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Executive Authority in America and the Analytical Shortcomings of the Modern Presidency Construct

by

Daniel Galvin, Yale University

Colleen Shogan, George Mason University

August 30, 2002

Prepared for delivery at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 29 – September 1, 2002. Copyright by the American Political Science Association. Please do not cite this version without permission. Comments would be warmly welcomed to daniel.galvin@yale.edu and cshogan@gmu.edu.

The concept of the “modern presidency” is the anchoring paradigm of presidential studies today. In Presidential Power, Richard Neustadt (1960) first described the attributes of the modern presidency, and Fred Greenstein (1977; 1978) later codified the term. The modern presidency construct has been useful in clarifying our understanding of important developmental changes to the presidency, including the proliferation of bureaucratic and administrative structures within the executive branch over the last seventy years (Burke 1992; Hart 1995; Heclo 1977; Pfiffner 1993) , the rise in public expectations for presidential agenda-setting and legislative activism (Edwards 1989; Light 1982; Peterson 1990; Wayne 1978) , the heightened awareness of the relationship between the presidency and public opinion (Edwards 1983; Kernell 1997; Lowi 1985; Miroff 1993; Tulis 1987) , and the new powers derived from the president’s increased involvement in international affairs (Fisher 1995; Lowi 1985; Rose 1988; Schlesinger 1973) . But the notion that the presidency has undergone a fundamental “metamorphosis,” “transformation,” or “quantum change” during the modern period (Greenstein 1978; 1977) has encouraged a bifurcated frame of analysis, in which modern and pre-modern presidents stand on opposite sides of a historical divide (Bimes and Skowronek 1999). In general, scholars characterize nineteenth century presidents as possessing fewer resources for the exercise of leadership than their modern successors.

Analyzing the under-studied nineteenth century presidencies of John Tyler, James Polk, and Rutherford B. Hayes, this paper argues that many of the characteristics of the presidency that are claimed to be distinctively modern are, in fact, trans-historical. Specifically, the propensity for presidents to seek control, authority, and autonomy (Moe 1985b) is not a distinctively modern phenomenon, but an enduring institutional characteristic. Indeed, the origins of this propensity can be found in the institutionalized ambivalence of executive power in the Constitution (Mansfield 1993) . The Founders defined executive power ambiguously, and left presidents to claim the authority and derive powers that were not specifically granted to them in the Constitution. The presidential quest for autonomy, authority, and legitimacy is a perennial struggle that transcends the boundaries of the temporal modern-traditional division in presidential scholarship.

Although most modern presidency scholars acknowledge that a few pre-modern presidents, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, claimed unprecedented authority for their actions and expanded the understanding of executive power in America, they are treated as exceptions to the rule. Instead, the predominant paradigms are that “presidential power was generally weak before 1932” (Greenstein 1977) and that modern power “cannot be acquired or employed on the same terms as those benefiting” pre-modern presidents (Neustadt 1960) . In contrast, we argue that there are fundamental similarities in the way presidents have “acquired” power throughout American history. In the case studies below, we demonstrate that the tendency for presidents to actively claim authority and seek out reliable resources for the exercise of power is neither distinctly modern nor particularly extraordinary. Rather, it is a common tendency that finds its roots in the peculiar, ambiguous form of executive power in America.

Executive Power in the U.S. Constitution

The idea of the executive as a non-monarchical entity originates in the political thought of Machiavelli. In The Prince, Machiavelli argued that the power of the prince is not bound by law and the institutions of governance, and is not restricted by the liberal Christian virtues admonishing cruelty. The prince acts as he chooses. However, he must justify his actions by claiming to represent something greater than himself—the people, the laws, the stability of the state. His authority to act with prerogative, while not democratic, still relies upon his need for legitimacy, or at least the appearance of legitimacy. Although independence is a precondition for the exercise of power, the prince cannot simply assume his autonomy; he must earn it. Mansfield (1993) explains:

This is to recognize openly the necessity of tyranny in the character of the prince, who initiates and innovates, even while he seeks democratic sanction for his actions so that he may seem merely to execute the people’s will. Later, chiefly by the thinking of John Locke, the Machiavellian prince was regularized as an office, called the executive, and juxtaposed to the legislative power in a constitutional framework, in the ambivalent form we recognize: now subordinate, now independent. In the deliberate design of this ambivalence may be found the modern doctrine of executive power (19).

According to Mansfield (1993), the Founders’ great accomplishment was to “tame” Machiavelli’s prince and imitate Locke’s executive by institutionalizing the executive power in a democratic system of government.

Not all the characteristics of Machiavelli’s prince were lost in the taming process; in fact, the essential ambivalence of executive power provides the motive force behind the American presidency. The Constitution prescribes that “the executive power shall be vested in a President,” but nowhere is the executive power explicitly defined. The ambiguity of executive power stands in sharp contrast to the specificity of the legislative powers enumerated in Article I – “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress” (emphasis added) (McDonald 1994) . These constitutional “silences” regarding executive power grant presidents the right – indeed, the requirement – to define executive power according to circumstance, to seek authority according to necessity, and to claim legitimacy for political actions where there is no doctrinal warrant (Pious 1979) . Although the debate over why the founders institutionalized the ambiguity of executive power is an interesting one, the important point here is that the presidency, unlike the Congress, must work to achieve the authority it is not explicitly granted.

Presidents cannot always declare their authority – often it must be negotiated, justified, and achieved. As political actors operating within a political system inhabited by other institutions vying for power and authority, presidents must ensure their institutional rights, per se, in relation to other institutions of governance. They must carve out specific realms of governance in which their actions will be considered legitimate and authoritative. Like Machiavelli’s prince, they yearn for autonomy; but unlike the prince, their authority must be derived from the democratic political system in which they operate. By actively confronting existing institutional arrangements, redefining political understandings, and seizing upon any number of available resources, presidents throughout history have actively crafted their personal, political, and institutional authority.

Institutional Incentives of the American Presidency

Moe (1985b, 1993) advances an understanding of the president’s institutional incentives that is quite similar to ours, but his theory is delimited by the concept of the modern presidency. Moe’s fundamental assumptions support our contentions: presidents attempt to meet a variety of goals, including reelection and historical greatness, by appearing strong and “by being autonomous” (1993, 364). To achieve this autonomy, presidents take “aggressive action within their own sphere of authority to shift the structure of politics for themselves and everyone else” (1993, 367). According to Moe, “autonomy is an integral part of their institutional incentive structure, part of what it means to be a good president” (1993, 365).

Moe is right to recognize that presidents are motivated by a “quest for control” and autonomy. But like many modern presidency scholars, he mistakenly claims that this quest began with the growth of the bureaucracy and the dramatic rise in expectations for presidential leadership that followed from Franklin Roosevelt’s activist presidency. Modern presidents, Moe says, respond to these unreasonable expectations by trying to shape the structure of the political bureaucracy to be more responsive to their personal control. They aggressively build administrative and regulatory institutions that are more tractable, pose challenges to the structure of the congressional bureaucracy, and act unilaterally whenever possible. By “centralizing” their administrative capacities and “politicizing” the political agenda, presidents gain more personal autonomy and institutional authority (Moe 1985a; b; 1989, 1993; Moe and Howell 1999a; b).

It is our contention that the institutional incentives that lead presidents to centralize and politicize result not only from the politics of structural choice, but more fundamentally from the ambiguity of executive power and the elusiveness of authority that is inherent in the office itself. Moe makes a strong case that aggressive administrative and bureaucratic management is the most prominent manifestation of this incentive in the modern period. But because his theory neglects the first century of American history, it falls short of recognizing that presidents have claimed authority in a variety of ways over time. Because Moe lets the structural politics of the modern period drive his definition of the president’s institutional incentives, he misses the creative ways in which presidents have pursued reliable resources of executive power and authority over time. We contend that the motivation to politicize and centralize the presidency is not a modern phenomenon, but a reaction to a pervasive institutional incentive.

Over time, presidents have achieved personal, political, and institutional authority by utilizing a variety of available resources. They have derived authority from their political party (Van Buren, Pierce, B. Harrison), from “the people” (Jackson, T. Roosevelt), from their individual persona (Washington, Reagan), from the formal, doctrinal powers of the office (Madison, Taft), and from their role as head-of-state (Wilson, G.W. Bush). Some presidents have constructed legitimacy for their actions by adopting new vehicles of rhetoric (Jefferson, Wilson), by expanding the powers of the commander-in-chief (Lincoln, Truman, LBJ), and even by independently setting limitations on their own authority (W.H. Harrison, Buchanan, Taft). Others have asserted their prerogative through the frequent use of their formal powers (Cleveland, FDR), by aggressively appealing to the public for support (A. Johnson, Clinton), and by initiating military conflicts (Polk, T. Roosevelt). In a plethora of ways, presidents have seized resources, claimed mandates, and constructed legitimacy through their actions.

In this paper, we show how “pre-modern” presidents actively pursued independent authority by creating presidential autonomy vis-à-vis three different political institutions. John Tyler battled vigorously against overzealous Whigs in Congress to secure the institutional independence of the presidency and the vice presidential succession process. By making innovations in budgetary procedures, James Polk created new avenues of bureaucratic authority for the presidency. Through his ambitious efforts to displace and eliminate entrenched interests and political patronage that impinged on the president’s ability to exercise autonomous leadership, Rutherford B. Hayes took early steps towards emancipating the executive from his own party. Most “modern” presidents and a few exceptional “pre-modern” presidents (Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt) are generally appreciated for their efforts to create executive authority. But as the following three case studies demonstrate, even lesser-noted presidents have faced the same institutional incentive: to seek political authority that is not explicitly granted to them by the Constitution.

Battling with Congress to Create Authority: The Presidency of John Tyler

New presidents enter office with a variety of resources, skills, and opportunities for the exercise of leadership. Whether a president is affiliated with or opposed to the dominant political regime can influence his prospects for leadership (Skowronek 1997). Likewise, the president’s electoral margin can have a similar impact on his ability to claim a mandate for governance (Conley 2001) . The manner in which the president comes to power is generally considered an important factor in determining the prospects of the new administration. It is fitting, then, to consider the presidency of John Tyler, who assumed office with quite possibly the least amount of authority of any president in American history, yet who defended his institutional prerogatives with vigorous determination.

As a case study of the perennial quest for executive authority, John Tyler’s presidency demonstrates that before a president can create new forms of authority, he must first defend his legitimacy. As we have noted above, the ambiguity of executive power compels presidents to seize any and all available resources for the exercise of authority; but as a precondition for the exercise of power, presidents must ensure their right to govern among other institutions and political forces vying for power. In this case, Tyler faced a Congress which sought to limit the authority of the presidency as an institution and discredit the president as an individual. As the first vice president to test the constitutional provisions for succession, Tyler’s actions generated enormous resistance from both Whigs and Democrats in Congress; he faced the unenviable task of defending his right to exercise the executive power in a particularly hostile political environment. John Tyler’s presidency demonstrates that even presidents with relatively few warrants for the exercise of leadership are driven to assert presidential prerogatives and defend presidential authority.

Securing Formal Authority

With the election of William Henry Harrison to the presidency in 1840, the Whig party hoped to reverse the course of presidential aggrandizement set by Andrew Jackson and return congressional supremacy to the federal government. In his inaugural address, Harrison promised to put into practice the Whig’s restrictive understanding of executive power. Overjoyed congressional Whigs fully expected their program to be fully implemented without significant interference from the executive branch. But Harrison’s untimely death a month later left to his successor the responsibility of living up to the Whig creed. John Tyler, however, had been nominated as the Whig party’s vice presidential candidate for political reasons, not for his dedication to the Whig party program. He was a states’ rights southerner who brought sectional balance to the party coalition, and he had provided valuable support to key Whig party leaders in the recent past. Tyler was a Democrat until the mid-1830s, and only left the party to demonstrate his opposition to Jackson’s excessive use of executive power. When placing him on the ticket, the Whig party had “asked him no questions about his views and required him to make no pledges” (Seager 135).

Harrison’s untimely death prompted an urgent debate over how to fill the vacuum of power he left behind. Should Tyler become the president? Or should he remain Vice President, acting as president? Like many other passages in the Constitution, the instructions regarding succession leave considerable room for interpretation. It reads: “in the case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President.” Precisely what “the same” means is unclear: is it the “said office,” or “the powers and duties?” Tyler’s detractors, including Harrison’s cabinet, declared that “Mr. Tyler must, while performing the functions of President, bear the title of Vice-President, acting President” and several major newspapers concurred that Tyler should assume the powers and duties of the presidency but not the office itself (Morgan 7-11).

Once Tyler reached Washington, D.C., he immediately took the presidential oath of office. He swore to “faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States” and “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” This action profoundly affected the legitimacy of his status, providing him with the formal authority of the office, not just of the president’s duties. Although former president John Quincy Adams regarded Tyler’s assumption of the presidency as a “direct violation of both the grammar and context of the Constitution” (Adams 463-4), most of Tyler’s critics reluctantly acknowledged that Tyler’s oath to execute the office of President was tantamount to being himself the President. Tyler’s possession of the office of the presidency entitled him to interpret the power of the executive as he saw fit for the remainder of his presidency. Although he would face constant ridicule for his “accidental” presidency, his formal authority was secured. The oath of office proved to be his first and most important resource of power.

Amidst the national frenzy over Harrison’s death, Tyler delivered an inaugural address, which he considered “a brief exposition of the principles which will govern me in the general course of my administration” (Morgan 18). Using the first person rhetorically was a direct claim of autonomy, and it did not go unnoticed in the press or in the House of Representatives, where a motion was made to force the title upon Tyler of “Vice-President, now exercising the duties of President” (the motion failed). Had Tyler hesitated for another day, week, or month to assert his authority as President, it is reasonable to assume that his congressional detractors would have seized the opportunity to debilitate the presidency and its powers and advance their objective of legislative supremacy. Thus from a defensive posture began the assertive presidency of John Tyler.

Defending Institutional Autonomy

Tyler took many crucial actions in the early days of his administration to defend the presidency and his own political authority. Among the numerous conflicts he faced, perhaps Tyler’s most personally trying experience was with his cabinet. Wishing to preserve the delicate factional balance of the Whig party and prevent further national strife during his transition to the presidency, Tyler decided to maintain Harrison’s cabinet. But the Cabinet was comprised of Clay supporters who showed hostility to Tyler’s assertions of executive autonomy. Daniel Webster, the sitting Secretary of State, explained to Tyler that President Harrison had made all policy decisions by a majority vote in the cabinet, and the president received one vote. Tyler seized this opportunity to defend his autonomy. He declared: “I am the President, and I shall be held responsible for my administration. I shall be pleased to avail myself of your counsel and advice. But I can never consent to being dictated to as to what I shall or shall not do…When you think otherwise, your resignations will be accepted” (Seager 149). In Federalist 70, Publius contended that unity is an essential component of energy in the office, but it can be destroyed by “vesting it ostensibly in one man, subject, in whole or in part, to the control and cooperation of others, in the capacity of counsellors to him.” By defending the unity of the executive in the face of overwhelming political and personal pressure, Tyler took a major step in asserting the autonomy and authority of the presidency.

Harrison’s Cabinet only lasted a few short months, when all but one of the secretaries resigned in protest against Tyler’s second veto of Clay’s national bank bill. The resignations were an unprecedented vote of no-confidence, intended to pressure Tyler to resign (which would have elevated Senate President Samuel Southard, a Clay man, to the presidency). But Tyler did not concede. He stated: “My resignation would amount to a declaration to the world that our system of government had failed…that the provision made for the death of the President was…so defective as to merge all executive powers in the legislative branch of the government” (Seager 161). Instead, Tyler swiftly nominated a new Cabinet and established new procedures. Although fourteen men circulated through Tyler’s Cabinet during the next three years, Tyler ensured that the personnel structure around him consistently reflected his own politics – a blend of northern-style conservatism and states’ rights. Tyler insisted that his Cabinet recognize its subordination to the president, act harmoniously, and “conform to my opinions” on all matters. The Cabinet meetings were to “involve no more than friendly discussions on how best to implement commonly agreed-upon principles” (Seager 162).

Ingeniously, Tyler found a way of centralizing and politicizing his administration without disrupting contemporary norms of presidential behavior. His initial decision to keep Harrison’s Cabinet was well-received; replacing it immediately would have been viewed as a frontal assault on the Whig party. Instead, Tyler circumvented the Harrison Cabinet by frequently soliciting the advice of informal advisers. When the Cabinet willingly resigned, Tyler finally had his opportunity to shape the institution of the presidency to suit his personal style and political objectives. Indeed, there is evidence that Tyler may have even encouraged the exodus of the Harrison Cabinet in order to rebuild his administration in his image. [1] Thus, the ambiguities of executive power compelled Tyler, like so many others, to actively take “aggressive action within [his] own sphere of authority to shift the structure of politics for [himself] and everyone else” (Moe 1993). Like “modern” presidents of the post-FDR era, Tyler worked to “centralize” decision-making procedures and “politicize” and personalize his administration’s agenda.

Not only did Tyler defend the autonomy of the presidency against encroachments from within his administration, he also protected the institutional prerogatives of the presidency from Congressional usurpation. Tyler refused to concede the president’s prerogative to be involved in the policymaking process; he frequently exercised his constitutional power to veto legislation; he refused to submit to congressional pressure regarding the exchange of information across the branches; and he defended the presidential custom of appointing family and friends to political positions. Although he was besieged by attempts to deprive the presidency of its governing authority, Tyler used any and all resources at his disposal to resist. He also laboriously articulated the constitutional principles from which he derived his authority. The ambiguity of executive power in the Constitution enabled Tyler to define executive power according to circumstance, thus proving to be a useful tool in the defense of executive authority.

During Tyler’s first year in office, Clay and the Whig-dominated Congress repeatedly passed legislation to reestablish a national bank despite the president’s warnings that he would most likely veto such measures. Tyler considered the Whig proposal for a national bank to be a violation of states’ rights; on the tariff bill and proposed legislation regarding the distribution of the proceeds from the sale of public lands, he also stood against the congressional Whig position. For each of the bills that Tyler vetoed, he made a principled defense of the president’s prerogative to reject legislation and explained why he viewed the measures as conflicting with the public’s interest. In a letter, Tyler explained that he refused to yield his “honor, conscience, and everything sacred among men” to the will of Congress. “Each branch of the government is independent of every other,” Tyler stated, “and heaven forbid that day should ever come when either can dictate to the other. The Constitution never designed that the executive should be a mere cipher.” (Tyler 171). The Whigs, in turn, remained intractable, and sent the same legislation back to Tyler – a strategy to provide Henry Clay with a platform for his presidential candidacy 1844. Democrats, for their part, provided little assistance to the struggling president.

Once his feeble attempts to persuade members of Congress to follow a more moderate course through indirect channels failed, Tyler’s only chance for autonomy was to exercise the president’s formal power of the veto—which he did repeatedly. The Whig press turned against the president for obstructing the centerpiece of Clay’s program, calling his claim of executive autonomy “one of the most odious of those Jacksonian pretensions” (Morgan 64). A Clay Whig suggested that “as a man of honor Tyler ought to resign or accede to Whig principles” (Peterson 1989, 67). He was burned in effigy, threatened with assassination, and formally expelled from the Whig party (Chitwood 249). Henry Clay led the congressional effort to amend the Constitution to allow a majority vote to override a presidential veto. In a letter to Tyler, Secretary of the Navy Abel Upshur noted that the Clay bill “directly asserts that that is a favorable time for that body to enlarge its powers, because the President has no party, and is too weak to resist” (Tyler 179). Public reaction to the president’s vetoes was mixed – members of the Whig party were divided, and Democrats who supported the vetoes refused to show much enthusiasm for Tyler as a political leader.

But Tyler stood firm, and challenged Congress to impeach him rather than mangle the authority of the executive. In a “protest message” submitted to the Congressional Record, Tyler stated that he refused to stand idly by as Congress desecrated the constitutional power of the presidency. Like Machiavelli’s prince, who seeks legitimacy for his actions by claiming to represent others, Tyler defended his actions by referencing the representative nature of the executive power in America – representative yet autonomous, accountable yet independent. He wrote: “I represent the executive authority of the people of the United States, and it is in their name…that I protest against every attempt to break down the undoubted constitutional power of this department without a solemn amendment of that fundamental law.” (Morgan 52-3) In contrast to the Whig proposition that the President is “dependent upon and responsible” to Congress, Tyler argued that the presidency was an autonomous institution that derived its authority from the Constitution and the people (Tyler 180). Tyler promised to stand firm against Congress in the interest of the people, the laws, and the constitutional balance of powers.

Tyler was therefore careful to articulate the compatibility of executive power with democratic ideals of governance. Amidst an ongoing debate over the propriety of policy-oriented presidential vetoes, Tyler defended presidential authority in terms of the fundamental relationship between executive power and democracy. Although Tyler lacked a political party or any demonstrable popular support, he found that a principled defense of the representative nature of the presidency was sufficient to resist congressional encroachments. Indeed, it worked: a temporary wave of popular support followed in the wake of Tyler’s impassioned messages, and Congress failed to override his vetoes.

In February 1842, Congress requested detailed information about negotiations between the Tyler administration and Great Britain over a disputed boundary in Maine. Tyler refused to transfer the materials to Congress, explaining that the divulgence of information threatened to interfere with U.S.-British relations; more importantly, it would threaten the constitutional authority of the president to make treaties. The following month, rumors that Tyler intended to remove loyal Whigs from office and replace them with Democrats motivated congressional Whigs to request that detailed reports on any and all applicants for office during the first two years of Tyler’s term be transferred to Congress. The request was not entirely motivated by scandal politics—throughout Tyler’s presidency, favors and appointments were granted to his friends, family, and supporters. But Tyler believed that the president had the prerogative to make appointments without the interference of the legislative branch, and his reply to Congress reflected this obduracy. Nowhere in the Constitution, Tyler proclaimed, was the legislative branch granted the right “to hear the reasons which an applicant may urge for an appointment to office under the executive department” (Peterson 1989, 170-2). Congress’ request infringed upon the “duties and powers which the Constitution has conferred exclusively on the Executive.” “It becomes me,” Tyler continued, “in defense of the Constitution and the laws of the United States to protect the Executive department from all encroachment” (Peterson 1989, 170-171; Morgan 88-9). Tyler was careful not to claim an absolute right to control all information flowing from the executive to the legislative branches. But when he was presented with an opportunity to formally defend the discretionary power of the presidency, Tyler did so aggressively and assertively, utilizing every resource he could muster.

Tyler achieved authority for his accidental presidency by forcefully asserting his autonomy in dealings with the Cabinet, in the policymaking process, and in institutional relations with Congress. His most readily available resources were the formal powers of the presidency, which he used effectively to thwart the Whig program and reach more moderate policy outcomes. Despite having to persevere through grueling personal and political assaults, Tyler managed to ensure the legitimacy of vice presidential succession and defend the executive power at a pivotal time in the development of the presidency. Tyler wrote to his son in a March 12, 1848 letter:

If in the tide of defamation and abuse shall turn, and my administration come to be praised, future Vice-Presidents who may succeed to the Presidency may feel some slight encouragement to pursue an independent course. In no other contingency will any one thus situated be anything more than a mere instrument in the hands of the ambitious and aspiring demagogues; the executive power will be completely in abeyance, and the Congress will unite the legislative and executive functions (Tyler 107).

By taking decisive actions throughout his presidency, Tyler earned the contempt of both political parties. He was widely vilified, and by the end of his term he could claim only the support of a handful of states’ rights moderates from his home state of Virginia. But through numerous battles with Congress, Tyler secured his own autonomy and preserved the authority of the presidency. Tyler demonstrated that even a president without a party, an electoral mandate, or a political future could draw upon the ambiguities of executive power to preserve presidential authority.

Controlling the Bureaucracy to Create Authority: The Presidency of James K. Polk

Presidential scholars widely recognize James Polk’s expansive use of executive power as commander-in-chief during the Mexican War. But the credit he has received for his aggressive foreign policymaking has overshadowed his distinction as the first president to exercise bureaucratic control over the federal budget. In an unprecedented effort to claim new presidential autonomy, Polk manipulated the ambiguous structure surrounding fiscal policy to his own advantage. His innovations in executive branch procedures created new authority for the presidency where none had previously existed. Unlike Tyler, Polk’s legitimacy as president was never questioned. Instead, Polk was an innovator who sought new ways of exercising independence and control in the executive branch. When Polk wrote, “In any event I intend to be myself President of the U.S.,” (Bergeron 23) he foreshadowed his creative executive independence.

Every year, the various bureaus and offices within each department of the executive branch generated their annual estimates. Before sending their budget estimates to the Secretary of the Treasury, department heads reviewed individual bureau budget requests. In a final step, the Secretary of the Treasury gathered all departmental budgets and transmitted a compiled fiscal budget to Congress. Therefore, prior to Polk’s presidency, Congress did not receive an “executive budget” per say, but “collected departmental estimates” that may or may not have been subject to scrutiny (White 78). As it stood, the President did not exercise any power or control in the process. In general, Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury shaped fiscal policy in the early nineteenth century. Polk, however, realized that nothing prevented the president’s interjection. Immediately after taking office in 1845, he began exercising control over the federal budget.

In pursuit of his goal to control the departments in the executive branch, Polk held two lengthy Cabinet meetings each week and insisted upon regular attendance (Bergeron 36). At these meetings, all policies, including expenditures, were discussed. Polk used the Cabinet as a coordinating body (White 62). Polk believed that if he assumed overarching control over all the departments and encouraged the Cabinet to work together cohesively, the federal budget could become the dominion of the executive. Polk insisted upon budget cuts across the board and avoided playing favorites within his Cabinet. In part, Polk’s equanimity stemmed from his desire to insure “equal and exact justice” to every interest in the Democratic Party. But more importantly, Polk’s approach to administrative management facilitated bureaucratic compliance. If the Postmaster General knew that the Secretary of the Navy also needed to cut his budget, it was likely he would comply with Polk’s recommendations. In short, Polk treated his Cabinet not only as a policymaking and advisory institution, but also as an instrument of administrative control (White 92-93).

Polk achieved control over the various executive departments through his painstaking attention to detail (White 69). Whereas earlier presidents had allowed department heads to run their divisions with little supervision, Polk used the ambiguity of his executive authority to his advantage, pushing the scope of his power to the fore as a way of protecting his own political program. Specifically, Polk wanted control of the federal budget to ensure that funding for the Mexican War would be available without driving the country into debt. Polk proved that a President could run a war by controlling the naval and military budget estimates (White 51). As president, Polk’s broader goal was to avoid entanglements with the major factions in the Democratic Party and to preside over his administration with an independent authority (Skowronek 160-61; Sellers 167). To achieve this independence, Polk seized upon the hazy uncertainty surrounding the President’s budgetary powers and grabbed hold of the purse strings with innovative methods and a vigilant attention to bureaucratic structural detail.

Throughout his four years in office, Polk’s control of the budget grew stronger and more comprehensive. For example, at a Cabinet meeting in 1845, Polk informed his secretaries that he wanted the annual estimates “to be made on the most economical scale” ( Diary, I: 48). He also asked the members of the Cabinet to develop their departmental budgets immediately so that he would have ample time to review their requests. By 1846, the Secretary of the War Department submitted budget revisions directly to Polk, not to the Treasury Department or Congress (White 80). In an effort to keep overall federal expenditures at a minimum, Polk also supervised the budgets of non-military departments, such as the Post Office. In 1847, Polk’s power over the budget became ironclad as he initiated the practice of interrogating bureau chiefs directly about proposed expenditures.

One particular incident encouraged Polk to assert tight executive fiscal control. In August of 1847, Polk learned that Congress planned to deny his request to call out 6,000 new volunteers for the Mexican War because of the unavailability of funds. Astonished by the failed request, Polk investigated the budget insufficiency and learned that a foolish transaction between the Treasury Department and War Department had occurred a few months earlier without his knowledge. In his diary, Polk admitted that he was “greatly vexed” by the “looseness” of the War Department budget, and confessed that the whole incident made him “sick.” Consequently, Polk resolved, “there should be a reform in this respect” ( Diary, III: 135-36).

After this incident, Polk monitored each department and their financial transactions (White 61). Polk refused to reimburse financial expenditures that he had not personally approved, and used the ambiguous nature of his budgetary powers to support his executive decisions. After the Mexican War ended, an American general submitted a list of expenditures amounting to over $200,000 that he had incurred in Mexico, allegedly in pursuit of a “secret” military mission. An enraged Polk called the account “remarkable” and informed the Secretary of War that he had “no authority to pay such an account” ( Diary, IV: 196). The tight fiscal control Polk had exercised in the previous three years clearly demonstrated that he did have the power to pay the general’s account. But Polk did not wish to reimburse a wastrel, and the ambiguity surrounding his budgetary powers allowed him to deny the request without controversy.

During his presidency, Polk essentially became the “Director of the Budget” (McCoy 74). To achieve this control, Polk monitored the bureau chiefs, whom he believed inflated appropriations and practiced fiscal irresponsibility. Polk usually accomplished this task by requiring Cabinet secretaries to read their reports aloud to him. Through this practice, Polk established a direct line of accountability from the departments to the president. [2] His scrutiny of the annual reports also enabled Polk to review the policy goals of each department. Furthermore, Polk recorded the positions and actions of all his Cabinet members in his diary, believing that this notation created an additional source of accountability. When all else failed, Polk interrogated the bureau chiefs directly. In September of 1847, the President asked Secretary of War William Marcy to reduce his estimates. Marcy explained to Polk that he could not control the requests of the bureau chiefs. Polk requested audiences with several of Marcy’s subordinates and achieved the reduced budget he desired. [3]

In his last year as president, Polk continued to manage the bureau officers. A fiscally conscious Democrat, Polk was determined to return federal expenditures to the low levels in existence before the Mexican War. In a November 6, 1848 diary entry, Polk recounted his effort to scale down the budget of the War Department:
The Secretary of War submitted to me the estimates of appropriations

for his Department for the next fiscal year, as prepared by the Heads

of the several Bureau[s] in the War Department. On comparing them

with the appropriations for similar objects for previous years, and

before the Mexican war, they were found in some branches to exceed

these appropriations. The Secretary informed that...he had much difficulty

with his Bureau officers in having them reduced to what they now were.

I directed further reductions of some of the items to be made, and directed

some of the items to be struck out altogether...The Bureau officers, whose

duty it is to prepare the estimates, are always in favour of large

appropriations. They are not responsible to the public but to the
Executive, & must be watched and controlled in this respect

(Diary, IV: 180-81).

Notice that Polk classified the bureau officers not as public servants, but as presidential subordinates. According to the structure Polk imposed, the bureau officers fell under the President’s direct supervision. Although Moe contends that only twentieth century presidents “anticipate, program, and engineer” the behavior of their bureaucratic subordinates in order to exert their own influence (1989, 284), Polk’s budgetary control suggests otherwise. Polk’s innovations demonstrate that the tendency for presidents to politicize and centralize cannot be attributed to the existence of a modern bureaucracy, but to persistent institutional incentives that encourage presidents to expand their power through innovation.

In sum, Polk was largely successful as chief budget officer. Near the end of his term, he repurchased a half million dollars in government bonds, thus reducing the national debt significantly before leaving office (Diary, IV: 195-96). It would be impossible today for presidents to exercise the same degree of personal control over the executive branch that Polk enjoyed during his term. However, it is clear that presidents in the pre-modern era took active steps to establish spheres of independent authority. Polk seized upon the ambiguity of the president’s budgetary power and actually created a political authority that had not existed prior to his administration. The president’s role in the formation of fiscal policy is undefined in the Constitution, and Polk set out to capitalize upon this imprecision. He interjected the presidency into an area of domestic decision-making that the Treasury secretary and the House Ways and Means committee had dominated during earlier administrations. Because Polk assumed control of the budget through the channels of administrative supervision, his monopolization of the process was accepted “without fanfare” (McCoy 223). He used the loosely knit bureaucratic structure to his advantage and then exerted his independent influence, which ultimately resulted in the execution of the policies he favored. Much like a “modern” president, Polk conceived of the presidency as the driving force in American politics, and forged ahead with an executive determination to disturb, control, and manipulate the political system surrounding him.

Emancipating the Executive from Party and Patronage: The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes

One characteristic of “modern” presidential leadership is its increasing independence from party control. As Tulis (1987), Kernell (1997), and Milkis (1993) have shown, contemporary presidents speak in their own voices and rely less on partisan apparatuses to establish credible leadership. The conventional wisdom is that nineteenth century parties created presidents, whereas “modern” presidents create their own independent organizations that perform the functions of both campaigning and governance. This examination of Rutherford B. Hayes demonstrates that the president’s relationship to his political party is more complicated. Even when presidential power reached a low point in the nineteenth century, Hayes found unique ways to retain independence and authority from the imposing grip of his party’s organization.

Situated within an era of presidential infirmity, Rutherford B. Hayes was an unlikely candidate to emancipate the executive from partisan control. Hayes is most widely known for his brokered victory over Democrat Samuel Tilden in the 1876 election. With the presidential vote of four states in doubt, Republicans and Democrats forged a deal that assured Hayes’ victory and also ended military occupation in the South. Both Democrats and Republicans walked away with unscrupulous victories resulting from the Compromise of 1877. The only apparent loser, it seemed, was Hayes himself, who found himself in an unenviable leadership position. Besides assuming office after the damaging presidency of Andrew Johnson and the scandal-ridden Grant administration, Hayes’s precarious election prevented him from claiming an electoral mandate.

With these political impediments weighing him down, we would not expect Hayes to exhibit a significant degree of calculated executive independence. Despite these disadvantages, Hayes seized upon the ambiguities of executive power to claim a considerable amount of authority during his presidency. Under the most unlikely of circumstances, Hayes managed to impose his reformist beliefs upon the nascent bureaucratic structure, establish important precedents for the Pendleton Act of 1883, reassert the executive’s appointment power by defeating the emboldened Republican Senate, and reinvigorate the presidency from its nadir of influence.

Civil Service Reform

In his boldest actions as president, Hayes asserted executive power to implement civil service reform. Hayes did not hide the fact that he aimed to overhaul the bureaucracy and wrest control from fellow Republicans in Congress; in his Inaugural Address, he called for reform “that shall be thorough, radical, and complete.” Such strong language was no surprise; Hayes had used those exact words in his July 8, 1876 party nomination acceptance letter to describe the civil service reform he pledged to implement if elected. But even before Hayes confronted existing corruption, he needed to build a governing structure that would support his reformist efforts. He selected a strong, independent-minded Cabinet and purposefully excluded individuals from the Grant administration (Davison 95). Fully aware that his reform-minded goals would not garner wide support from many Republican senators whose power relied on the retention of the patronage system, Hayes manipulated the structure of his administration by assuming full control over Cabinet selection. The strategic formation of Hayes’s Cabinet was a necessary precursor to his control of the bureaucracy. Selecting his Cabinet sent a strong message of presidential independence to Congressional leaders, and also provided Hayes with staunch allies in the executive branch who would support his reformist efforts. With these early actions, Hayes paved the way for a reclamation of presidential authority.

For the most part, Hayes picked his nominees without consulting the leaders of his party. The most controversial nominee was Hayes’s choice for Secretary of State, William Evarts. GOP leaders hotly contested the nomination of Evarts, who led the New York reform faction of the party that openly criticized Grant’s corruptions. The Senate, which the Republicans still controlled, threatened to reject Hayes’s selections for his Cabinet. Hayes stood firmly behind his choices, confident that public opinion was on his side. [4] The newspapers reacted negatively towards the Senate’s refusal to confirm the nominees. Telegrams and letters flooded Congressional offices in support of Hayes’s appointments (Davison 164). The Senate backed down within a day of their threats. Only a short month into his presidency, Hayes rejected executive subservience to Congressional Republicans and asserted his independent authority as president.

In his first move to depoliticize civil service, Hayes appointed John Jay, a known reformer, to lead a nonpartisan commission to investigate the New York Customhouse. Although Hayes believed in the morality of civil service reform and wanted to eliminate corruption, his motivations for scrutinizing the New York Customhouse were political and strategic. New York Republican Senator Roscoe Conkling had opposed Hayes’s nomination to the presidency in an effort to eliminate the entire reform wing of the party. After the 1876 election, Conkling openly mocked Hayes, often calling him “Rutherfraud” (Hoogenboom 1961, 156). Using his executive control of the bureaucracy, Hayes sought to punish Conkling, who controlled the New York Customhouse since Grant’s administration.

Ironically, Hayes’s depoliticization of the bureaucracy was a political move in itself. Through his efforts, Hayes aimed to eliminate a “hostile faction” of his party that “failed to deliver the vote in 1876” (Hoogenboom 1988, 132). Hayes used the executive arm of the bureaucracy as a mechanism to exert influence over those who threatened his presidential leadership. He sought to neutralize Conkling not because he was corrupt, but because he derived his power in the Senate from the New York Customhouse patronage (Hoogenboom 1961, 179). Much like a “modern” president, Hayes aimed to refashion his party to fit his own political agenda.

The battle over civil service was more than a struggle between two political factions. Rather, it was a contest rooted in the structural capacities of the presidency and its independent authority apart from party. Hayes sought to institute reform for its own sake, but his efforts also reasserted the independent authority of the executive to control appointments and the ever-growing bureaucratic arm of the government. In an April 22, 1877 diary entry, Hayes wrote, “We must be relieved of Congressional dictation as to appointments” (87). The larger battle for Hayes involved the reclamation of presidential power; he used the reformation of the bureaucracy as the vehicle for his assertion of authority.

In Party Government, E.E. Schattschneider analyzed the structural incentives that encourage the President to seek civil service reform. Schattschneider observed that in the second half of the nineteenth century, congressmen consistently used patronage to benefit local party bosses, often damaging the “public reputation of the president” in the process (139). The abolition of the spoils in American politics required a “fundamental redistribution of power” that shifted authority from “local machines” to a more centralized leadership structure (Schattschneider 140). In part, Hayes’s executive actions to reduce the influence of local patronage can be explained by the president’s institutional incentive to seek centralization and independent control, which transcends the modern-traditional divide in presidential studies.

Hayes also realized that the political longevity of the Republican Party, steeped in patronage appointments, was in jeopardy. In an April 13, 1877 entry in his diary, Hayes mused that if Senators make office holders, and office holders make Senators, “How many victories can the Republican Party gain on such a platform?” The answer, according to Hayes, was that the “Watchword of the people against the office holders would soon be raised, and the party on the wrong side of the question would go under” (138-39). As a national leader with no prospects of reelection, Hayes’s actions were also motivated by a desire to save his party from national disgrace. [5]

After receiving Jay’s highly critical report concerning the New York Customhouse, the President ordered that federal civil servants should not assume leadership or management positions in political organizations or campaigns. Hayes wanted to remove Chester Arthur, the collector of the customhouse, but did not want to damage the Republican organization by acting hastily. He allowed Arthur to keep his job as long as he cooperated with ongoing reform efforts. For the time being, Hayes believed it was in his best interest to pursue a moderate course of action (Hoogenboom 1988, 131). But when customhouse Naval officer Alonzo Cornell disobeyed the President’s executive order and refused to resign from his position in the Republican Party, Hayes resolved to remove Arthur and Cornell and eliminate Senator Conkling’s influence. In an October 24, 1877 diary entry, Hayes pondered his strategy to wrest control of the bureaucracy from the Republican Senate:

How to meet and overcome this opposition is the question. I am clear

that I am right. I believe that a large majority of the best people are in

full accord with me. Now my purpose is to keep cool—to treat all

adversaries considerably and respectfully and kindly but at the same time

in a way to satisfy them of my sincerity and firmness (100).

Hayes’s personal letters to friends and political confidantes throughout 1877 and 1878 revealed that he intended to emancipate the presidency from Congressional control by regaining the appointment power (Hoogenboom 1988, 142).

By convincing other members of the Senate that the President’s independent course threatened legislative control of the bureaucracy, Conkling managed to kill Hayes’s appointments in late 1877. But Hayes did not accept defeat easily. In a December 6, 1877 diary entry, Hayes charged that legislation should be passed which would relieve Congress from all “responsibility for appointments.” If Congress failed to pass such legislation, Hayes resolved to “adopt and publish rules” that would achieve the same effect (106). If Congress refused to cooperate with his reforms, Hayes would summon the independent authority of the presidency to get the job done. Using the political tools available to him, the President planned a counterattack in 1878. He issued a special civil service reform message to Congress and collected evidence to support his claim that the New York Customhouse cheated the federal government out of revenue by undervaluing goods and favoring local merchants (Hoogenboom 1988, 136). When Congress adjourned in the summer months, Hayes put his plan into action. He suspended Arthur and Cornell, replacing them with his own recess appointments. With public opinion favoring his actions, Hayes prepared for an aggressive battle with the Senate over the appointment power. [6]

According to custom, senators would not vote for confirmation of a nomination that was opposed by the senator representing the state in which the office was located. To gain confirmation of his appointments, Hayes needed to defeat this powerful senatorial tradition and discredit Conkling. In a letter to the President, William Henry Smith advised Hayes to attack the problem directly, arguing that the only “way out now lies through assaulting the abuses in the New York Customhouse in earnest” (Hayes 1924, 455). In January of 1879, Hayes issued a report to the Senate, urging them to accept his appointments. Using evidence his executive commission gathered, Hayes emphasized that the conduct of the New York Customhouse had improved noticeably since his replacement summer appointments had assumed office. Conkling responded by publicly insulting Hayes, a strategy that ultimately caused Conkling to lose credibility with many of his fellow senators. With the help of John Sherman, Secretary of the Treasury, Hayes assembled a coalition of Republicans and Democrats who supported his replacement nominees. In February of 1879, the Senate decided that the President could choose his own subordinates, and approved Hayes’s customhouse appointments (Shores 264-65). Hayes’s quest for autonomy broke the stranglehold of the Senate and reclaimed the President’s power to control the executive bureaucracy. Through an executive order, Hayes extended the reforms achieved in the New York Customhouse to other ports across the nation (Hoogenboom 1961, 173).

When Hayes entered office, he aimed to curb Congressional interference with the executive power of nomination, diminish the ironclad union of office holders and party politics, and end the kickbacks required of patronage appointees (Shores 276). In pursuit of these objectives, Hayes sought to impose structures that would advance his own best interests. When possible, Hayes issued unilateral executive orders to reform civil service and relied upon his Cabinet members to implement his directives in their respective departments. To curb the power of his adversary Conkling, Hayes and his independent-minded Cabinet secretaries built a coalition of Democrats and Republicans to support his nominees for the New York Customhouse. As an outsider who stood apart from the powerful factions within his party, Hayes was in a favorable position to bring about reform and renew the independent authority of the presidency. At the end of his term, Hayes had successfully achieved all of his goals.

By waging a political battle against Conkling and issuing unilateral executive orders, the President reasserted control of the federal government’s bureaucratic arm. Single handedly, Hayes ended a decade of decline in executive authority and power (White 25). Hayes clearly believed he had carved out a significant sphere of authority as president. He wrote in his diary on July 14, 1880:
No member of either House now attempts even to dictate appointments. My

sole right to make appointments is now tacitly conceded...I began with

selecting a Cabinet in opposition to their wishes, and I have gone on in that

path steadily—until now I am filling the important places...almost without a

suggestion even from Senators and Representatives! Is not this a good measure

of success for the Executive to accomplish almost absolutely unaided by

Congress (286-87).

It is not fully accurate to conclude that Hayes manipulated structure in order to create “responsive competence” as Moe describes. Hayes’s achievements were broader in scope. Rather than merely aiming to create bureaucratic responsiveness, Hayes manipulated the political structure and incentives in an attempt to exercise executive independence and control. Hayes seized upon the ambiguities of executive power to embody the assertive and energetic qualities of the executive described by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 70.

Kenneth Davison contends that Hayes’s presidency marks a “line of demarcation” that can be “drawn in the history of the American presidency” (66). According to Davison, Hayes was the first president of the “modern” era. But instead of placing the breaking point of “modernity” at the Hayes presidency, or any other date in time, it is perhaps more instructive to appreciate the persistent desire of presidents to impose structure, control subordinates, and exert independent authority.

Concluding Thoughts: Presidential Scholarship and the Modern Presidency Construct

In our paper, we argue that the constitutional ambiguity of executive power provided a similar incentive structure to three nineteenth century presidents. Although the presidents in our case studies created authority by manipulating a variety of mechanisms, the thread that binds them together is their common impulse to push the envelope of executive power. The inclination for presidents to seek control, authority, and autonomy is not a modern phenomenon, as typically characterized. We conclude our examination with three final observations.

First, an issue that remains to be addressed is the durability of nineteenth century presidential innovations and reforms. Pre-modern presidents might have asserted authority, but did their efforts produce any lasting change or development like the modern innovations of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, or John F. Kennedy? To a certain extent, such distinction between nineteenth and twentieth century presidential leadership is warranted, but even this dichotomy is not as definitive as it appears. Although several “modern” presidents did implement lasting institutional changes, the hallmark of the modern presidency is not the endurance of authority, but rather Moe and Neustadt’s common observation that each president must create authority anew and establish unique resources for leadership. Rather than generating additional authority, modern developments have resulted in an accumulation of presidential responsibilities – which oftentimes are constraints rather than resources. In this light, our case studies demonstrate that the line between the “modern” and “traditional” presidencies is a blurry one. We believe that the most enduring characteristic of the American presidency is the Machiavellian desire to derive authority from external sources, in the hope of forging a stronger arsenal of authority. Thus, the modern accretion of executive responsibilities does not diminish our observations about the perennial quest for autonomy, authority, and independence.

Second, although we have described three distinct ways in which presidents pursue authority (vis-à-vis Congress, bureaucracy, political party), we believe that many other avenues exist – we do not seek to delimit future examinations of executive leadership. Our study analyzes how the ambiguity of executive power in the Constitution motivated three lesser-noted nineteenth century presidents in three disparate circumstances to seek out authority not explicitly granted to them. We anticipate that further historical analyses of other lesser-noted presidents, such as Van Buren, Buchanan, Grant, Benjamin Harrison, and Taft, for example, would probably yield similar results. We certainly recognize that not all presidents have been equally aggressive in their quests for authority, but this unevenness does not jeopardize our primary thesis. The point we wish to underscore is that presidential scholarship that narrowly focuses on the modern era tends to ignore fundamental aspects of the president’s incentive structure.

Lastly, rather than placing presidents in segments of American history, we believe that presidential scholars should focus on the institution as a whole. But we wish to go further than simply saying “history matters.” We encourage the development of comprehensive theoretical frameworks with which to view the presidency over time. Without theory-driven research, the radically different styles, strategies, and personalities of our chief executives make the study of the presidency a messy scholarly endeavor. To organize our knowledge about the presidency, we must reexamine the relationships between the past and the present, and not remain satisfied with temporal categorizations that gloss over the complexity of political institutions and their historical development. There is no doubt that contemporary politics are different from nineteenth century politics, and there is no doubt that the “modern” presidency looks different from the “pre-modern” presidency. But we cannot merely attribute these differences to distinctly modern phenomena such as the growth of the federal bureaucracy. By looking into the past, we are better able to see which developments have altered the president’s leadership possibilities and which innovations have not. Moreover, to understand the presidency at any given moment in history, we must first understand the institutional incentives that have held constant over time. Thus, our paper is intended to be a first step toward the development of a historically informed and theory-driven research agenda that transcends the modern-traditional frame of analysis.

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ENDNOTES

[1] See Duff Green to Tyler, September 10, 1841 in Green, Duff. 1967. The Duff Green Papers in the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina Library. Chapel Hill, NC; and letter from Gilmore in John Tyler Papers V, 175 (Chitwood 279).

[2] Sometimes the reports were read in the presence of the entire Cabinet, and sometimes Polk asked the secretaries to read them aloud in front of him alone. For example, on November 26, 1847, Polk wrote in his diary, “The Postmaster General called this morning and read to me the draft which he had prepared of his annual report” ( Diary, III:231-32).

[3] In a November 11, 1847 entry in his diary, Polk recounted a conversation he had with Quartermaster General Jesup: “He submitted to me his estimates, and I found that he had reduced them near seven millions below the sum he had first proposed” (Diary, III:219-20).

[4] On March 14, 1877, Hayes wrote in his diary, “After a few days the public opinion of the Country was shown by the press to be strongly with me...The expressions of satisfaction from all parts of the country are most gratifying” (81).

[5] Hayes favored a Constitutional amendment that extended the presidential term to six years and prohibited reelection. In his nomination acceptance letter, Hayes promised not to seek a second term (Hoogenboom 1988, 17).

[6] Hayes might have recalled a January 25, 1877 letter written to him by Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz. Writing about the Senate, Schurz stated, “A President who has public opinion at his back need fear no opposition in that body” ( Speeches 371).