Presidential politics 179gress on those matters the administration considers essential to the national
interest, and unable to ensure the passage of legislation, whether trivial or
vital in importance. To pursue a vigorous policy in respect of domestic legisla-
tion requires a tremendous commitment on the part of the president, backed
by all the charisma that can be mustered. A John F. Kennedy can put all his
enormous appeal into his relations with Congress and the public, and then
fail miserably. A Lyndon Johnson can use all his ability as a wheeler-dealer to
get a large legislative programme through Congress, only to see the results
dissipated in the impossible complexity of the administrative arrangements
necessary to win congressional approval. An Eisenhower without the urge to
build great domestic programmes can withdraw to the golf course; a Nixon
can withdraw to an aloof, remote world apart. For all of them the temptation
to spend more and more of their time and effort on foreign policy is almost
overwhelming.
The roots of this situation are to be found in the institutional and political
developments that dominated the twentieth century. There was a vast cen-
tralisation of government authority and an increase in the power and func-
tions of the federal government in that period. There was also a consequent
expansion in the statutory powers and functions of the president. It is to
the federal government, and hence to the president, that Americans looked
increasingly for the solutions to the problems of their society. However, at
the same time as this centralisation of constitutional and legal authority was
taking place, there was under way an increasing decentralisation of political
power, making it more and more difficult for the federal government to ex-
ercise effectively the authority that it had accumulated. The most significant
fact of American government during the twentieth century was that the centralisation of
government authority took place without a corresponding centralisation of political power.
On the contrary, the power base of the president, the only truly national
political figure in the country, was seriously weakened. Congress became
more and more a collection of individuals, Senators and Congressmen who
did not feel committed to support the president, even a president of their
own party. This decentralisation of political power resulted from the ending
of the patronage system, from the evolution of the American welfare state
and the disappearance of machine politics, and from the introduction of pri-
mary elections. The whole basis of the coherent political structure that was
relevant to the problems of politics in the nineteenth century was removed,
but was not replaced by any other coherent organising principle of politics. A
president with a strong character could battle against this system and try to
dominate it by sheer force of character; a weak person had to turn to other
means of ego-maintenance.
The opening years of the twenty-first century saw an apparently new situ-
ation: a Republican president allied with a Republican majority in the House
of Representatives, and also in the Senate after 2002. There was a more
ideological orientation to inter-party conflict and an increase in partisanship
in the Congress, suggesting that the president was more likely to get his