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Ronald Reagan—Another Hidden-Hand Ike?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Fred I. Greenstein
Fred I. Greenstein*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Name the president.

He was enormously popular during his eight years in the White House. In contrast to Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter, he not only entered but also left office riding high in the polls. Yet when he stepped down the experts who make it their business to observe presidents closely did not join in the public adulation. The verdict of the Washington watchers was that he had been a passive participant in his own presidency, remaining disconnected from day-to-day politics and policy.

For the young this can have been only one president—Ronald Reagan. But those whose political memories reach back to the 1950s may recognize that he could also have been the only other two-term president in the post-New Deal era—Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The description of Ike as out of the loop in his own presidency was unquestioned at the time that Eisenhower left office. When Arthur Schlesinger asked a panel of distinguished students of the presidency to rank 31 American presidents in terms of greatness, they placed Eisenhower 21st—a tie with Chester A. Arthur (Schlesinger, 1962).

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 7 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1990

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