150 Presidential politics
The president has four main political functions. First, like Congress, al-
though necessarily in a very different way, to act as a broker between the
contending interests that make demands upon the government. No presi-
dent can afford to ignore the demands, some trivial, some gargantuan, that
develop in the political system. The president may be looking towards re-
election or simply attempting to secure political support in matters of vital
concern to the administration’s policies, but in either case the political game
must be played. The president is potentially the ultimate target, direct or
indirect, of every individual or group that wishes to promote or defeat legisla-
tion, to obtain the exercise of a presidential power or to affect the operation
of the administration. In a multitude of matters of governmental concern
the attempt to gain the ear of the president will not be worth the effort and
no attempt will be made. The decision to attract presidential attention will
not necessarily depend simply upon the intrinsic importance of the matter
at issue, but also upon the politics of access to the president. Individuals or
groups who potentially have support to offer the president, whether it be the
likelihood of voting support in a congressional battle or simply the friendship
of someone whom the president may trust, will be in a privileged position as
far as access is concerned. Whether this results in actual presidential support
for the policy is quite another matter – but access in itself is a vitally impor-
tant factor when a single person must cram so much into a working day. In
many matters of vital concern to interest groups, presidential intervention
or the refusal to intervene, may be decisive, although presidential support
for a particular point of view is by no means a guarantee of success. Thus
the presidency is a pluralistic institution like the other parts of the system,
although in a very different dimension.
The first political function of the president, then, is to reflect and react
to pluralistic pressures, but the second function, paradoxically, tends to cut
across and even contradict this line of action. The second political function
is to attempt to interpret and pursue the national interest as the president
sees it. The idea of the national interest is fraught with difficulties for the
student of politics. Indeed, those who see the political system in extreme
pluralistic terms deny that the concept can have any meaning. Objectively,
it is true, there may not be any policy, or set of policies, that can be un-
equivocally designated as being in the interest of the whole nation, except
perhaps when one can isolate a situation that would lead to its complete
destruction. Nearly every policy will help or harm different groups in varying
degrees. The decisions of governments inevitably strike some sort of balance
between the advantages and disadvantages that they anticipate will result
from alternative policies, so that the national interest can almost always be
resolved into sets of conflicting pluralistic interests. Nevertheless, whatever
the objective realities of the national interest may be, the person who holds the
office of president must do more than simply attempt to strike compromises
between contending interests. Policy goals must be identified that seem to
provide the best long-term prospects – economic, social and strategic – for