Energy in the Executive
Eastland, Terry
T he title of Terry Eastland's com- pelling argument for an assertive, even aggrandizing, but still conservative presidency comes from Alexander Hamilton. "Energy in the executive is a leading...
...Added to this was their insistence on nominating judges who shared their conservative judicial philosophy...
...The Neustadt school The American Spectator October 1992 61...
...The strong but thus defeated President may nonetheless qualify as a great one—great because of his service to the nation...
...Only a strong President can do that, as Ronald Reagan demonstrated in 1981...
...Bush established what Hamilton called "an antecedent state of things," a set of facts that framed the issue of going to war with Iraq...
...For good reason, conservatives have traditionally been uncomfortable with a strong presidency...
...was the President's very powerful exercise of executive power...
...The result: "Far more so than liberalism, conservatism is at home Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...Thestrong President may be defeated after a single term," writes Eastland...
...Reagan left office with a higher approval rating than any President since World War H. "Like dying rich, this is a great moral failure," Charles Krauthammer has 'written...
...Reagan refuted this, Eastland says...
...Post-Reagan, it's chiefly liberals who are dissatisfied with a strong presidency—because it's not powerful enough, on domestic and economic matters anyway...
...Tough job, and not one for slackers...
...The same is true of Reagan's drive to increase defense spending that played a large part in the collapse of the Soviet Union...
...Thus the federal courts were transformed during the Reagan-Bush era, a change more dramatic than at any time in the past half-century...
...The second Neustadt tenet is that strong Presidents go hand in hand with a stronger centralized government...
...I agree with Eastland that the most impressive recent case of strong, conservative presidential leadership was Desert Storm...
...But the simple fact is that conservative goals cannot be achieved unless a conservative President acts with maximum energy, using all his constitutional powers and a few others as well (speeches on television, not dirty tricks...
...Reagan, sad to say, relied too heavily on words, not enough on action...
...Want to reduce the size and influence of government...
...Since F\ranklin Roosevelt, the idea has been associated with bigger government, more federal control, arbitrary bureaucrats, higher taxes, and other threats to liberty...
...They suffer lapses...
...Reagan knew this, and won re-election easily in 1984...
...Bush didn't know it (and still may not), and his re-election prospects are dicey...
...Conservative Presidents (Reagan, George Bush) haven't been consistent in using constitutional means to attain conservative ends...
...Some nominations were blocked, others pilloried...
...This is more true than ever today, insists Eastland, especially for a conservative President, who must not only make correct decisions and push proper legislation, but also communicate effectively with the American people while combating a liberal Congress...
...After Reagan and Bush, what's needed is a conservative President who will use his authority across the board to further conservative ends...
...What did move such a Congress to side with him...
...Bush has been exemplary in defending presidential prerogatives, often by use of the veto, but he has refused to make an energetic case for his legislative proposals...
...II Eastland's book effectively rebuts the theory of the presidency enunciated by Richard Neustadt in Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership in 1960...
...Reagan threatened vetoes, then wouldn't issue them...
...Eastland argues persuasively that Presidents can also rely on their constitutional prerogatives to wield considerable influence—the veto, the hiring and firing of appointees, administrative decisions, litigation, and the unilateral execution of foreign policy...
...Presidents use their personal skills to achieve popularity and obtain power...
...By his actions—freezing Iraqi assets, deploying troops in Saudi Arabia, doubling the troop level, calling up the reserves, getting United Nations assent to the use of force—Bush "created the circumstance by early January [1991] in which Congress felt compelled to side with him against Iraq," Eastland writes...
...Today, with no consensus in the electorate, "a President must make a public legislative case...
...In doing that—through good arguments—he will both polarize and build coalitions...
...That means popularity cannot be husbanded...
...In his 1988 State of the Union address, he ostentatiously displayed a stack of documents, a continuing resolution that had kept the government going for another year...
...It was Trumanesque, but not Mondalian.rests on two ideas...
...A modern President cannot 'bargain' his way to consensus with legislators from both parties" at a summit, says Eastland...
...And instead of protecting the powers of the presidency, he allowed Congress to usurp them through such measures as the Boland amendment and special prosecution legislation...
...It wasn't achieved easily...
...The first is that presidential power is personal...
...Energy in the executive is a leading character[istic] of good government," Hamilton wrote in Federalist No...
...No amount of even the best rhetoric, that is, rhetoric that advances the most powerful reasons, could have moved to his side a Congress controlled by Democrats, many of whom were (and still may be) extremely reluctant to use military force...
...with the presidency as it currently exists," writes Eastland...
...So they pine for a parliamentary system, which would produce more of the things conservatives don't like, including a less interventionist foreign policy...
...Be "showed that, as a practical matter, a strong presidency was necessary to effect the conservative end of less government, defined in terms of lowered tax rates, Slower rates of spending, fewer regulations of the private economy, and less judicial activism...
...T he Eastland ideal—and it's one I subscribe to—is a conservative President who exploits every tool at his disposal: rhetorical, legislative, and administrative...
...No more...
...There's a problem, however...
...It's much more honorable than the way Bush has been losing, having frittered away his popularity by being weak...
...In this effort, Eastland notes, Bush had "far more in common with the liberal Presidents of decades past than did recent liberal aspirants to the office, such as Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis...
...But the result, an enduring legacy of judicial conservatism, makes the friction worthwhile...
...There is a lesson here: Any President who attempts to claim his constitutional prerogative to choose lower court judges and to exercise his power in behalf of a certain judicial philosophy can expect to arouse opposition, even to lose some nominations, by formal vote or withdrawal...
...There are examples large and small ENERGY IN THE EXECUTIVE: THE CASE FOR THE STRONG PRESIDENCY Terry Eastland The Free Press /392 pages/$22.95 reviewed by FRED BARNES 60 The American Spectator October 1992 that fit the Eastland ideal...
...He said he'd never sign another mammoth bill like that...
...Both Reagan and Bush asserted their discretion in choosing federal judges, including district court judges...
...But he'd already signed this one, making his gesture mere histrionics, not strong presidential leadership...
Vol. 25 • October 1992 • No. 10
