Last night as I typed this piece on Fred Thompson and presidential politics I actually thought to myself, "I bet Ken Blanchard writes one of his 'well, that might be true, but let's take a look at the bigger picture' responses." And here it is!
Prof. Blanchard accuses Thompson of lethargy. But as Andrew Ferguson points out in the piece that stimulated this discussion, Thompson was lethargic only in the sense that he didn't seem to constantly seek the approval of others. He spent his time working on policy and developing ideas. To be sure, this is not the best way to get votes, for which Thompson is responsible, but this is precisely the point. The personalized presidency, to use Theodore Lowi's phrase, is one which demands the candidate be all things to all people (to "feel their pain") which inflates the importance of the presidency and leads to inevitable disappointment when presidents cannot fulfill the promises or meet the expectations that took them into office.
Ferguson notes that it was not always this way. Until the mid-20th Century it was considered unseemly for presidents to even campaign for office. This leads Ferguson to this conclusion:
The traditional restraint of old-time presidential candidates wasn't arrogance or sanctimoniousness, the twin accusations that wised-up politicos made against Thompson during the campaign. There was a philosophical component to it too: By not seeming overeager--no matter how eager they were--candidates paid tribute to the democratic idea that political power is best sought, taken on, and used reluctantly. It was also a matter of seemliness, and Thompson, alone among recent candidates, felt its pull. In his stump speech he often mentioned George Washington, once a staple of political rhetoric for his willingness to walk away from the power that was thrust upon him. Today Washington's restraint seems nothing more than an archaism. And by extolling it Thompson sounded merely odd.
This idea of rhetorical and political restraint is the theme of fine works such as Jeffrey Tulis's The Rhetorical Presidency and James Ceaser's Presidential Selection. One also finds this theme in Hamilton's writings on the presidency, especially Federalist #71. The president must have some distance from public opinion while not being immune to it, and a president (or candidate) who power is based solely in public opinion is playing with fire.
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