The Presidents We Pick
On our increasingly democratic politics
by Roger B. Porter
James MacGregor Burns, Ph.D. ’47, Woodrow Wilson professor of government emeritus at Williams College, a distinguished scholar, gifted writer, and Democratic Party activist, has produced yet another volume about the health of the American political system and the role of presidential leadership. Burns is perhaps best known for his calls for transforming leadership and his claims that the American political system, as presently constituted, instead most frequently yields merely transactional leadership. His latest volume is timely when public approval of elected officials on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is at a nadir, and when we are in the midst of the first presidential election since 1952 when neither major political party will have an incumbent president or vice president on the ballot.
His straightforward, uncomplicated account, entitled Running Alone: Presidential Leadership from JFK to Bush II—Why It Has Failed and How We Can Fix It, rests on four basic assertions. First, presidential candidates have increasingly felt fewer attachments to political parties. Instead, they build their own organizations, raise their own resources, and develop their own ideas and proposals. Party leaders, therefore, are less able to control the outcome of the nominating process; parties are less capable of producing coherent policy programs that transcend both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue; and parties as a result are less the unifying vehicles of action that they were in former times.
Second, once elected, presidents have increasingly “governed alone,” independent of party organizations, party platforms, party-generated proposals, and party leaders. Rather than rely on establishing collaborative and close working relationships with congressional leaders or party officials, presidents have sought to lead on their own.
Third, these presidential efforts have failed to produce the genuine, transforming leadership the nation needs. According to Burns, from John F. Kennedy through George W. Bush—the period covered by this volume—we have had a series of failed presidencies.
Fourth, what is needed is “party polarization”—to help facilitate transforming each of our two major political parties “into a disciplined national organization, united by shared values, committed to collective action.”
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