This paper examines the nature of direct presidential leadership in the United States, focusing on the administrations of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. It explores how the constitutional distribution of power shapes and limits presidential authority while still allowing individual presidents considerable influence. The paper analyzes Eisenhower's post-World War II deterrence strategy and his foreign policy record, including successes in Iran and Korea alongside the U-2 spy plane incident. It then turns to Kennedy's military credentials, legislative background, economic record, and significant failures such as the Bay of Pigs invasion and Cuban Missile Crisis. The paper concludes that presidential leadership consistently yields mixed results, even when history ultimately vindicates a president's decisions.
It is without question that the direct leadership of the President of the United States plays a pivotal role in shaping the tone, pathway, and patterns of American governance and its place in the world. Much of the President's power is offset by the distribution of authority across the three branches of government. However, there are things that a President can do mostly — if not entirely — on their own, and they hold considerable sway in areas where they cannot act entirely unilaterally. Quite often, powerful Presidents have the backing of at least one, if not both, houses of Congress, and this can make it considerably easier for them to govern as they see fit. While this power can be very useful, the American presidency has produced leaders who have exercised such power with varying degrees of success. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy are two notable examples.
Eisenhower was a major military leader during World War II, and that war represented a resounding success for the United States. In the wake of the conflict, Eisenhower positioned himself prominently in the debates that followed — particularly given the rather violent way the war ended, especially for the Japanese. He made a point of counteracting the assertions of figures like Robert Taft, who advocated non-interventionism despite the fact that such a stance had long characterized American foreign policy, and had even been embraced by some figures in the United Kingdom, such as Neville Chamberlain. However, the advance of Nazi Germany and the attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into the war, and the Allies — including the Soviet Union — brought it to an emphatic conclusion.
Rather than over-correcting from that approach, Eisenhower asserted that deterrence and the credible threat of force could be used to maintain international order, and he achieved considerable success with this approach in Iran, Korea, and elsewhere. However, the U-2 spy plane shoot-down over Soviet territory proved to be a significant embarrassment for his administration. Despite attempts at public misdirection, it became clear that the United States had been caught conducting aerial surveillance operations over Soviet airspace (History, 2015).
John F. Kennedy also benefited from his military credentials as well as prior experience in both the House and the Senate — the latter being extremely rare among elected Presidents, as very few sitting U.S. senators have gone on to win the presidency. Kennedy won a hard-fought victory over Richard Nixon and then governed from a relatively moderate position, at least by contemporary standards. He was notably pro-business in his economic approach and was a member of the National Rifle Association. His leadership on economic matters and the Space Race drew considerable praise.
However, Kennedy faltered in other areas. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion — and the Cuban Missile Crisis that followed — represented serious challenges to his foreign policy credibility. His personal conduct, including rumors and later verified accounts of extramarital affairs with celebrities, drew scrutiny, as did the authorized wiretapping of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The legacy of immigration amnesty legislation championed by his brother Ted Kennedy has been viewed with both praise and criticism depending on one's political perspective (History, 2015).
The President's leadership abilities are both limited and wide in scope. Presidents obviously cannot act as unilateral dictators, but they do wield a great deal of power. Those who have embraced and exercised this power have done so with mixed results. Even when history ultimately vindicates a president's decision — as is often argued in the case of Truman's decision to bomb Japan — they are frequently condemned or criticized at the time, and their public approval ratings may suffer. Regardless, presidents must ultimately act on what they believe is right.
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