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The Constraining of the President: the Presidency After Watergate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Richard E. Neustadt
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Extract

The White House was once – and will be again – a great place for a young man to work. I did it myself and have never been sorry. Fate was kind and my age was right: it was Harry Truman's White House and I worked for Charlie Murphy – Charles S. Murphy, to give him his due. He was the President's Special Counsel, successor to Clark Clifford in that post and one of Truman's senior aides. Working for Murphy and with him for the President was a fine experience, as unlike Egil Krogh's or Gordon Strachan's as day from night. What made it so is illustrated by a story. And this story is a starting point for looking at the presidency now, by light of Watergate.

Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , October 1974 , pp. 383 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 For instances, see, among others, Hamby, Alonzo L., Beyond the New Deal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

2 For a lively account of ‘old’ style executive/legislative relations, see Burns, James Macgregor, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955)Google Scholar, particularly Chap. 9, ‘ A Leader in the White House’.

3 In Chap. 20, ‘The Fight for Delegates’, of Frank Freidel's book Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Triumph (Boston: Little, Brown, 1956)Google Scholar Freidel describes Roosevelt's scramble for delegates in 1932. Although the system had loosened, many of the same features existed as late as 1960. To see some of the changes between 1960 and 1972, compare Theodore White's, H.The Making of the President 1960 (New York: Atheneum, 1961)Google Scholar with his The Making of the President 1972 (New York: Atheneum, 1973).Google Scholar

4 For Gallup Poll figures on Truman, see my Presidential Power (New York: John Wiley, 1960), pp. 88et seq and 223–4.Google Scholar The 1946 and 1948 incidents were told me at the time by Truman aides. Relations with Adlai Stevenson and the latter's nomination I observed directly.

5 For a critique of the ‘new’ American party system, see Broder, David, The Party's Over: The Failure of Politics in America (New York: Harper, 1972).Google Scholar

6 Hoover, who directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1924 until his death in 1972, rode concern about communist subversion in the 1940s to a position so strong on Capitol Hill and with various parts of the public that for years he dealt with Presidents as he did in 1970, when he flatly rejected a White House plan for domestic intelligence and surveillance – the so-called Huston Plan – unless ordered to accept it over Nixon's own signature, a signature he evidently judged he would never see since the plan involved numerous illegalities. Faced thus, the President abandoned the plan. See the New York Times, 6 June 1973, for relevant testimony before the Senate select committee on the Watergate affair (formally the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Practices).

7 As one example among many of staff memoranda revealed in Senate hearings on the Watergate affair, see the famous ‘enemies list’ prepared by Dean, John for Colson, Charles; New York Times, 26 06 1973.Google Scholar For other examples, see the final report of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Practices, released in July 1974, and the evidence made public during 1974 by the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee pursuant to its inquiry into impeachment of President Nixon.

8 Ehrlichman, John, former Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs before the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Practices, New York Times, 25 07 1973.Google Scholar

9 The warning was given by his advisers on the transition, of whom I fear I was one. Watching the Eisenhower Administration from outside, we had failed to grasp the extent of this subtle change.

10 For some reason trends in scheduling, Administration by Administration, seem not to have been the subject of much scholarly inquiry. A monograph waits to be written!

11 For some elaboration on press conferences in Roosevelt's time and Truman's, see Cornwell, Elmer E. Jr. , Presidential Leadership and Public Opinion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965)Google Scholar, esp. Chap. 7.

12 Author's estimates, prepared after consultation with officials of the Office of Management and Budget.

13 Nixon's January budget (for fiscal 1974), presented after his re-election, recommended severe cuts in future funds for many programs, and at the same time announced ‘impoundment’ (stoppage) on the President's authority of current funds already appropriated by Congress. Impoundments at this time totalled many billions, unprecedented sums spread widely among programs in unprecedented fashion. A number of the post-election impoundments have since been declared unconstitutional by the lower federal courts. As of 1974, the Supreme Court had not reviewed any of these cases.

14 The case in question is Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company vs. Sawyer, with opinions handed down 2 June 1952.

15 Since this was written, the Supreme Court has ruled on claims to executive privilege (US vs. Nixon, 24 July 1974). Unlike the steel seizure case the decision was unanimous, with a single opinion. But the result, again, was to limit the presidency very little. The opinion prescribed only that in a criminal case before a court a concrete need for evidence took precedence over a generalized assertion of executive privilege unrelated to defense or diplomacy. Even so, ‘fishing expeditions’ were hedged against by severe screening procedures prescribed for judges. In this and other respects the opinion was respectful of executive privilege when asserted by the President even in generalized form. Indeed the Court, for the first time, explicitly grounded that privilege in the Constitution and suggested it might well be absolute for national security affairs. If anything this strengthens, not weakens, the presidency's formal powers.