Neustadt's Source of Presidential Power

Read Example 14.1 "The Source of Presidential Power," After reviewing Neustadt's ideas, apply them to the role of a CEO. What lessons can the CEO learn from reading Neustadt clearly? Illustrate specifically how a CEO could implement Neustadt's principles to help the firm fulfill its strategy.

Submit your responses in a Word document. Answers should be clear, concise and compelling. Support your answers (external to text) in APA format.

In addition, you will be assessed on how compelling or persuasive you write. If your essay is fewer than 500 words, you are probably not compelling enough, if it is greater than 750 words, you are not concise enough. Specific reference to fact, terms used in the course, and logic will all help you to be compelling. Finally, a graduate level essay shall have no mechanical errors.

THE SOURCES OF PRESIDENTIAL POWER

One of the most famous studies of the bases of power was Presidential Power, Richard Neustadt's 1960 examination of how Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower dealt with power and influence during their administrations. The book was widely read at the beginning of the Kennedy administration and has remained important to sitting presidents, their staffs, and policy analysts. The important issue for Neustadt is the conflict between the image of the president as powerful and the reality of the presidency as institutionally weak. Presidential power does not consist of the president taking direct action on some front, such as Truman's recall of General Douglas MacArthur or his seizure of the steel mills in 1952, or Eisenhower's decision to send troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 to assist in desegregation. These command decisions were more exceptions than typical uses of power. Nor did any of them solve the president's policy problems. Instead, they used up scarce presidential power and, at best, allowed the president and others involved in the situation more time to search for a lasting solution. Neustadt suggests that decisions made by command or fiat are more likely to be evidence of a lack of power than of its effective use. In a given situation, however, there may have been no other choice than to command. For example, whatever problems Truman encountered in recalling MacArthur, the cost of not recalling him and thus allowing civilian authority to be flouted would probably have been higher. Presidential power is the ability to influence the people who make and implement government policies. It has three sources. The first is the bargaining advantage that comes with the office that enables the president to persuade others to work in his interest's the formal powers and authority of the president. The second source is professional reputation, which comprises the expectations of professional politicians, bureaucrats, and others in the political community regarding the president's power and his willingness to use it. This is related to the ability to control the votes of Congress on key issues. Once the president loses control of a majority in Congress, he cannot guarantee that his programs will be enacted and will lose power as a result. A third source of presidential power is his prestige among the public, specifically how the political community assesses his support among different constituencies and the consequences that failure to support the president will have for politicians. Although the political situations facing the president of the United States are different from those facing the CEOs of large firms, Neustadt's three sources are consistent with those discussed earlier. The formal powers of the job, whether stemming from the Constitution, laws, or customs, along with the institutional routines that have grown up around it, provide a basis for incumbent power, a basis that can be used well or poorly. Professional reputation in a firm refers to how observers expect the power holder to act in a given situation, based on their accumulated experience with the power holder. Finally, prestige for politicians is analogous to control over critical resources. For the president and professional politicians, that resource is public sentiment, which translates into votes. Looking back to 1990, in light of the six presidents who had served since Presidential Power was first published, Neustadt saw little reason to change his fundamental conclusions. For example, the experience of Nixon and Watergate, on the one hand, and Johnson and Vietnam, on the other, showed the importance of credibility and perceived legitimacy for both public prestige and professional reputation. Similarly, although Neustadt still emphasizes the importance of political skills for the president, the experiences of Johnson and Nixon also emphasize the relevance of individual temperament for success in office. The president needs to be patient enough to tolerate a complex political system that rarely allows him to successfully implement major policy initiatives immediately. Neustadt still sees political skills and experience as crucial for success in office. (The presidency is no place for amateurs.) Political skills and experience, however, though necessary to success in the presidency, are not sufficient. Both Nixon and Johnson were highly experienced in elective office and possessed formidable political skills, yet their sense of power led both of them to support policies that ultimately dissipated their power and impaired their effectiveness. In 2010, Neustadt's book was 50 years old and outlived its author, who died in 2003. Nevertheless, it remained the sixth most assigned book in college courses on the U.S. presidency in American colleges and universities. In an essay on the book’s influence for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael Nelson notes that the crises plaguing American presidents since 1990, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the financial crisis of 2008 and the recession that followed it, have shown how the decision-making issues raised in Presidential Power are still appropriate today and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.