For all occupying presidents during this time, the
obsessive public attention to the issue of the communist threat, the
military demands which required American boots on the soil in a wide array
of theatres and the systemic internal pressures from such non-executive
departments as State, Defense and Intelligence would all collectively
dictate a common ground amongst political figures who were most certainly
bitter enemies. Indeed, as the Grover text suggests and as retrospective
history might deduce, the Vietnam War was an issue that belonged to
multiple presidencies, all of whom sought to balance the sense of
individualized power in combating global threats and an awareness of
America's prevailing sentiments concerning the role of America in the
world. Ultimately, we may deduce that while Vietnam became a negative
cross to bear from Presidents Johnson and Nixon, Kennedy's assassination
relieved him of this onus. Indeed, the inevitability of America's Cold War
policy was larger and more determinant than any one presidency. In many
ways, this premise helps to reinforce Grover's main point of discussion,
which is that each president is inherently formed by the issues which he
inherits.
Thus, the president's political philosophy will not shape the issues
which are his. Instead, they will help to guide his response and his sense
of his own autonomy in shaping that response. To this point, Grover
contends that "two main schools of thought have dominated the discourse on
the postwar presidency. One school-the expansivists-generally held sway
from the time of FDR trough the late 1960s....
. . The other school of thought-
the restricitivsts-are a more recent phenomenon within the discipline,
although they do include some theorists who wrote with FDR's years fresh in
mind." (8) For the expanisivists, there is a sense that the president is
given the authority by the public to act in a manner befitting of his
ideological disposition, with the electoral process entitling a certain
liberalism of constraint. In many ways, this is the type of executive
entitlement that his been ironically fitted to the ambitions of the Bush
Administration, which has awarded itself with broad and sweeping authority
in the face of terrorism challenges. Contrary to Roosevelt, however, the
Bush administration would use these authorities not to channel existent
policies of state into necessary states of reform-as characterizes
Roosevelt's New Deal-but to undermine state policies concerning military,
law enforcement and economic orientation. Here, we can see the dangers in
that type of liberalism.
By contrast, we consider a figure such as Bill Clinton, whose office
was distinguished by the initial challenges of recession and social
upheaval. The philosophical approach of restricting the presidential
appeal to authority would present us with a president of deeply political
spots, capable of channeling compromise from the often shackling confines
of the oval office, providing a modern template for the executive who
recognizes the demand to guide rather than create structures qualities of
the State.
Works Cited:
Grover, W. (1989). The President as Prisoner. Willis Monie Books.
