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º Modern Presidents from FDR to the Present
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The Modern Presidency from Roosevelt through George W. Bush
Russell D. Renka
22 January 2006
° Defining Characteristics
° Studying the Modern Presidency
° Constitutional Authority
° Political Succession and the Calendar
° References
° Endnotes
The term ‘modern presidency’ proclaims a sharp line of demarcation separating Franklin D. Roosevelt and his eleven successors since 1933 from the thirty men who preceded FDR as American presidents in the 36 presidential terms from 1789 to 1933. The modern presidency differs from its historical predecessor in fundamental ways, all making it far more powerful and important, more reliant upon use of political rhetoric, and far better defined in terms of institutional possibilities and constraints. President Clinton in the 1996 State of the Union Address said “the era of big government is over.” That is certainly not the case in calendar 2007. Whereas Washington D.C. is sometimes less the seat of power now than in the 1930s on domestic policy, the reverse is true of foreign and antiterrorist security policy after 11 September 2001. Big government does still exist, and has been in place continuously since 1933.
The modern presidency is an integral part of that bigness. This article illustrates the several concurrent factors--constitutional, communicative, ideological and political--which together make this modern office vastly more powerful and important than its historical predecessor. These are traced chronologically from the first term of Franklin Roosevelt onward. I briefly define factors that contribute to the enhanced powers of the modern office. Then I set forth a perspective for studying the presidency in modern context. Following that is a demonstration that the U.S. Constitution does little to define the presidency. Finally I employ presidential succession to demonstrate the elevated modern importance of this office.
Defining Characteristics Top
The modern presidency differs from its predecessor in power. That enhanced power in turn derives from four related factors. These are: 1) rise of the United States to world power status, 2) rise of the central government within the American federal system, 3) creation of modern electronic communication networks enabling the rhetorical presidency to expand, and 4) creation of a modern administrative apparatus for the president and the White House. I will not elaborate this in detail for now, leaving that for successive chapters commencing with the first modern president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (The New Deal Coalition of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Roosevelt's Expansion of the Presidency). Suffice it here that all four of these factors surfaced during the 12 years and 1 month of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency from 4 march 1933 to 12 April 1945.
I. Studying the Modern Presidency Top
We only have one President at any time. The American presidency's most distinctive constitutional attribute is that the office has a single occupant, so who is president matters a lot. That's why rules of succession have become so important in the modern era. The singular office of the U.S. Constitution's Article II was vigorously defended in Alexander Hamilton's March 1788 Federalist No. 70 whereby "Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government." Great industry has been spent ever since on the peculiar range of talents and backgrounds of the American presidents. The pantheon of American heroes is led by a handful of them, especially Washington and Lincoln but also Jefferson, Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. The likenesses of four are literally carved on a mountainside (Aerial photograph of Mt Rushmore). Modern presidents create their own monuments upon retirement--presidential libraries.
Presidents are intensively studied by people from several disciplines: political science, history, political communications, psychology and journalism. The president's every move is tracked by a wide array of leading national print and electronic journalists. There is even a telescopic "death watch" site near Camp David from which journalists watch for sudden arrival of traffic there. This has not always been so. Nineteenth century presidents did not draw the obsessive popular and scholarly interest of the current office. James Garfield's 1881 assassination did not shake the world, or even the nation. John F. Kennedy's 1963 murder assuredly did both.
Fred Greenstein, long a leading scholar of the modern office, in 1988 summarized its peculiar emphasis upon the individual: "the impact of the presidency is almost invariably a function of the personal leadership qualities he brings" (Greenstein 1988, 1). More recently he led off a textbook devoted to the eleven completed modern presidential administrations by referral to "the presidential difference" (Greenstein 2000, 1-9). In matters of war and peace with the American superpower, who is president indeed makes a profound difference in policy. The nation is at war in Iraq because President Bush decided as much. So much about this office and its occupants consists of the idiosyncratic: Franklin Roosevelt's jaunty confidence and devious assigning of competing duties to subordinates, Harry Truman's pugnacious tendencies, Dwight Eisenhower's obfuscation and penchant for hidden-hand politics, John F. Kennedy's flights of rhetoric, Lyndon Johnson's deep-seated craving for approval through control, Richard Nixon's multiple insecurities and utter aloneness, Gerald Ford's open and straightforward normality, Jimmy Carter's moralism and disdain for politicians, Ronald Reagan's visionary belief in American destiny, George H.W. Bush's elite-reliant circle of personal friendships, Bill Clinton's undisciplined failures of 'emotional intelligence', and George W. Bush's determined religious vision (Greenstein 2000, 173-188; Greenstein 2004, 191-210; Idiosyncratic).
But the presidency is meanwhile a political institution, rooted in constitutional authority and defined by modern political imperatives in running a national government of a world power. Institutions are rooted not in the idiosyncratic and personal, but in the nomothetic reliance upon established regularities that govern their conduct and render their behavior predictable and orderly. Institutions are governed by certain underlying regularities, and the scholar's duty is to find and test what those are (nomothetic; Nomothetic and idiographic).
The very term "modern presidency" is rooted in those lawlike regularities. The modern office is not different from its predecessor simply because a different breed of men happened to occupy the office since 1933. It is different because of underlying imperatives to create an expanded and more powerful executive. Certain imperatives follow from this. The modern presidency is a speaking office. A great deal of the memorable and important political rhetoric derives from there. All modern presidents are accordingly judged by adequacy in performing this inherited duty; and of course they vary widely in manner and adequacy of speech delivery. Another is that the president is the pre-eminent fashioner of American foreign policy on elemental questions of war and peace. Where Greenstein says it matters that Eisenhower rather than Nixon made the 1954 decision not to directly commit American armed forces to rescue the French at Dien Bien Phu, it's always the President who makes those fundamental decisions.
Presidential scholarship divides itself into two distinct orientations based on these terms (Ragsdale 1993, 1996). The more traditional personal or political-actor approach emphasizes the unique attributes and qualities of individual presidents as the core determinant of insight to the subject. Political biographers are the preeminent practitioners of this approach. Most are historians or journalists. It is a thriving industry in both the academic and popular literature realms. You can see this from the crammed shelves at Barnes and Noble. Every modern president has drawn major biographical attention; and so have their predecessors, notable or otherwise. On the web, consult Welcome to The American Presidency (from Grolier) to sample four compilations of these for the 43 American presidents; or go to Miller Center of Public Affairs - American President - An Online Reference Resource. A single academic publisher by 2006 had published 35 book length biographies on specific presidencies (The University Press of Kansas - American Presidency Series). It is quite natural to concentrate upon the background, training, talents, and character of presidential candidates when selecting one among them. So also for divining their actions once elected. All modern presidential biographies emphasize certain shaping events and core personal qualities. They give the Campobello polio episode in shaping FDR, the Pendergast Machine history with Harry Truman, the war years with Dwight Eisenhower, the health woes and bachelor tendencies of John Kennedy, the obsessive pursuit of power and sense of intellectual inferiority with Lyndon Johnson, the peculiar confessionals of a shy Richard Nixon on television, the personal normality and traditional mid-western values of Gerald Ford, the social gospel Christianity of Jimmy Carter, the sunny disposition and nationalist optimism of Ronald Reagan, the sense of patrician duty with George H.W. Bush, the desire to please everyone with Bill Clinton, and the aggressive demeanor in look and speech of George W. Bush. Little wonder psychohistory has often concentrated upon presidents--albeit with limited success at producing valid generalities on their character (Barber 1992). Who is president will always be very important.
But it is not the whole story. The institutional search for regularities of the presidential institution is the domain of many political scientists and political communications scholars (Ragsdale 1996, 1-9; Edwards, Kessel, and Rockman 1993). All aspects of the presidency--executive branch management, foreign policy conduct, legislative agenda management and negotiations, partisan political behavior, historically important acts, placement in historical judgments, the rhetorical presidency, the symbolic public actions, the approval ratings--are amenable to this search. All modern presidents have been ambitious politicians who vigorously sought the office and assiduously husbanded their power once there. This includes General Eisenhower despite his professed disdain for professional politicians. All these top-rung political persons were middle aged or older white males with substantial histories of high public office, including legislative positions, state governorships, Cabinet posts, and high military command. This is not by accident. Our contemporary presidential selection system has changed much since 1932, but there is always the institutional imperative to select our top leader only from leading political and public figures.
The institutional approach says “institutional regularities prompt all presidents, regardless of personality, leadership style, or ambition, to behave similarly in fundamental ways” (Ragsdale 1996, 3). Regularities are everywhere in the American system. All modern presidents face standard imperatives and limitations in office. Modern presidents must speak extensively to the public whether the individual relishes that duty (Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan) or considers it a disliked chore (Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush). Modern presidents give the State of the Union orally, and are strongly expected to invoke tradition and continuity during inaugural addresses. They hire speech writers because presidents lack sufficient time to personally write speeches (as Lincoln once did). Presidents are part of the American two-party system of political coalitions, even while some have professed a nonpartisan view of things. Presidents seek congressional support primarily with fellow partisans because they cannot get consistent support from the other side. Minority presidents such as Truman in 1947-48 or Clinton in 1995-96 use the veto heavily to curb the ambitions of an opposition-run Congress; these same two individuals used the veto little when a more favorable Congress prevailed. Vetoes are used to signal presidential preferences to Congress (Cameron 2000). All second-term presidents become lame ducks with reduced power in the late second term due to the Amendment 22 term limitation; and such presidents resort increasingly to unilateral actions (Howell 2003). High election margins confer more political capital on presidents than narrow margins (Light 1999). White House staffs seek to move policymaking authority out of departments and into the White House. Cold War presidents maintained constant vigilance over Soviet designs and behavior; those since 9-11 must conduct a war on terrorism. Presidents since November 1963 must accept intensive personal security to curb possible assassination; all of them live a gilded fishbowl existence in the White House, at Camp David, or traveling on Air Force One. And so forth.
These regularities depend little upon who is President. The cluster of regular practices and expectations surrounding this office are the very source of definition of the modern presidency as a distinct history entity. It is not that we get different persons than before, but instead that seriously enlarged expectations are now attached to the office itself. The modern presidency is defined primarily through a careful look at institutional regularities. What changed the office so much that the presidential era of 1789 to 1933 looks very different than 1933 to 2005? It was institutional change wrought in the Roosevelt era and made permanent with successors, not a change of the sort of persons who hold the office. Consider first the constitutional trappings of the office.
II. Constitutional Authority Top
The U.S. Constitution does not define the presidential office very well. Article II, Section 1 opens with “The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America.” Full stop; this Section says no more on the office's powers and responsibilities (The U.S. Constitution Online - Article II, Section 1). In Article II, Section 2 and Article II, Section 3 a few specifics exist--the president shall be Commander in Chief of the armed forces, may require the written opinion of the heads of each executive department, may issue reprieves and pardons for non-impeachable offenses against the United States, may make treaties with advice and consent of the U.S. Senate, shall nominate ambassadors and judges and other officers subject to confirmation by the Senate, may grant commissions to officers during periods when the Senate is not in session, shall “from time to time give Congress information of the state of the union” and recommend measures to the Congress, may convene Congress in special session and adjourn them as he sees fit, “shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers,” will issue commissions to all officers of the United States, and shall “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The extensive powers of the modern office are not evident here.
The congressional Article I, Section 7 adds the specification of the presidential veto with two-thirds override by both houses of the Congress. Also there is the presentation clause: all bills or concurrent resolutions from the House and Senate must be presented to the President for signature or disapproval. And Article I, Section 8 says "The Congress shall have Power To ... declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; to raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; to provide and maintain a Navy; to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress ... ." In other words, power to create a military and to use it was not a presidential prerogative alone. At the very least it would be deeply shared with Congress.
And shared it was. The 19th century saw long periods of congressional dominance, even on foreign policymaking. "War hawks" in the House led by freshman Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky instigated the War of 1812 over reservations of President Madison (Eaton 1957, 22-35).
There is little point to blaming the Founders for being vague about presidential powers. They trod on new and untried ground (Kurland and Lerner, The Founders' Constitution; and Article 2, Section 1, Clause 1). There was no equivalent executive office under the Articles of Confederation, nor anything quite similar among state governors. Certainly powers such as the veto were influenced by the gubernatorial experience, but little could be adduced about foreign affairs. The British monarchy did afford some guidance, but was an obvious threat to republicanism.
The Founders' foresight also differs profoundly from our modern hindsight. We now see the executive branch as first or at least co-equal to the legislative branch. But the national Congress was their chief preoccupation during and after the 1787 founding. The American presidency was obviously not given a long or expansive portfolio of formal constitutional powers. The Founders spent little time on it while working out the intricacies of power balance of the new bicameral federal Congress.
Specific powers of the president taken today for granted, such as setting priorities and direction of the national budget, derive not from enumerated constitutional authority but from congressional statutes conferring powers to the executive. Presidential budgeting authority stems from the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act which "directed the President to formulate a national budget (Fisher 1975, 9)" and created the Bureau of the Budget to assist him (see Evolution Of The Budget Process -- The Executive Budget Movement and The Budget And Accounting Act Of 1921). Presidents had limited budgetary influence before that, although it had expanded considerably in practice under Woodrow Wilson during World War I in 1915-18. Thus the president’s extensive budgetary powers come mainly from sources other than express or implied constitutional authority.
The lack of constitutional specifics in the nineteenth century gave rise to a rich historical literature of creative presidential assumptions of powers in unforeseen, novel and emergency conditions. Strong presidents are universally recognized in history for their successes in defining the powers of their office. George Washington is greatly honored now precisely because he carefully defined proper presidential responses to novel problems. Abraham Lincoln in April 1861, with insurrection rampant in Maryland and Congress not in session, took upon himself ill-defined emergency powers to provide military supplies and suppress dissent. For example, in Virginia a federal military commander preemptively declared runaway slaves contraband of war (Oates 1977, 250-253, 257-258). Abraham Lincoln defended this brilliantly in his famous July 4, 1861 message to Congress that a President ultimately answered to constitutional authority--but exactly what that authority was, remained opaque until defined in the field. Thus he said: "if a State may lawfully go out of the Union, having done so it may also discard the republican form of government; so that to prevent its going out is an indispensable means to the end of maintaining the guaranty mentioned; and when an end is lawful and obligatory the indispensable means to it are also lawful and obligatory." (Lincoln July 4 message). A president encounters something new, decides upon a position, and must leave to others the ultimate decision whether that practice was rightful and shall endure.
Is presidential power under the Constitution better defined today? With a long list of constitutional interpretations by the Supreme Court, it is indeed. The extensive powers of the modern presidency required this. But even in the modern era, presidents often act first and find out later if actions will pass constitutional muster.
For example, Congress can declare war, but who declares peace? On 22 April 1793 President Washington forthrightly proclaimed American neutrality when France during its Revolution declared war on Great Britain (The Proclamation of Neutrality 1793). Many Members of the 3rd Congress--which was not then in session--dissented from that. Washington's own Cabinet harbored a schism; Jefferson favored siding with the French, while Hamilton favored neutrality. Did Washington have such an authority at all? The Constitution didn't say. That prompted a famous debate of Madison and Hamilton over loci of such non-belligerency declarations. President Washington "won" this debate by virtue of acting first without contravention from Congress.
When Congress was in session, presidents still declared policy but in a less obviously peremptory manner. The Monroe Doctrine was delivered at the opening of the 18th Congress on 2 December 1823. It declared neither war nor peace, but delivered clear warning that America opposed any further colonization by European powers of New World territory.
This was precedent by action to fill in constitutional blank pages. When disputes arise, presidents fill the void if they can, and Congress or states do so otherwise. The Supreme Court has often sided with presidents on filling in blank pages. Presidents share appointive power of executive branch officials with the Senate, but who has the power to fire somebody? In the 1926 case of Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926) the president finally won the right to fire an executive employee whom he appointed with advice and consent of the Senate. This came 137 years and 6 months after the April 1789 start of the American presidency. But did this apply also to appointed members of independent regulatory commissions? It did. The Court so declared in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 292 U.S. 602 (1935). That came after 146 years. Today we take these powers to fire somebody for granted.
Even when the constitutional wording is specific, sometimes the president intrudes upon congressional authority. The Constitution flatly says the Congress shall Declare War, but modern presidents have often committed the United States to foreign hostilities without the express advance approval of Congress. We routinely see wars initiated by presidents without formal declaration as such. President George H.W. Bush committed the American-led alliance to war with Iraq on 15 January 1991; President Clinton dispatched American armed forces to Bosnia on 27 November 1995 and to defend Kosovo against Serbia in 1999; and current President George W. Bush committed America to Iraq in 2003 largely on his own authority. The U.S. Constitution offers no detailed or precise prohibition on cases like those. Presidents more often define their own possibilities for exercise of legitimate power than they simply follow prescribed constitutional direction.
Presidential power is usually exercised first, and given constitutional dressing and rationale afterward. This is an expressly political office rather than a narrowly defined constitutional one. The Whig theory of limited presidential power took a fatal blow not only from their mortal opponent Andrew Jackson, but from the former Whig turned Republican, Abraham Lincoln. Later Court interpretations often support such powers in a way that makes their exercise routine. The anti-Whig type of expansion of presidential power is a large share of grounding for high historical "greatness" rankings conferred upon Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln--each of whom defined and enlarged the powers of the office in a manner eventually made routine in hands of successors. Wisely or not, this is how modern presidents are judged as well.
Of course the Constitution does define some fundamental structural characteristics of the presidency. The most elementary one is its separation from selection by Congress, leaving it strongly distinct from all parliamentary systems with prime ministries or their equivalent. Foreigners often have difficulty understanding American presidential conduct in the peculiar American separation-of-powers doctrinal context. From inside that system Americans have trouble looking abroad for germane comparisons to other executives. This problem remains with us after more than two centuries of constitutional experience.
Does the U.S. Constitution's direct wording define any separation of the modern presidency from the historical office? It does not. It is largely not an amended Constitution, but other formal and informal practices that define this for us. However, one area which does reflect the vastly heightened power and importance of the presidency is shown directly in recent amendments. The political calendar and rules for presidential succession created early in American history were little altered when Roosevelt stepped into office in 1933. A major overhaul was definitely needed.
III. Political Succession and the Calendar Top
Every working democracy must spell out clear standards for who is the chief executive of the central government, when they serve, and how they are replaced. The U.S. is no exception. Yet the original Constitution gave limited guidance here, too. Only with modern-era constitutional amendments has that guidance become comprehensive and aligned with the imperative to govern the nation year-round from Washington. The political calendar set out by the Constitution is proof. In 1933 the United States still had an antiquated 18th century political calendar for facing 20th century troubles. Here I show that the assumption of vastly increased presidential powers in the modern office compelled the rewriting of terms of political succession.[1]
Section 1 of Article II defines who is eligible to serve as president--only natural born citizens (or those who were citizens at adoption of the Constitution) of at least age 35 by inauguration date who had been residents within the U.S. for 14 years or more (Article II, Section 1 and Notes). This Section dwelt primarily with setting out the electoral college procedures, which practice was necessarily revised after the 1800 election deadlock to avoid pitting a presidential and vice-presidential candidate directly against one another for College votes. That was resolved with Amendment XII of 1804 by setting forth separate votes for each, implicitly recognizing that political parties were emerging and that candidates ran on one ticket for one office or the other (Amendment XII).
Section I also addressed replacement of a president who died, was disabled, resigned from office, or was removed by impeachment by saying “the powers and duties of the said office ... shall devolve on the Vice President.” It adds that Congress may enact provisions to address other problems. In practice this came to mean a Vice President became President upon death of the sitting President for the remainder of that four-year term. This often happened in the 19th century, leaving the Vice Presidency vacant for the balance of that term. And some Vice Presidents died or resigned, too. But no provision was created to replace the consequent vacancy in the vice-presidency during terms such as John Tyler (1841-45), Andrew Johnson (1865-69), or Chester Arthur (1881-85).
The Founders were more precise about setting up calendar election and power-transition dates. The President-elect, chosen from selection of Electors in each state on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, was named by a majority of Electors (if such majority existed) who met in their respective state capitols in the first week of December. If no majority, the House of Representatives met and decided the issue on basis of one vote per state delegation. Either way, the new President took office March 4, four months after the November election and beyond the worst of northeastern winter storms.
Meanwhile, a Congress was chosen every even-numbered year by the same November dating, thence to take regular session thirteen months (that's right!) after election in December the following year. Another year later the second regularly scheduled session of that Congress would convene in December after the election of a new congress. Half the time, that congressional election coincided with a presidential election. If the old president were not reelected, then the outgoing President governed the nation with the fellow "lame duck" congress from November to March 4 when both were compelled to depart. After March 4 inauguration, the new President could always call the new Congress into regular session before December--as Lincoln judiciously did by Independence Day of 1861. Or should he not, he governed alone until December. On 2 July 1881 President James A. Garfield was grievously injured by gunshot and lay disabled for weeks before dying on 19 September 1881. Vice-President Chester Arthur assumed the presidency's full powers amidst questions of his right to do so, but he did not call the Congress into session in advance of its December 1881 beginning of regular session (James Abram Garfield).
This was the constitutional arrangement confronting the nation in economic crisis amidst the Hoover Administration of 1929-1933, over 140 years after the old calendar was originally adopted. Herbert Hoover and a Republican-run 71st Congress were together elected in November 1928. All went well enough until the October 1929 stock market crash. Hoover and the 71st then sought with some success to reassure the nation during winter 1929-30 and spring 1930 that normality would return. Once the 71st Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariff and then adjourned in July 1930--the crash now being eight months old and recession deepening--the administratively confident Hoover governed alone. Meanwhile, the nation's economic disaster continued unabated.
That November of 1930, the new 72nd Congress was elected with a great many more Democrats in a midterm voters’ rebuke of Republican governance. Then the lame duck 71st returned in December 1930 for a session which produced several notable progressive acts early in 1931--drought relief, direct relief to farmers, George Norris' public power act, and veterans' bonuses. It also had limits, one being rejection of any direct federal relief for farmers or the unemployed. Hoover enforced that standard with some vetoes (Barone 1990, 47-49). Hoover then chose not to call the politically unfavorable 72nd to work early. The duly elected 72nd could not call itself into special session, so sat home until December 1931. Hoover governed alone amidst disastrous dry-ups of foreign trade in the wake of the infamous June 1930 Smoot-Hawley protective tariff against imported foreign goods (SSRN-The Smoot-Hawley Tariff A Quantitative Assessment by Douglas Irwin). Thus did succession to office work per constitutional fiat during the great economic crisis that preceded creation of the modern presidential office.
Little wonder this period produced the first of three modern "succession amendments," Amendment XX, ratified in February 1933 after ten years of campaigning by the foresighted progressive Republican Senator George Norris of Nebraska. Its 1933 ratification came after passage by the purposeful 72nd Congress in March 1932. This modernizing device changed the political calendar to acknowledge modern roads and to largely ignore winter weather. Henceforth all Presidents-elect would be inaugurated on January 20 rather than March 4. On arrival he would meet the new Congress, already in session from January 3 onward, per Amendment XX provisions. (FindLaw U.S. Constitution - Twentieth Amendment; also 20th Amendment to the US Constitution: The Advancement of the Presidential Inauguration and the Convening of the Congressional Session; superceding of 1886 Presidential Succession Act: Presidential Succession Act).
But this modern calendar came a bit too late for the first Roosevelt Administration or the heavily Democratic 73rd Congress elected along with Roosevelt in November 1932. So Roosevelt set forth his famous First Inaugural Address on 4 March 1933, proclaimed the national "bank holiday" on Sunday, 5 March (First Fireside Chat -The Banking Crisis), and on Monday immediately called the new 73rd into special session for that Thursday, March 9. Thus ended the miserable four month long Hoover-to-Roosevelt interregnum and began the real and original Hundred Days (no apologies for later pretenders) from March through June 1933. Rexford Tugwell, one of the chief FDR economic policy advisors, concluded "(T)he old stretch of four months, devised for a country without rapid transportation, was a dangerous hiatus in the circumstances of 1932-1933." (Safire 1993, 396)
Amendment XX also set forth a constitutional line of presidential succession for the first time, revising the Presidential Succession Act of 1886 with a more foundational stipulation that a deceased president (or one otherwise unable to serve) would be succeeded by the Vice-President for the balance of that term. But it failed to address the chronic problem of vice-presidential vacancies.
A modern, powerful chief executive of an emergent world industrial and military power with a vigorous central government must be a fulltime office. It made little sense for a repudiated outgoing executive to continue governing as a lame duck officer with a fellow lame-duck old Congress as partner. Yet it took 144 years before this change was made. The circumstances of the modern office are compellingly different in that consequences of the political calendar are much more deeply felt than in the past.
Two more recent succession amendments have since been adopted. Both also reflect the realities of heightened power and greater risks associated with such a singularly personal office presiding over a world power. Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 yielded to personal ambition and fear of Hitler and Japan to win an unprecedented third term as President, followed by a fourth in 1944 amidst a rapid decline of health which killed him on 12 April 1945. From this period a conservative-promoted term limits Amendment XXII was set forth in the Republican-run 80th Congress of 1947-48 and adopted in 1951. It stipulates that a President shall serve no more than two full terms of office, or in event a former Vice-President serves part of a term and then wins election on his own, no more than ten consecutive years (FindLaw U.S. Constitution Twenty-Second Amendment).
The inspiration for this was partly antipathy to personal power (no more presidents for life) but also judicious worry about effects of advanced age upon so powerful a position (fewer deaths in office through shortened tenure). So second-term presidents since Eisenhower are automatically subject to a calendar-based lame duck status with truncated power that attends any official known to be near the end of his tenure.
Succession followed a ragged path despite this corrective measure. Harry S. Truman served 45 months (12 April 1945 to 20 January 1949) and Lyndon Johnson another fourteen (22 November 1963 to 20 January 1965) as President following death of the former principals. Neither had a Vice-President during those times despite abundant evidence that assassination attempts and ill health both made this office prone to sudden departures.[2] Only in 1967 was another amendment, the 25th, added to correct the oversight of Amendment XX and provide for replacement of a vacancy in the Vice-Presidency. Section 2 specifies that “Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress." (FindLaw U.S. Constitution Twenty-Fifth Amendment).
That amendment promptly went into use. President Richard Nixon named Gerald Ford in place of the resigned Spiro Agnew in late 1973, a few months before impeachment prospects obliged Nixon himself to resign. Without this provision there would have been no sitting Vice President in August 1974 when Nixon resigned his presidential office. Nixon resigned in face of certain impeachment and conviction. In absence of a sitting Vice President, the next office under the pre-1967 Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (Amended) was the Speaker of the House.[3] That Speaker in the 93rd Congress of 1973-74 was Carl Albert, a Democrat who lent his office strongly to impeachment of the Republican president.
Needless to say, such a party-change of the presidency is doubtful for meeting democratic standards. Divided government, in which different parties control the White House and Congress respectively, had been historically rare in the U.S. but has become commonplace since 1968 with such division in 26 of the next 36 years up to 2004 (Presidents and Congresses). Thus the 25th Amendment came none too early in adoption to avoid a most unseemly means of changing the occupant of the White House.
The modern era has compelled the nation to address presidential succession with considerably more care than was granted the problem in the 144 years of constitutional history of 1789 to 1933. The consequences of failure are far more important for the nation and the world in the modern period. This signifies a sea change in the stature of the office of the presidency. The modern presidency compels that change.
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Safire, William. 1993. Safire's New Political Dictionary: The Definitive Guide to the New Language of Politics. New York: Random House.
[1] Formal definitions of succession confine the term to “arrangements under which presidential authority in the United States may be transferred other than by means of the quadrennial presidential election” (Feerick, 1997). I interpret succession more broadly to include election arrangements themselves, including the inauguration date.
[2] There was ample reason to worry in the case of Lyndon Johnson right after the Kennedy assassination. In December 1963, the new President Lyndon Johnson told Kennedy holdover aide Theodore Sorenson: "Miz Johnson says she's had thirty people say 'I looked up there and saw those men behind you'--and I've got to come home before seven o'clock at night." The younger and higher-ranking of those people was Speaker John McCormack, then 71 years of age but far beyond that by all appearances. The elder was ancient Carl Hayden, then in final service of 50 years' duration in the Senate as President Pro Tem. Johnson wanted Sorenson to work on procedures for presidential disability. Sorenson replied: "... take Mrs. Johnson's advice and take it goddamned easy because that would be a real disaster--with all due respect to the Speaker." (Beschloss 1997, 86; photographs from Presidential Succession During the Johnson Administration)
[3] We have Harry Truman to thank for invoking the Congress to alter succession in favor of elective office over Cabinet appointees. The President in June 1945 and again in January 1946 asked the Democratic-majority 79th Congress to make these changes. His June 1945 message said: "It now lies within my power to nominate the person who would be my immediate successor ... I do not believe that in a democracy this power should rest with the Chief Executive." The proposal sat until a midterm change in party control to the Republicans produced a 1947 party-line passage of this change (Congress and the Nation, 1945-1964: 1433-1435; Hardeman and Bacon 1987, 313-14, 326; Presidential Succession Act of 1947). Thus in 1948 had Truman departed the office, his replacement would have been the Republican Speaker of the House Joseph Martin.
Copyright@2001-2007, Russell D. Renka
September 04, 2007 09:07 AM