 1930s and '40s, dealing with the Depression and World War II.
Leadership. (Barber called it ``legitimacy.'') Although it sounds similar to action, this is different. Americans expect the president to set an example, to ``act presidential,'' to remind them of what the government can and can't do, and talk about individual responsibilities. Also, this view perceives the president as being above politics, where the other views are of a more political president. Think of John F. Kennedy here.
``Over time the climate of expectations shifts and changes,'' Barber wrote. ``Wars, depressions and other national events contribute to that change, but there also is a rough cycle, from an emphasis on action to an emphasis on legitimacy to an emphasis on reassurance and rest, and back to action again.
``The point is that the climate of expectations at any given time is the political air the president has to breathe. Relating to this climate is a large part of his task.''
This is not a simple matter. The president can't get up every morning and check the expectations barometer on the White House wall. This ``climate'' filters through to him via the media, polls, friends, other politicians and direct contact with the public.
Some presidents understand the climate better than others. Some understand it and ignore it. In the late 1930s, many people did not want the United States to enter the European war and expected the president to keep them out of it. Roosevelt, however, gradually steered the nation on what he felt was the right course. Maybe he drew on expectations Americans didn't know they had.
The rise of the media in the past 30 years may have hobbled the presidency by heightening expectations. Although you might expect the media scrutiny to render the president more human - FDR's paralysis could never be veiled today - in practice its fascination with ceremony and drama cause him to loom larger than life, the biggest, most powerful celebrity on the stage.
``You folks kind of carry a picture of the presidency to people,'' said Charles O. Jones, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
``That picture in my judgment is one that vastly overstates the power of the president. And it creates impossible expectations. It leads inevitably to disappointment.''
Yet it may be that this is not new.
It is related to a larger, older character trait in America, an impatience which makes it difficult for presidents to live up to the nation's standards. A full 150 years ago, Charles Dickens called ``universal distrust'' Americans' greatest flaw after a speaking tour in the 1840s.
``You carry . . . this jealousy and distrust into every transaction of public life,'' he wrote. ``You no sooner set up an idol firmly, than you are sure to pull it down and dash it into fragments . . . Any man who attains a high place among you, from the president downward, may date his downfall from that moment.''
That statement and its eerie resonance today was noted by Washington Post writer Haynes Johnson in ``Divided We Fall,'' a 1994 book exploring where America stands and how it feels about many aspects of public life, including the president.
``Surveys on public alienation have tracked America's steadily eroding confidence in its leaders and institutions - a decline so uniform and so steep that it raises the most serious questions about public faith in the democratic system and therefore the ability of that system to function,'' Johnson wrote.
Part of the book explores how Americans feel about President Clinton and his perception of those feelings.
In the book, Clinton said of his election in 1992, ``I think one of the things the public wanted from me was some sort of immediate action - immediate action in Washington that they could feel in their own lives.''
This is clearly one of the expectations noted by Barber, and it is typically an expectation produced by crisis. It may reflect the surprisingly deep and general unease Americans feel today.
On the surface, it would seem America should be very confident: Its 50-year enemy, a communist Soviet Union, has collapsed; by most conventional measures, the economy is stronger than it has been in years; and even violent crime, a growing shadow for decades, at the moment seems to be receding.
Yet Americans are not confident about the future and are perhaps more impatient than ever.
Clinton had almost no ``honeymoon'' in his first year. In a national poll five months after he had taken office, more than half the respondents said the country's problems were too large for any president to solve, and that was the most pessimistic response ever to that question.
Clinton knew that. In the same interview with Johnson, he said, ``Even though I said until I was blue in the face, this won't be immediate, it won't be easy, it won't be quick - I think they question whether anybody could get it done, or whether I could get it done.''
Perceptions of the president, then, reveal just as much about Americans' perception of themselves and their capacity to solve problems.
A public unable to see how it can work together to solve problems is not likely to see how the president or Congress can address those same problems.
James Fallows, editor of The Atlantic magazine in Washington, D.C., and author of ``Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine Democracy,'' said Americans have come to an ``unreasonable fatalism'' about the ability of government to do things.
Fallows pointed out that in recent weeks the press covered efforts to improve meat inspection and airline safety, ``and the assumption in both cases is that the government will work well and can work better.''
To say ``everything stinks'' is just lazy, Fallows said.
``It's intellectually easier that way, but we all have to live here. And it becomes worse if we all think it's failing,'' he said.
Graber, however, believes that in Bill Clinton's case, the public has come full circle, and is now willing to accept him as a flawed but still capable human being.
``They wonder why polls have not gone down with some of disclosures about him,'' she said. ``The reason is, we've accepted him warts and all.
``I think these are more realistic expectations. People are more willing to accept flaws and moral weaknesses.''
Fallows thinks it has something to do with the end of the Cold War, when the president may have been unnaturally elevated as a national champion.
``I think it's healthier to say we are not choosing someone to be the vessel of every hope we hold,'' Fallows said. ``We're choosing among political agendas for the next four years. Politics is about choosing among imperfect solutions to public problems.
``That's what presidential elections should be about, rather than who should be the next king.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff illustration<
Washington
Some Americans expected George Washington to become a very strong,
almost king-like figure. But the first president set the tone of the
office by exercising restraint in the use of his power and stepping
down after two terms.
Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln faced low expectations because of his rural roots
and initial unwillingness to take a stand for abolition. A master
politician, he ultimately became known for his firm principled
stands on the Union and slavery.
Clinton
While Americans seems obsessed with character issues in the late
20th century, Bill Clinton appears to have moved into an unusual
position: The public is indicating it's more interested in his
policied than his personal flaws. by CNB