History News Service

Leadership and the New Bush Administration

By Jeffrey J. Matthews
History News Service

If the political pundits are to be believed, the next president of the United States is destined for failure. By implication, historians can begin to prepare George W. Bush's place alongside other ineffective chief executives such as Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan.

These dire projections, routinely made by "talking head" journalists, scholars, attorneys and politicians, rest upon a simplistic and shortsighted understanding of leadership and history.

These observers argue that such a close election will deprive the new president of broad popular support. Moreover, the rancorous legal wrangling over dimples, chads and absentee ballots has raised the ire of diehard partisans who will try to weaken the president by carping about his legitimacy. Worse still, the argument goes, the next chief executive will be hamstrung by the evenly divided Congress.

While it is certainly true that these initial circumstances may make governance by the Bush administration difficult, the political prophets of the day fail to appreciate that leadership is not static. Leadership, presidential or otherwise, is a dynamic process that revolves around three complex elements -- the leader, the followers and the situation.

When contemplating leadership, most people focus primarily, if not exclusively, on the leader. Certainly the leader plays a pivotal role in the process. Too often however there is a false presumption that the leader, or in this case the next president, is a predictable, one-dimensional figure, acting in a vacuum.

But a leader's behavior and ultimate effectiveness depend upon multiple factors. There are, for example, many facets to his or her personality, intellect and experience. Furthermore, the American presidency has varied and vast sources of power, which can be wielded in different ways to influence followers and the general course of events. We have only to look at Harry S. Truman, a relatively unknown figure when he became president, whose administration ended World War II and created the Marshall Plan, or John F. Kennedy, who was elected by the narrowest of margins, to see that men with no "mandates" can govern effectively.

While most television pundits give short shrift to the numerous dimensions of the presidency, they do appear to be fixated on the second major component of the leadership process: the followers.

Political commentators are rightfully focusing attention on the role of the next Congress. To lead successfully, the president needs cooperation from the legislative branch. Despite the even balance of power in the Senate and House, some level of cooperation with the chief executive is possible. Both political parties, for example, are already feeling public pressure to find grounds for unity and compromise. Citizens will expect Congress to follow the president's lead.

Analysts would do well to grant more attention to the potential power of what Theodore Roosevelt called the bully pulpit. A president can effectively influence Congress by galvanizing follower support outside of Washington, D.C. Should the public determine that the president's political opponents in Congress are impediments to progress, it could tilt the legislative power balance in favor of the executive in the mid-term elections.Such a development would reveal the importance of the third major element in the leadership process: the situation. The most common and serious mistake made by today's presidential prognosticators is their failure to appreciate how quickly leadership conditions can change. Indeed, they can change drastically.

When George H. W. Bush was elected president in November 1988, who predicted that the nation would soon be embroiled in a major war in the Middle East? Who in 1988 predicted that Bush would come to enjoy public approval ratings in excess of 80 percent? Who in 1988 predicted that Bush would fail to win reelection because of a faltering American economy? Faulty and even pessimistic predictions are not uncommon in American presidential history. Few contemporaries imagined that Truman, Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt would emerge as transformational leaders. Only a broad understanding of these leaders, their followers and their situations can explain their effectiveness.

In short, current political handicappers lack an adequate appreciation of leadership and American history. Their forecasts, based on limited knowledge of future events, are hardly reliable.

Leadership is a dynamic process involving unique leaders and followers living in a world of shifting conditions and priorities. Because our information about the next four years is so limited, it borders on the ridiculous to speculate on the effectiveness of a Bush presidency.

Jeffrey J. Matthews teaches leadership in the school of business and public administration at the University of Puget Sound and is a writer for the History News Service.

[Jeffrey J. Matthews, School of Business and Public Administration, University of Puget Sound, 1500 Warner, Tacoma, WA 98416-0032. Telephone: (253) 879-3155; fax: (253) 879-3156; email: jmatthews@ups.edu.]