178 Presidential politics
produced a strong reaction against what Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr has la-
belled ‘the Imperial Presidency’.
However, the desire to reduce the power of the presidency was an
over-simple reaction to an extremely complex situation. The Watergate
affair, though not of course in any sense inevitable, represents an extreme
possibility inherent in the way in which an eighteenth-century constitution
has evolved under the strains of twentieth-century conditions. The proximate
cause of Watergate was, no doubt, the character of President Nixon and of
the aides with whom he surrounded himself, but to understand the more
fundamental causes it is essential to see these events within the context of
the long-term trends in the American political system.
The American political system is extremely intricate. It has evolved in
response to the needs of a society that was expanding rapidly in quite unique
circumstances. In comparison with other nations, the United States was able
to establish itself in an environment that was in some ways very favourable
- an ‘open’ society with the possibility of expansion, a wealthy society, and
one that was for most of the nineteenth century free of foreign entangle-
ments and able to devote its energies to the solution of the problems of
settling and developing the continent. As a result, the political system that
emerged is able to do certain things very well indeed, and copes with other
problems much less efficiently. The structure of the electoral system, of the
parties and pressure groups, the organisation of the Congress – all these are
superbly adapted to the task of registering and reflecting the interests and
opinions of innumerable groups throughout the country and of aggregating
those interests in a way that will facilitate the emergence of compromise
policies, that often represent the lowest common denominator of interested
opinion. As a mechanism for this purpose the system is unsurpassed in the
modern world. The other side of this coin, however, is that the compromises
that work so well in so many fields are potentially disastrous in those areas
that demand coordinated and continuous policies. The compromise politics
of consensus give to interested groups the opportunity to delay, and to modify
substantially the policies that eventually emerge. In this way minorities de-
fend themselves from attack, but at the same time they gain the ability to
veto effective action on behalf of other minority groups. When confronted
by a head-on clash of interests, the political system, instead of being able to
resolve such conflicts, can only shelve them. The president, or the Supreme
Court, can exert considerable leverage, and by a courageous act of leader-
ship may sometimes move the political situation. Their autonomy, somewhat
apart from the pluralist battle, and their prestige, endows them with this
possibility, but in the process they must often subject themselves to vicious
attack. Their ability to exercise this leadership is limited by their personal
courage and skill, and by the institutional factors that hem them in.
The limitations on the power of the president are considerable. As power-
ful as the president is in the field of foreign affairs, a very different situation
exists in regard to domestic policy. The president may be frustrated by Con-