Two Ex-Presidents Assess the Job

By Gerald R. Ford, Richard M. Nixon

As the presidential campaign drew to a close, there was increasing concern about the job itself. Has too much power been stripped from the presidency? Alternatively, is the job simply too much for any one man to handle? Should it be streamlined? Reorganized? Aside from the incumbent, only two living Americans can answer from their own experience. One, Richard Nixon,.skillfully used the presidential powers ultimately led to his resignation and to some of the very weakening of the presidency that he decries. The other, Gerald Ford, inherited the office after more than two decades in Congress and performed ably. From their differing perspectives, the two ex-Presidents have written their views for TIME:

Imperiled, Not Imperial

By Gerald R. Ford

Some people used to complain about what they called an "imperial presidency," but now the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. We have not an imperial presidency but an imperiled presidency. Under today's rules, which include some misguided "reforms," the presidency does not operate effectively. That is a very serious development, and it is harmful to our overall national interests.

The biggest change since I first went to Washington in 1949 has been the revision in the relationship between the presidency and the Congress. Immediately after World War II the presidency was at a peak; the Congress was very responsive, especially in foreign policy. Today a President really does not have the kind of clout with the Congress that he had 30 years ago, even in matters that affect national security. There is not the kind of teamwork that existed in the '50s, even if the President and a majority of the Congress belong to the same party.

The main reason for this change is the erosion of the leadership in the Congress. Party leaders have lost the power to tell their troops that something is really significant and to get them to respond accordingly. The days of Sam Rayburn, Lyndon Johnson and Everett Dirksen are gone. That has adversely affected the Congress's ability to do things even in very difficult circumstances involving the national interest.

Part of this erosion of the congressional leaders' power has come from the "reform" of the procedures in the Congress. We went on a wild nightmare of reforms, and we really messed up the way the Congress effectively works. You could run down a list of things that have been done under the title of reform, and they all look good, but the net result is that the Congress has really lost its capability to respond. I think all the so-called reforms since the late 1960s ought to be reviewed to see whether or not they have been counterproductive.

The other big problem in Congress is that party responsibility does not have any real meaning any more, and that is tragic. Not that political parties should be free of criticism, but powers in the conduct of foreign policy, though his abuse of those same the parties provide a way for the public to see who is good and who is evil and who does a job and who does not do a job. The parties today are really more or less impotent, and if you do not have party responsibility, the system does not work.

The second principal weakness in the presidency is the inability of the White House to maintain control over the large federal bureaucracy. There is nothing more frustrating for a President than to issue an order to a Cabinet officer, and then find that, when the order gets out in the field, it is totally mutilated.

I have had that happen to me, and I am sure every other President has had it happen.

There are bureaucratic fiefdoms out in the states or in various regions, and the people who occupy those pockets of power want to do things in their own way. They are pros at it. They have been disregarding Presidents for years, both Democratic and Republican. And a President sits in the West Wing of the White House, and he says, "How could that happen?"

It would be helpful if a President could fire somebody when there was an obvious disregard of orders and policy determinations. He should just be able to say, "Mr. Cabinet Officer, this man violated your order and the President's order. He ought to be fired tomorrow." If you did that a couple of times, I think the disregarding of orders would stop.

The solution to that -- and a lot of other problems in the imperiled presidency -- is to use the Vice President as a real Chief of Staff, both to control the administrative bureaucracy and to see that Administration relations with the Congress really mesh. Having been the Vice President and having been the President, I know that there has to be a better delegation of responsibility between the two offices. I don't care how well intentioned a President or a Vice President is -- and I have seen both Democrats and Republicans try to work it out -- no Vice President that I have known has been a full partner. The President has always relied much more on his own people. I believe that you have got to take an elected official, a Vice President, and move him right into the West Wing of the White House as the Chief of Staff of the whole Administration.

This would be comparable to what happens in a well-organized business, where you have a chief executive officer and a chief operating officer. The President is the chief executive officer. He makes all the decisions. He signs all the actions. He is the final autions. He is the final authority. But you then have the Vice President as the chief operating officer. He does not have a separate staff; he run the White House staff He manages the White House. He does not make the decisions. It is not a co-presidency, as some people were trying to call it at the time o the Detroit convention last summer. But the Vice President should be in the job of making the Administration work. That is the only way, in my opinion, that you can really make the team of a President and Vice President function efficiently, the only way to avoid all the jealousies, all the inefficiencies, all the conflicts -- and they certainly do exist in every Administration.

It can be argued that some Presidents and Vice Presidents do not agree on things, but I think most of the antagonism that has developed arises because the Vice President has not been in the flow of the decision-making process. He has been sitting over in the Executive Office Building across the street, and his staff is jealous of the staff in the West Wing. It is a bad situation. But if you put the Vice President in the flow of things as the Chief of Staff, he would be a part of every decision, not just an adjunct over there waiting for the President to die.

This may seem mainly a technical point, but a presidency really is a combination of the individual President and his staff. I also think that the Congress would respond better if it knew that the Chief of Staff was an elected official rather than just an appointee trying to husband all of the power in the West Wing. That is really resented by members of the Congress.

I want to emphasize the importance of these personal relationships between the White House and the Congress. I think the President has to accept the fact that he must spend more time personally with members of Congress, and he must work with the leaders of both parties to enhance their strength and influence. Members of Congress are important. The President cannot spend too much time with them. (I mean on matters of policy, not just a Congressman bringing in ten of his constituents -- you can get overwhelmed with that.) I think a President has to give the leaders in the Congress and influential members of both parties an open door to come and take part in policy decisions. He doesn't have to guarantee that he will do what they say, but at least they have to have the feeling that their views are considered before the fact, and not after. I think that the President just cannot make a decision and then call up the Congress and say, "Give me help." That is unfair. He has got to ask their advice. Even if he does not agree with it, he can then go back and ask for their help, and he would be in a much better position to get results. By strengthening the leadership the President would make the Congress more responsive.

Another important way for the President to exert leadership is through the Cabinet. I am a strong believer in an effective Cabinet. That means that you cannot rely on political flunkies. But if a President has good Cabinet heads, he can delegate a lot of authority. He does not have to get into the minutiae of running the Government. The Cabinet members, on the other hand, ought to have full access to the President. That kind of access can be very important, for example, when a budget is being put together, and decisions are made. There is a tendency on the part of the President to listen mainly to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. After all, he is there a lot in the Oval Office. But the Cabinet officer must also have access, so he can make his appeal. If you do not must also have access, so he can make his appeal. If you do not give them that kind of personal relationship, then they cannot really do the job on behalf of their departments.

In a way, that reliance on good people is the only way the President can do his own job well. He has to be a good listener, to be a good analyst of the arguments. And then there is a certain instinctive common sense, good judgment, that is more necessary than almost anything.

A President cannot be an expert on every detail in the economy, every detail in the defense, every detail in foreign policy. He does not have to be a scientist or a computer expert. He has to have good judgment as he listens to the arguments pro and con, as he asks questions of people who are making a presentation. He knows that Mr. A is the best economist he can get, who is objectively giving him the options, or Mr. B is a totally competent Secretary of Defense or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and will give him without prejudice what the options may be in a military sense. If a President has that, plus his own background in what the problems are, then he only needs good judgment. That's the key, good judgment. Even the most complicated things can be brought down to a denominator where an intelligent man can understand the differences and the options that are available.

There can be conflicts, too, between different officials favoring different options. I myself liked to have a consensus developed before a problem came to my desk for decision, but then I reserved the right to go behind that consensus to find out what the differing views were in the process. In were in the process. In that way I got a feel as to whether it was just a weak compromise or whether it was a legitimate one that provided the best answer. You can have compromises that just destroy the arguments on either the right or the left, and that is a pretty poor policy. On the other hand, you can have a good consensus where things actually mesh.

It's a hard job being President -- but despite all the talk about the heavy burdens, the job is not too big for any one man. I get sick and tired of hearing people say you ought to have two Presidents. I don't have any sympathy for that argument. Don't misunderstand me. It is a job that takes about twelve to 14 hours a day. But what is wrong with that? The President of the United States ought to be willing to spend that land of time. Anybody who walks in there thinking he can punch a time clock at 9 in the morning and leave at 5 has got another thought coming. We do not elect Presidents who want that kind of a life.

There is a lot of wasted motion, of course. The worst waste is that there are an awful lot of perfunctory, ceremonial things that have to be done. They take up about 15% to 20% of a President's time -- more in election years. But I guess they have to be done. After all, if they are not done, the public gets the wrong perception of the President, that he is behind the walls of the West Wing of the White House and he does not want to meet the people. But if you look at it from a cost-benefit ratio of time spent, he ought to be spending his time on the business that just keeps flowing in and out of the Oval Office.

On any specific issue the President needs to know the facts, get the best information, so that he can make the decision and then lead from there. I do not think a President should run the country on the basis of the polls. The public in so many cases does not have a full comprehension of the complexity of a problem. A President ought to listen to people, but he cannot make hard decisions just by reading the polls once a week. It just does not work, and what the President ought to do is make the hard decisions and then go out and educate the people on why a decision that was not necessarily popular was made. It can be done, and it has to be. That is what it means to be a leader.

Needed: Clarity of Purpose

By Richard M. Nixon

At least for the balance of this century, the survival of freedom and peace in the world will depend on the strength and effectiveness of the American presidency.

This may sound melodramatic. But it happens to be the truth. It lends added point to the perennial debates about whether the basic constitutional structure of the office should be "modernized." Certainly we should consider such proposals as limiting the President to a single six-year term, or creating a second vice presidency to assist with day-to-day oversight of the Executive Branch. However, while we can dream about tinkering with the constitutional arrangements, the fact of the matter is that whoever is President for the next four years will have to deal with the office as it is -- including all of its frustrations, its limitations and its demands.

Any major institutional changes are not going to take place in the near future, and unless we master the needs of the presidency in the near future, there may not be a distant future.

Some say we are entering a period of collective leadership in the West -- that because the United States has lagged in economic growth and lost its military supremacy, we are going to have to consult our more prosperous allies and defer to them in the search for a Western consensus. This is nonsense. Consult, of course. But unless the United States leads, nobody will. And unless the President leads, nobody will.

There are three keys to an effective presidency. To succeed, a President must succeed at all three. He must 1) analyze, 2) decide and 3) persuade.

The fact that we face a challenge to the nation's very survival gives special urgency in the '80s to the power to persuade -- to rally the nation to meet the challenge. This is more than a matter of political and managerial skills, and more than being able to communicate well on television. It also requires a driving vision of where the nation is and where it should be heading, and why. It requires a clear, compelling purpose, from which presidential priorities then flow logically. This is central to an effective presidency: the vision, the sense of direction, to see the map whole and to chart the basic course without leading the country aimlessly on one detour after another.

It is not enough simply to "manage," examining each set of choices in a philosophical vacuum. The President's central principles must be there, they must be consistent, and they must be clearly seen. His own staff, his Administration, Congress, the press and public all need from him a clear indication of what he considers important; of his values, his priorities, and the directions in which he seeks to lead the nation and the world. Whether his direction is right or wrong, it is essential to the debate that it be visible, and that it bear a logical relationship to his other policies and programs.

No President gets his own way all the time, or should. Democracy is a process of give and take. But a President who does have a clear sense of direction provides the steady compass by which policymakers can steer. He may have to trade off a dam here for a missile base there, or an agricultural subsidy for a few crucial treaty votes in the Senate. But there will at least be a basic consistency, and a conscious awareness of how and why he deliberately chooses to vary the course, to avoid this shoal or take advantage of that prevailing political wind. Then policy-making ceases to be an exercise in the abstract, or a matter of rootless, drifting pragmatism. Intellectual discipline returns to it, and arguments once more have a focus and coherence that give edge to the process of public debate.

Many analysts -- including, recently, Carter Counsel Lloyd Cutler -- have argued that the separation of powers has itself become a formula for stalemate between President and Congress. Stalemate often results, but it does not have to. If a President is sufficiently forceful, sufficiently sound in his policies and sure of his purpose, and able to take his argument persuasively to the people, Congress will go along a good deal of the time. You

do end up in stalemate when those at neither end of Pennsylvania Avenue know what they really want; when, at both ends, officials and lawmakers are wallowing in symbols and photo opportunities and other media gimmicks, trying to ride a poll or catch a headline.

If we have Government by poll, we hardly need a President.

We can simply feed the Gallup and Harris results into a computer and let laws and appropriations come out the other end.

We need a President precisely because we need leadership that rises above the polls, that educates the public and leads public opinion rather than following public prejudice.

The greatness of a President is measured not by his ability to determine what is popular and get it enacted into law, but by his ability to take what may appear to be unpopular positions -- which he believes to be right -- and to make them popular. This becomes especially crucial as we enter a period in which both sacrifice and risk are necessary -- but in which the risks of inaction are greater than the risks of action.

The presidency is in many ways a very flexible office. To a considerable degree, the occupant can organize it the way he chooses. But certain pressures and constraints act to mold it as well. For example, both Presidents Ford and Carter insisted at the outset that they were not going to have White House "Chiefs of Staff." Then each learned the hard way that one was needed, and each named one.

Sherman Adams used to be called "the abominable no-man," because part of his job was to say no to the people that Eisenhower either could not or would not see. Bob Haldeman got very much the same reputation in the Nixon White House. But the plain fact is that a President needs an abominable no-man if his time is to be organized effectively so that he can get done the things that he has to get done -- and especially il he is to have the uncluttered time in his schedule that he needs in order to think.

Of all the duties Presidents have, none is more important than thinking, and none is less appreciated by those who measure presidential activity by flurries of paper or items on the appointment schedule.

If power is to be exercised effectively, it has to be exercised selectively. A President selectively. A President cannot squander his energies, his attention and his ability to make things happen on the trivial without slighting the important.

This is one of the reasons we should trim down the functions of the Federal Government -- stripping away decisions that do not have to be made in Washington, and placing the power of decision with states, localities and the private sector. This also argues, paradoxically, for limiting the size of the White House staff. Staffs develop functions; staff members acquire staffs of their own; these multiply functions further. If you want to trim back the functions, one place to begin is by trimming back the staffs.

With large staffs, you also get too many people who glory in the reaction on the other end of the telephone line when a secretary says, "The White House is calling." It is not "the White House" calling; it is some particular person who happens to work at the White House, and who may or may not be calling with the President's authorization. The bigger the staff, the greater the likelihood that this will be abused -- and also the more internal rivalries, jealousies and feuds, which tend to expand as the little empires expand.

In a simpler, less threatening past, America could dally with notions of "congressional" government -- with the theory that a President's role was to follow the will of the people, as expressed through their representatives in the Congress. But Congress is not equipped, institutionally, to respond to the challenges that face the United States abroad. As De Gaulle once commented to Andre Malraux, parliaments can paralyze policy, but they cannot initiate it.

Neither is it realistic to expect "Cabinet" government, as theorists often advocate it. British-style Cabinet government is a creature of the parliamentary system. British Cabinet members are themselves of the legislature, and the Cabinet does make decisions as a collective body. In this country, every new President takes office promising a strong Cabinet of independent members, and some new Presidents take office really believing this promise. But each soon learns that there have to be limits on the individual Cabinet members' independence, and that the Cabinet as a collective body is not suited to decision making. He must have strong, able people in his Cabinet, who can manage their departments well and give him sound advice. But each department is a separate fiefdom; if there is to be coherence and direction to the Administration's policies, the President has to impose that direction from the top, cutting across the often conflicting interests of the various departments. The President must, of course, consult his Cabinet members, just as he consults the leaders of Congress. But on the larger questions only he can decide; only he can lead.

Today, even the classic argument between the proponents of "presidential government" and "congressional government" is itself being eclipsed by the rising power of the news media, especially television. Television has transformed the presidential office and also the governmental process. This is dangerous and potentially disastrous. Congress may be fractionated; it may speak in a cacophonous babble with the voices of 535 separate constituencies; but at least its structure is built around the serious consideration of questions of public policy.

Not so television. Television is a show-business medium. The evening news is a series of minidramas. But real life is not played out in such minidramas, and the real choices the President and Congress face are not framed in such neat, capsulized ways. More often than not, what is emotionally appealing -- and therefore dramatically captivating -- is intellectually vacuous and substantively wrong. What makes good television often makes bad policy.

Because of the pervasive impact of television, the actions of Presidents are directed increasingly toward the omnipresent cameras, and confined within the distorting prism of television news. Public debate is conducted increasingly in slogans and one-liners.

All this puts a heightened premium on "symbols." Symbols and substance are both important, but for a President to confuse the two can be ruinous. He has to use symbols and symbolism -- but not as ends in themselves and not as a substitute for substance.

At the same time, television is a fact of life, and a President in the '80s will have to use television effectively in order to govern effectively. The challenge will be to find a way to use it that enlightens rather than obfuscates.

The powers potentially at a President's disposal are awesome, but they also are limited. They are limited by the Constitution, by statute, by custom, and by what may be politically, diplomatically or militarily possible in any given situation. But we need a strong presidency for the '80s. This need transcends party, personality and ideology. It does not mean an "imperial" presidency. But it does mean that whoever holds the office must be prepared and permitted to wield its powers boldly when necessary -- and also that he must be both astute and discriminating in recognizing when such action is necessary.

It is a mistake for a President to go too far in trying to show the "common touch." He is not just another man-in-the-street, and if he tries to appear like one, he is going to see his power diminished. Perceptions of power become like self-fulfilling prophecies. It is also a mistake for a President to try too much to be "loved." The desire to be loved is understandable, but more important is that he be respected.

Like nature, power abhors a vacuum. If a President fails to exercise power effectively, others are going to exercise it in his stead; and if America fails to exercise it effectively, other nations are going to exercise it in our stead. In the '80s, the alternative to the effective exercise of American power is the unchecked exercise of Soviet power.

The next President has to be able to concert the nation's energies, to coordinate its responses, so that its resources -- material and spiritual -- can be summoned forth effectively to meet the challenge of international lawlessness generally and Soviet ambitions particularly. He has to raise a standard to which free people will rally, not only to defend their own freedom but to extend it throughout the world.

To do this, he must be able to crystallize our purposes, and he must not shrink from the exercise of power.

Essentially, the presidency is a vehicle for the exercise of power. We choose Presidents to make things happen. Their success or failure depends on the clarity of their purposes, on their skill, and also on luck. Generally, however, successful Presidents are those who best choose the purposes for which power should be exercised, and who most effectively exercise it in the service of those purposes. This is simple to say, difficult to do -- but it can be done.

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