Diminishing Presidents
J. R. Pole
Every American President makes his pre- decessor look good. This observation has held its own, with some qualifications, since the death of Franklin Roosevelt; not only the American people but the rest of the world may begin to worry about whether it is turning into an immutable law.
To a considerable extent the law, as it has worked so far, is a modern characteristic of what we may call the media-effect. It is more difficult for a President whose infor- mal and formal gestures, grimaces and trivial mistakes are under constant pictorial scrutiny to look good than for his predecessors. Another difficulty is that a modern President cannot control the infor- mation emanating from his own govern- ment. Departmental leaks will always be ahead of his own utterance.
Moreover, when a President addresses the nation on television, he is immediately subjected to an undignified post mortem. No sooner has his face faded from the screen and the last of his peroration fallen 'silent than a panel of political analysts will pick his speech to pieces and devour it like fresh carrion. Ronald Reagan, an ex- perienced visual personality, has been able to make something out of such intrusions. But far more of a President's current stan- ding turns on immediate, though ephemeral, impressions than used to be the case, and as these irritations blur into the past, they disappear from the receding im- age of a past President. To that extent the question of appearances is a genuine one. Appearances in politics are difficult to separate from realities; images, after all, are pictures of real objects and shadows are cast by real people.
If the law of presidential diminution were merely a matter of appearances it would give some cause for worry about a situation in which the mass media of communication actually come between the object of their observations and the public. This is surely a paradox which deserves serious attention. Appearance inevitably depends to some ex- tent on the point of observation. For exam- ple, during his lifetime, John Kennedy cer-
tainly did not make Eisenhower look the better President, but the passage of time did not take long to alter the perspective. For Kennedy had generated an excitement which he had no means to satisfy. In foreign affairs and in terms of legislative achievement Kennedy's record was abysmal, and was quickly put in the shade by Lyndon Johnson. But the blandness and self-satisfaction which Eisenhower quietly encouraged looked agreeably calm and safe when compared with the Bay of Pigs fiasto or the missiles crisis.
It would, of course, be ludicrous to claim that FDR made his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, look good: it is also not suggested that any successor could have looked better than FDR. Harry Truman grew in stature as he gained in experience, but he never gave an adequate impression of scale. He did not seem to realise that when he pardoned a crooked political crony or lost his temper over trifles, he depreciated his office and thence his authority; he frequently angered Americans because, as their President, he embarrassed them. Yet in the Eisenhower years, Truman began to look better and better. The recent revival of historians' respect for Eisenhower is a characteristic phenomenon of distance. During his
presidency, he conveyed an air of lazy self- indulgence and failure of vision.
But the fact that the law implicates Lyn- don Johnson is the cruellest irony of the period. On the home front he succeeded where Kennedy had failed. But it was Johnson who brought the word 'credibility' into fashion, precisely because no one could believe his word. He deceived the people over his intentions in Vietnam, and the war into which he had launched his country was to cost 30,000 American lives. There were scandals, too; and the curious episode when, after a surgical operation, President Johnson pulled up his pyjamas to show the people his scar on television. No, Johnson didn't look good, and people sighed for the style and youth and glitter of Camelot.
Nixon, on the other hand, achieved the remarkable feat of making Johnson look good. If Johnson lacked the dignity of of- fice, Nixon never threw off the image of the shady used car dealer; bringing to a fine art the ability to convey the conviction that the President was not telling the truth. But what of Gerald Ford, apparently a weak link in this argument? Ford's general in- tellectual incoherence blended nicely with his physical ineptitude to give his predecessor a kind of pathetic dignity, but if Ford had enjoyed a full term of office I believe he would have proved the rule. In- deed, the electorate's verdict in 1976 proved it for him.
Jimmy Carter possessed arguably one of the best presidential brains of this century, but he lacked the sense of political process. Instead of learning from experience, he ap- peared to defy experience. He got certain important priorities right — energy, human rights, SALT 2 — and pulled off the Camp David agreement. But he got the politics wrong, and showed a strange incomprehen- sion of the importance of communication. In July 1979 he announced a crisis of con- fidence in the national spirit; but it was real- ly a crisis of confidence in himself. Self- deception is a wonderful safeguard but it only shields the self-deceived. 1976 was the only year in which Carter's brand of calculating innocence could have won the Presidency. His lack of professionalism succeeded in making Ford look like a genuine politician of a recognised and dependable style.
Where Carter failed to communicate, Reagan emerged as 'the great com- municator'. However, persuasion soon began to appear as an end in itself, regardless of the message: but the message itself has been getting more and more in- digestible. Mr Reagan, who seldom reads, listens with difficulty to long explanations, and has little comprehension of the com- plexities of the world around him, has made his allies shudder and has dismayed Americans, and is rapidly making Carter look superior.
There may be hope, however, that the law is coming to the end of its natural life. No obvious recipe exists for making Reagan look good; if it did one wonders how long America would survive.
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