Presswatch/The Power Executive

...the latter are not central to his work, though they may be useful, in a subordinate way, to what he calls "the persuasive process...

...A second example: Ten days before the ground war, the CBS/New York Times poll found just 11 percent of Americans in favor of starting one...

...troops, followed by efforts to recruit Egypt, Morocco, and others into the alliance...

...The powers of the presidency, if skillfully deployed, are enough to move the nation...

...Every president has to define the office for himself...

...It would have been impolitic, but Bush could have added: "And the presidency itself has been vindicated...

...the troops were already there...

...Jim Hoagland, the paper's chief foreign correspondent, wrote on November 4 that we had the right Gulf policy but "the wrong President" because Bush, who has "limitations" in speechmaking, had not made "a clear and ideally inspirational statement to the nation to explain the goals of the potentially bloody conflict we may be approaching...

...Consider the litany on this score by the Washington Post, when polls in November showed that less than a majority of Americans believed Bush had explained the situation well enough "so that you understand why troops are there...

...Duty, honor, country" capture its ideals...

...Arab states could have refused to join the coalition at the outset or else seceded from it later on...

...work, then a doubling of troops in early November...

...The U.N...

...These definitions imply an interest in the personal abilities of a President and also in approval ratings (on the theory that ratings indicate how a President has done at persuasion), even as they give short shrift to the formal powers of office—the very ones Bush used so skillfully from August 2 through February...

...after he gave the order, 81 percent approved...

...As it happened, of course, Bush turned out not to be the Great Communicator but the Great Liberator...

...It is, of course, important to point out that Bush used these powers...

...could have declined the role Bush sought for it...

...After the war, neither Apple nor anyone else at the Times took the egg off the newspaper's face with the kind of analysis subsequent events demanded...

...With few exceptions, the media remained unimpressed by this extraordinary triumph of presidential power or by its implications for the execution of American foreign policy...

...There were numerous profiles of Bush the War President, discussing his personal character and style of leadership, and there were, remarkably enough, editorials and opeds saluting the President for his undeniable achievement, some written by people not known for toasting Bush unless with an intention to burn...

...Ronald Reagan and his speechwriters helped popularize this understanding of the power to persuade, i.e., the rhetorical presidency...

...For the first time since Vietnam and Watergate, the media suddenly find themselves less favored, if not less monied...

...It's nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, and whatever else Bush was trying to do in his speech that night, he didn't need Peggy Noonan's help...

...He didn't have to persuade anyone of anything...

...In its unity (the executive power is vested in one person) the President can act swiftly (freezing assets, sending troops) and diplomatically (in the Middle Fast, in the United Nations, in Moscow) and decisively (Colin Powell: "First we will cut it off...

...Of course, Bush could have been thrown off course...

...One example: Three days before he deployed the troops in August, the Gallup Poll reported that 56 percent of Americans opposed such a move...

...One is a mainly rhetorical definition: the President uses speeches to rally public opinion to his side...

...the judge in the case said the issue wasn't ripe (actually this banana had turned brown...

...PRESSWATCH THE POWER EXECUTIVE F ()Bowing President Bush's televised address to Congress and the nation on March 6, Dan Rather commented that the President of the United States has many powers but that his principal power is the power to persuade...

...Congress is not the only institution that has fallen a notch or two in the wake of a remarkable display of presidential power...

...Then there was the diplomacy to get the Saudis to agree to a large-scale deployment of U.S...

...As President, I can report to the nation: Aggression is defeated...

...The military is a collective enterprise that represents the nation in a life-anddeath struggle over important ends...

...then we will kill it...

...It is axiomatic among most members of the media that the power to persuade really is the President's most important...

...When General Schwarzkopf asked a reporter during his fifty-seven-minute Mother of All Briefings whether the man had ever been in a minefield (the answer was "no"), he in an instant revealed the difference between the military and the media—on worldwide television, no less...

...So consistently against force for more than three decades, and then so conspicuously against it whenthere was a clearly just war, the Democrats simply lack the mentality to be an executive party...

...Yet each action reshaped the debate and in time came to be seen [emphasis mine] as necessary if not inevitable—and correct...

...Such is the lot for those who are not doers, but observers...

...Though unremarked by the media, this is as serious a problem as a political party can have...

...In addition, he is vested with the execuby Terry Eastland tive power, which (to the consternation of many) eludes precise definition...

...but the proxies the people are more concerned about are the ones in uniform...

...Pointedly noting that Bush did not really use the bully pulpit, Krauthammer showed how the President employed the formal powers of office to rally "a reluctant nation to a successful war...

...The 1973 War Powers Act, which Bush technically violated by sending troops to Saudi Arabia without consulting Congress, is now virtually a dead letter...

...Neustadt argues that the President must acquire and use personal power in order to secure his formal powers of office...

...Of course, the media will argue that they represent the nation as proxies for the general public...

...There was more U.N...

...That is why the public accepts censorship during a war, as it did in this one...

...Congress had been outflanked by a President who had skillfully used his formal powers...

...Government schools will be studying Bush's march through Washington...

...When the Soviet Union tried to negotiate a peace on unsatisfactory terms, there was the delicate diplomatic effort to keep Mikhail Gorbachev at bay and the pressure on Saddam...

...Congress could not have done what the President did...

...On each of these occasions—whether dispatching diplomats or troops or bombs or bullets—the President took action pursuant to his formal powers...

...And up through the second week in January a sizable contingent in Congress continued to insist on staying with economic sanctions only...

...But contrary to what many in the media said at the time, that vote did not reveal a deliberative Congress so much as one that could not do otherwise...

...Terry Eastland is resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center...

...This was one of the major stories of the Persian Gulf War, but with few exceptions the media did not see it...

...A press less ignorant about the pres- idency as an institution would have seen the exercise of executive power as the constant theme in the series of U.S...

...The media play a vital role in American democracy, but not the leading one, and seldom the heroic one...

...In all this coverage, I found only one news analysis that explicitly noted that one of the winners of the Gulf conflict was the presidency as an institution...

...When the latter refused to pull out, there was the ground war that forced the end...

...that should kill it...

...Two definitions of this power are currently in use...

...Still, it matters that Bush was positioned by the office he held to do what he did...

...But perhaps because of their own blindness to the nature and importance of executive power, the media have not penetrated to the deepest level of insight: the war revealed the Democratic party as not merely anti-war, but anti-executive...

...In his brilliant treatment of executive power, Taming the Prince, Harvard's Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr...

...One reason it did not is that its nature was revealed in a context for comparison in which it was bound to be the loser...

...Unable to get their way politically, some members of Congress sued, arguing that the congressional power to declare war meant that it had to give approval to what Bush had done...

...correctly emphasizes that the Constitution does not determine the behavior of those who govern under it...

...that is why, in Saudi Arabia, some news organizations resisted the "pool" system that collectivized the journalism from the front...

...Also dead, in an important respect, is the Democratic party...

...Dan Rather's remark about the power to persuade was not something that oddly popped from his mouth...

...What helped get Bush where he was in early March was the well-equipped office he sat in...

...Obviously, the power to persuade was the most important presidential power...

...The President is the commander-inchief as well as the nation's chief diplomat, and he has the duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed...

...The other definition, more sophisticated, is drawn from Richard Neustadt's book Presidential Power, first published in 1960 and a bedside bible for most White House reporters...

...Making this point, the Economist observed, "There will be fewer questions about the power of the commander-inchief in the future, and less talk of the War Powers Act...

...It was not rhetoric impressive enough for the Washington Post that rallied Americans to Bush's side, and the United States to victory in the Gulf...

...the day after it was launched, some 75 percent approved...

...On November 14, when congressional objection to the additional deployment was mounting, R. W. Apple, Jr...

...There was the legislative effort to get Congress to pass the resolution authorizing military action...

...On December 2, another of the paper's correspondents, George Wilson, sang the same chorus: Bush was "still groping for a rallying cry to get teenagers and their parents to believe it is worth risking their lives to free Kuwait, save gulf oil or topple Sad-dam...

...The Democrats are a congressional party that would have been at home under the Articles of Confederation—when there was no presidency...

...Norman Schwarzkopf was sent to the Gulf, 230,000 troops in tow...

...The press has no analogue to THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1991 37...

...After Bush sent an additional 150,000 troops in November, some told the White House that only Congress could order such a large deployment, forgetting what Bush himself pointed out as he pulled a copy of the Constitution from his suit pocket...

...On November 15, the Post reminded its readers that Bush was no Great Communicator in a story headlined: "President Struggles to Ar36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1991 ticulate Goals...

...The legislative power is the genius of our government, but the framers of the Constitution realized that Congress could not be the source of energy in government, and that without energy there could be neither good administration nor effective foreign policy...

...no military force, please...

...actions taken in the wake of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait...

...Only once did he propose to involve Congress—when he sought the resolution authorizing force—and even then he denied that its participation was necessary...

...it is not constrained by heroic ends...

...As commander-inchief," Bush said that night, "I can report to you: Our armed forces fought with honor and valor...

...But, it was Bush who had the unique authority to do all of these things, not because of his rhetoric or his approval ratings but because of the Constitution...

...First, there was the freezing of Kuwaiti assets to keep them out of Iraqi hands, then the drafting of the crucial first United Nations Security Council resolution—Number 660—which condemned the invasion and demanded Iraq's withdrawal...

...In the end, of course, Congress passed the resolution authorizing military force...

...resolution setting the January 15 deadline and authorizing the use of force...

...The influence of these definitions among the media helps explain the complaint made unremittingly during the fall that Bush had not been a good enough communicator...

...Crovitz observed that Bush had used his powers to "outflank" Iraq, in the process recovering presidential dominance in foreign policy...

...It's all there in Article II of the Constitution...

...Just as, in the end, Iraq was...

...Rather it was what he did...

...The media have provided plenty of stories on its postwar difficulties, given the position of most co sional Democrats against the use of force...

...For that matter, the actual war itself might not have gone so well...

...he just didn't have the right stuff...

...It is inherent in the very idea of the executive that at some point he must use force, given recalcitrant human nature...

...Bush's rhetorical inability, it appeared, would do in his effort...

...The point is, Congress is institutionally ill-equipped to run foreign policy...

...T he Economist, in marvelous un- I derstatement, observed, "The press has not had a good war...

...For those who want to parse the complete meaning of kicking the Vietnam syndrome, there may be something here...

...Indeed, readers of the news analyses of the New York Times were apt to take away a different message...

...Then, on January 16, there were the first bombs on Baghdad...

...As Charles Krauthammer wrote, Bush took unilateral actions "that were bold and, to the extent anyone had considered them at all, generally unpopular at the time...

...It is also why the public is upset when the press complains about censorship, as it did in this one...

...There was the diplomacy to get the U.N...

...A fair question is whether a press that understands power in terms of speeches and approval ratings will do the same.duty, honor, country...

...As for opinion writers, only two understood the central importance of the presidential office—Charles Kraut-hammer and the Wall Street Journal's L. Gordon Crovitz...

...What the media typically struggle over isn't lifeand-death but the story itself...

...N of that it doesn't try, and, consis- tent with the trend since Vietnam, some members tried hard during Desert Shield...

...By contrast, the media, when they report a story, are not a collective enterprise but many individuals in competition...

...Gorbachev could have refused to butt out when Bush asked him to...

...The presidency was created to supply this energy...

...It does other things (as George Mitchell might say: "First we will tax it...

...Krauthammer's conclusion: "As a shaper of public opinion, the bully pulpit is overrated...

...To be sure, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, among others, published detailed pieces recapping the Bush Administration's seven-month effort to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait...

...Congress and the President are coequal in power, but their powers are different, a point the media seldom appreciate...

...It is, at bottom, why the image of Michael Dukakis riding in a tank was so laughable in 1988—and is even more so today...

...If the Times is an accurate barometer, the media have yet to figure out that kicking the Vietnam syndrome has required demonstration not only of American military might but also of a presidential might that puts Congress in its foreign policy place...

...The power to persuade...

...If reporters do risk their lives, it's typically for the sake of the story (Bob Simon), not for the nation that the military represents...

...He could have read names from a phone book and still retained the nation's admiration...

...Imagine Congress, a body of 535, trying to do any of these things...

...As uniquely reported by the presidential-power-savvy Gordon Crovitz, Bush told congressTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1991 35 men that under the Constitution only Congress can declare war, but only the President is commander-in-chief...

...wrote that Bush was learning that limitations on presidential power apply in foreign policy as well as domestic affairs...