Michael Genovese - The Presidential Dilemma: Revisiting Democratic Leadership in the American System

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The Presidential Dilemma

The Presidential Dilemma

Revisiting Democratic Leadership in the American System

Third Edition

Michael A. Genovese
With a new introduction by the author

Originally published in 1995 by Harper Collins College Publishers

Published 2011 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

New material this edition copyright 2011 by Taylor & Francis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2010026919

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Genovese, Michael A.
The Presidential dilemma : revisiting democratic leadership in the American system / Michael A. Genovese. -- 3rd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4128-1112-5 (alk. paper)
1. Presidents--United States. 2. Political leadership--United States.
I. Title.

JK516.G46 2010
352.23'60973--dc22

2010026919

ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-1112-5 (pbk)

To Gabriela, and a love that has lasted, endured, grown,
strengthened. You are my everything.

Contents

1. ix

Guide

List of Tables and Figures

Office Holders but Not Leaders

We give the President more work than a man can
do, more responsibility than a man should take,
more pressure than a man can bear. We abuse him
often and rarely praise him. We wear him out, use
him up, eat him up. And with all this, Americans
have a love for the President that goes beyond
loyalty or party nationality; he is ours, and we
exercise the right to destroy him.

John Steinbeck, America and Americans

In the 1981 movie, The History of the World, Part I , Mel Brooks, playing King Louis of France, walks around an opulent garden, insulting his guests by squeezing the backsides of ladies of the court. Is he called to task for this gross behavior? No, in fact after pinching one especially voluptuous woman, Brooks turns to the camera and says with great satisfaction, Its good to be da king!

And indeed, it must have been good to be the king, especially in the days when the accepted paradigm was the Divine Right of Kings. Talk about power ! The king claimed that his authority derived from the fact that God had anointed him king. To disobey the king was tantamount to disobeying God. As long as the vast majority of the people were willing to buy into that myth, the king could rule, or command, perched on the shoulders of God and fully expect to be obeyed.

Over time, the divine right of kings gave way to a new myth: the divine right of the people, or democracy. The ground beneath the king's authority collapsed and was replaced by a secular legitimacy based on the will or consent of the people. Few followed the commands of the ruler. Now people had to be persuaded to follow, or they believed that the "elected" leaders were to follow their will. The grounds of authority and legitimacy were weakened. If it was good to be the king, it was exceedingly difficult to be the president.

To understand the great difficulty of governing in an age of mass democracy, stripped of the lubricating assistance of divine power, take a short trip with me to the beautiful Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Perched on a hill overlooking the city on one side and the Pacific on the other, the Getty is a gorgeous venue for art and culture.

One of the paintingsJames Ensor's Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 (1888)holds special interest for students of politics. Believed to the be the first "expressionist'' painting, Elisor's painting is mad, magnificent, complex, claustrophobic, confused, confusing, anarchistic, and beautiful. Rich and colorful, it depicts Christ's entry into the city, but in a way that is unorthodox, even shocking to our sensibilities.

Picture in your minds eye what a painting entitled Christs Entry into Brussels should look like: Christ with a halo aglow sits on top of a donkeythe center of attention, with adoring followers lining the streets, bowing in respect, laying palm leaves on the path.

But in Ensor's dystopian version, Christ is barely visible. Lost amid a garish, cluttered, colorful anarchy of people and puppets, one has to squint and look hard to find Christ, who is lost in the crowd. There is a marching band, clowns, costumed characters, masked figures, performers, self-important officials, skeletons, and clerics. From the pompous to the pitiful, it is a mad cacophony of the leering mob.

This painting is relevant to our understanding of the presidency because Ensors allegorical work of art portrays the dilemma of leadership in a mass democracy. Rather than deferring to Christ, the mob barely pays attention to him. There are too many distractions, too many entertaining diversions to pay attention to, not to mention defer to, this leader of the Christian movement. There is a party going on, a carnivaldo not bother me with the boredom of authority. If the choice is party or pietylet the parade begin!

In our world today this Christ is not the center of attention, not the recipient of worshipful respect; this Christ must compete with the entertaining party of the human parade. The chaos of fun trumps worship. Self-indulgence trumps hierarchy; individualism trumps obedience; party trumps followership. As James OToole notes:

Ensor understood that social chaos would soon arise from the secular democracy then aborning in Europe. A hundred years ago, he foresaw the seeds of the tradition-destroying trend that would eventually germinate and produce, among countless other cultural horrors, seventy-six channels of cable television. The painting forces the viewer to think about the unprecedented obstacles to effective leadership in a world that has grown, in the subsequent century, even more turbulent than Ensors frenetic Brussels street scene. Ensor saw that henceforth leaders would face the challenge of having to lead without the traditional powers of station, sanction, or threat of suppression. Instead, like Christ, leaders would have to appeal to the minds and hearts of their followers.

Ensor causes us to wonder how anyone could lead from the middle of an inattentive crowd of individualists, each a political and social equal, and every last one bent on demonstrating that fact. Though people have always resisted efforts to bring about changes, even those in their own self-interest, Ensor suggests that modern times would be characterized by widespread resistance to being led at all.

The emergence of democracy as the new social and political paradigm, the imposition of the Divine Right of People, undermined authority and legitimacy. No longer would subjects automatically follow; now citizens had to be persuaded. They could choose to follow or not, they might give to a leader their authority and power, or not. It was no longer automatic but had to be earned, won.

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