How Presidential Greatness Subverts Republican Government

Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is one of the best books on Lincoln. It's a collective political biography of Lincoln, William Seward, Salmon Chase, Edwin Stanton, and Edward Bates, which shows how Lincoln brought his political rivals into his presidential cabinet so that he could draw from their intellectual and political strengths even when they disagreed with him. Recently, Barack Obama has said that he would like to follow Lincoln's example by bringing his opponents into his administration to create "the best possible government." In the August 3rd New York Times, Goodwin has an oped piece arguing that while this would be hard to do in today's political environment, our need for good government to meet the crises of our times would be well served by a President surrounded by people willing to disagree with him.

What bothers me about all of this--and what should bother any citizen who favors a republican form of government--is the unstated assumption that the "best possible government" is a purely presidential government. The concern with promoting good deliberation in the White House implies that this is the only place in the government where deliberation occurs and policies are made. The silence about the Congress is remarkable.

This cult of the presidency is the primary threat to the American republic. This cult is evident in our preoccupation with presidential "greatness" and "leadership." We assume that good government requires central direction from the White House. This is very far from the republicanism of the U.S. Constitution. In the Constitution, the first and longest article is the article on the powers of Congress, and those congressional powers are clearly meant to be the center of the government. But now, we have effectively elevated the presidency to the top. Rather than the original constitution, we now live under the sort of regime favored by the Progressives--a regime of presidential leadership overriding the constitutional system of checks and balances.

Lincoln warned in his Lyceum Speech of 1838 that the greatest threat to the American republic would come from the rise of ambitious men who would seek the glory and distinction of becoming the national leader--men like Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon. But now, far from worrying about Caesarism as a threat to republican government, we assume that good government requires it.

We can see this in the historical ratings game: Who are the greatest presidents? Historians and political scientists play the game by ranking the presidents in terms of their greatness. The latest contribution to this game is Alvin Felzenberg's The Leadership We Deserved (And a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game. He ranks the presidents in six categories: character, vision, competence, economic policy, promoting liberty, and foreign policy. Lincoln ranks at the top as the greatest president based on these criteria. But notice, again, the assumption that the whole government and all its policies depend on the President. This is not republican government. This is the presidential government of the Progressives.

Oddly enough, many conservatives have been taken over by such thinking. For example, neoconservatives like Harvey Mansfield have praised George Bush for his "one-man rule" and "imperial greatness." Like many Straussians, Mansfield thinks the best form of government would be the arbitrary rule of the one wise man, and he implies that this supports executive prerogative as superior to the rule of law. As I have indicated in my posts on Mansfield, this shows a dangerous fascination with what Mansfield calls "manly nihilism." Standing behind much of this Straussian scorn for limited government and the rule of law is Carl Schmitt's "decisionism."

As I have indicated in my recent posts on Thomas Krannawitter's new book on Lincoln, Krannawitter falls into the same trap. On the one hand, he rightly criticizes the Progressives for turning all government over to the "vision" and "leadership" of the President. On the other hand, he seems to endorse presidential government by agreeing with Benjamin Kleinerman's suggestion "that it is better for the president to act without law and, in so doing, to explain and defend his actions by speaking openly to the people about the temporary necessities that require such actions." This idea that the president should circumvent the Congress and appeal directly to the people for his authority is the core of the Progressive conception of presidential government.

As I have suggested previously on this blog and in Darwinian Conservatism, republican government based on checks and balances and the rule of law conforms to a realistic view of human nature. There is a natural human inclination to look to one man as the ruler, and some men are ambitious enough to seek the glory of such rule. (This reflects a primate evolutionary legacy of social groups organized around a dominance hierarchy with an alpha male.) But no man can be trusted with unchecked power. And there's a natural human inclination to resist exploitative dominance by one or few individuals. That's why a constitutional republic is designed to balance the powers of the one, the few, and the many.

Presidential government, by contrast, is based on a utopian view of human nature--the idea that the leadership of one wise man is the best government. This is the Fuhrer principle--Schmitt's "decisionism"--that stands against constitutional republicanism.

As citizens in a republic, we should not demand "greatness" from our presidents. We should demand service to a republican structure of government in which deliberation on policy is found primarily in the legislative branches.