Neustadt\'s Statement on Presidential Continuity

Neustadt's Statement On Presidential Continuity

The American presidency is a theoretically debatable job. The vast responsibility and the onus of accountability which both fall upon the president denote that the position is extremely complicated. There is a historical disagreement over whether the president is to be seen as a unique conduit for a value system and ideology endorsed by the American public or whether the president is to be seen as a custodian of the office whose responsibility is to execute the perceived will of the public. Richard Neustadt's important text, Presidential Power and the Modern President, provides us with a great deal of insight on this subject, describing the presidency as a position which is reflexive to its moment in history. This is the observation that allows Neustadt to argue that from Kennedy to Reagan, America has experienced a relative continuity in the way that the presidency is occupied.

In his discussion on the way that these presidents contended with elements of history unique to their respective tenures, it becomes apparent that three decades of the office have been shaped by the policy interests in place on a broad cultural and global level. As Neustadt notes, "the purposes of Presidents are not to be confused with their intentions at the start; these are a matter, rather, of responses to events. Nor should these purposes be confused with signs of temperament, with 'passion.' Whether Kennedy was 'passionate' is scarcely relevant." (Neustadt, 170) Instead, Neustadt argues, Kennedy's role should be understood as relating to the time into which he stepped as a leader. Different degrees of success in attaining goals and different personalities or relationships with the public aside, Neustadt contends that the period passing between Kennedy and Reagan can be characterized by a relative historical continuity.

The dominance of the Cold War and the policies relating thereto would occupy the focus, attention and policy priority of all the presidents to pass through office in this time. The Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Afghanistan and South America assured that the presidents during this time would in a certain regard all approach the same question of competing with the Soviet permeation of the globe. Thus, even if it is popular to consider in retrospect that Kennedy was an important ideological diversion from the model of presidency which came before him, it does not change the fact that his presidency dealt with many of the same questions as would his predecessors and, to an even greater extent, his more publicly embattled successors. Both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon would grapple destructively with the issue of the Vietnam War, but we may assume with reflection on the lead-up to this conflict, that Kennedy's survival would have most likely placed this conflict in the lap of his administration.

The domino theory which presumed that the fall of a nation such as Vietnam would cause an entire region to topple to communist influence would underscore Cold War foreign policy for generations, with presidents culturally required to affirm a commitment to the goals of protecting American interests and opposing Russian aims that appeared to be contrary to these interests. Regarding Kennedy, "from his Vienna interview with Khrushchev, through the Berlin crisis during 1961, to the Cuban missile crisis and therafter -- this commitment evidently deepened with experience as Kennedy responded to events." (Neustadt, 170) This is to note that regardless of the perspective which he took into office with him, his increased exposure to the insights and knowledge of the presidency would drive him to view Cold War policy refinement as the highest of priorities.

Accordingly, this mounting knowledge that would show Kennedy to be as much shaped by the role of the presidency as vice versa, would ultimately become a template passed from one president to the next until the resolution of the Reagan administration. That this would mark the end of the Cold War, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the tumbling of the Berlin Wall symbolizing the end of a long struggle for ideological supremacy. And though it may be said that certain decisions and actions on Reagan's part can be argued to have hastened the end of the Cold War -- particularly by heightening, intensifying and diversifying the war to the point that the Soviet's could no longer simultaneously compete and support their society -- his was largely a continuation of the policies which preceded him.