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Reagan and Jackson: Parallels in Political Time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2011
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There is widespread agreement among scholars that Franklin D. Roosevelt created the modern presidency, and he serves as their paradigm of successful presidential leadership. James MacGregor Burns, Richard Neustadt, Clinton Rossiter, and others who took their cues from them found in FDR the ideal heroic president. He combined extensive and sustained popularity, partisan support, skillful power-sensitive bargaining and persuasion, adept use of the prerogatives of the office, and consummate performance of the multiple roles of the president to make the American constitutional system work.
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1. Burns, James MacGregor, The Deadlock of Democracy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1956)Google Scholar, and Presidential Government: The Crucible of Leadership (Boston, 1965)Google Scholar; Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power (New York, 1960)Google Scholar; and Rossiter, Clinton, The American Presidency, rev. ed. (New York, 1960).Google Scholar
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9. Skowronek describes the process of regime generation and degeneration as follows: “Each regime begins with the rise to power of a new political coalition that is able to construct and legitimize a particular set of governing arrangements and, in so doing, to define relations between state and society in ways advantageous to its members. The dominant coalition then attempts to perpetuate its position by responding to changes in the nation at large through modifications and elaborations of its basic agenda. Once established, however, coalition interests can have an enervating effect on the governing capacities of these regimes. An immediate and constant problem is posed by conflicts of interest within the dominant coalition. The danger here is that attempts to elaborate the coalition's political agenda will focus a sectarian struggle, weaken regime support through factional disaffection, and open new avenues to power for the political opposition. A longer-range and ultimately more devastating problem is posed by changes in the nation at large that throw into question the dominant coalition's most basic commitments of ideology and interest. The danger here, of course, is that the entire political regime will be called into question as an inadequate governing instrument and then repudiated wholesale in a nationwide crisis of political legitimacy.” Skowronek, 1986, 293.
10. That involvement depends on two factors: the president's relationship to the dominant political party of the established regime and the vulnerability of the regime party's governmental commitments to repudiation. There are, then, four opportunities for the exercise of political leadership. “In the first, the basic governmental commitments of the previously dominant political party are vulnerable to direct repudiation, and the president is associated with opposition to them. In the second, basic governmental commitments of the previously dominant political party are again on the line, but this time the president is politically affiliated with them. In the third, the governmental commitments of the previously dominant political party still appear timely and politically resilient, but the president is linked with the political opposition to them. In the fourth, the governmental commitments of the previously dominant political party again appear timely and resilient, and the president is affiliated with them.” Skowronelc, 1986, 294. Skowronek designates these situations as the politics of reconstruction, disjunction, preemption, and articulation, respectively. It is the politics of reconstruction with which we are concerned here.
11. Skowronek, 1984,92.
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20. Remini, 1981,30.
21. Ibid., 117.
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23. Remini, 1984, 218.
24. The Second Bank of the United States developed out of the chaotic conditions of war finances and was intended, like its Hamiltonian predecessor, to restore the national credit, establish a sound currency, and secure the national debt. It was a government chartered monopoly and the largest corporation in the country. It played the dominant role in the currency and credit system and had an immense influence on the day-to-day operation of American business. The Bank was also heavily involved in politics by subsidizing its political friends and actively intervening in election campaigns.
25. The Bank veto signaled a more radical phase in Jackson's reform efforts. It not only cited constitutional arguments against recharter, which were at the time the only acceptable reasons for exercising a presidential veto; it also stated political, social, economic, and even nationalistic reasons. Jackson argued that the government must never confer exclusive privileges on anyone. He decried monopoly power and pronounced a theory of the minimal constitutional state. Government grants of power create unjustified inequalities and lead to the deprivation of liberty. He maintained that the stock of the Bank was controlled by the few, and yet the profits it provided them came from the taxpayers. Moreover, some $8 million worth of shares belonged to foreigners who helped to shape bank policy and who sucked money out of the country. To Jackson the Bank was a menace to the country's liberty and independence.
26. Jackson's strategy for the destruction of the Bank entailed removing the federal government's deposits and placing them in selected state banks. This caused a crisis within his administration since by law only the Secretary of the Treasury had authority to remove deposits. Jackson exercised his executive authority and removed two treasury secretaries, who had refused to transfer the deposits, before appointing Roger B. Taney, who carried out his directives.
27. Lamer, 164–92; and Remini, 1984, 84–116 and 142–79.
28. Remini, 1984, 154–55.
29. Remini, 1981, 184.
30. In reality, Jackson did not initiate the spoils system in American politics, nor did he in fact perpetrate a reign of terror upon government officials. He actually removed relatively few persons and those who replaced them were by and large drawn from the same educational and class backgrounds as those who had been dismissed, Remini, 1981, 186.
31. Richardson, 449.
32. Hofstader, 66.
33. The administrative presidency strategy uses administrative rather than legislative action to accomplish presidential policy objectives whenever it is possible to do so.
34. Heclo, Hugh, “Reaganism and the Search for a Public Philosophy,” in Palmer, John L., ed., Perspectives on the Reagan Years (Washington, 1986), 40Google Scholar. For other views of Reagan's political perspectives, see Dana Rohrbacher, “The Goals and Ideals of the Reagan Administration,” in Kymlicka and Matthews, eds., Reagan Revolution?, 25–41; James D. McNiven, “Ron, Reaganism, and Revolution: The Rise of the New American Political Economy,” in Kymlicka and Matthews, 54–64; and Lowi, Theodore J., “Ronald Reagan— Revolutionary?” in Salamon, Lester M. and Lund, Michael S., eds., The Reagan Presidency and the Governing of America (Washington, 1984), 36–46.Google Scholar
35. Heclo, 50. Also see McNiven, 56–59.
36. Laurence Barrett has remarked that the words in Reagan's inaugural address that he spoke with greatest conviction were his pledge to “curb the size and influence of the federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the federal government and those reserved to the states or to the people. The federal government did not create the states,” he continued, “the states created the federal government” (emphasis added). Gambling with History: Reagan in the White House (Garden City, NY, 1983), 14.Google Scholar
37. Richard P. Nathan, “Institutional Change Under Reagan,” in Palmer, ed., Perspectives on the Reagan Years, 139.
38. See James Tobin, “Reaganomics in Retrospect,” in Kymlicka and Matthews, eds., Reagan Revolution?, 85–103; Peter Gottschalk, “Retrenchment in Antipoverty Programs in the United States: Lessons for the Future,” in Kymlicka and Matthews, 131–45; R. Kent Weaver, “Social Policy in the Reagan Era,” in Kymlicka and Matthews, 146–61; Jack A. Meyer, “Social Programs and Social Policy,” in Palmer, ed., Perspectives on the Reagan Years, 65–89; and Isabel V. Sawhill, “Reaganomics in Retrospect,” in Palmer, 91–120.
39. Myer, 72.
40. Lowi, 49–56.
41. Chubb, John E. and Peterson, Paul E., “Realignment and Institutionalization,” in Chubb, and Peterson, , eds., The New Direction in American Politics (Washington, 1985), 30.Google Scholar
42. Sawhill, 102.
43. Charles O. Jones, “A New President, A Different Congress, A Maturing Agenda,” Salamon and Lund, eds., The Reagan Presidency and the Governing of America, 285.
44. Ibid.
45. Kernell, 124.
46. Richard P. Nathan, “The Reagan Presidency in Domestic Affairs,” in Greenstein, ed., The Reagan Presidency, 70–77.
47. Allen Schick, “The Budget as an Instrument of Presidential Policy,” in Salamon and Lund, eds., The Reagan Presidency and the Governing of America, 113.
48. Bert A. Rockman, “Conclusions: An Imprint but Not a Revolution,” in Kymlicka and Matthews, eds., Reagan Revolution?, 205.
49. Ibid., 202.
50. Schneider, 40.
51. Rockman, 206. However, Rockman observes that Reaganism did not risk attacking the institutionalized dependencies built on the entitlement programs of the New Deal and the Great Society.
52. Schneider, 40.