Hail To The Chiefs

[mgc1961]

In 1936 Franklin Roosevelt felt overwhelmed. The New Deal had begun to spawn dozens of new agencies, and Roosevelt, fearful of the fragmentation of the executive branch, asked for help. The Brownlow Committee, an independent panel tasked with finding a new model of White House management, proposed offering the president some personal staff. “They would remain in the background, issue no orders, make no decisions, emit no public statements,” the committee explained in a report responding to public skepticism about growing the size of government. Over the next two years, Roosevelt recruited six trusted aides.

Nowadays, six aides is roughly the number Barack Obama has to handle incoming mail—a small fraction of the 469 employees who work in the White House Office and councils for domestic and economic policy, the core staff of the presidency. Other officials include an ethics adviser, a special assistant for “mobility and opportunity policy,” a director of African-American media, and a special assistant for financial markets, to name just a few. Days in the West Wing are a constant, head-spinning oscillation between dozens of domestic, foreign-policy, and political eruptions and concerns.

On the spring day that Obama signed his health-care-reform law, for instance, he also had an economic briefing on unemployment, discussions about financial reform, a meeting at the Department of the Interior, a quick lunch, a meeting with senior advisers and then with Senate leaders on ratification of a new nuclear-nonproliferation treaty with Russia, and an Oval Office summit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on devising a model for Middle East peace. On cable TV, meanwhile, pundits offered nonstop analysis of the holes in the new reform package, while Sarah Palin renewed accusations of Obama’s “government takeover” of health care. A new poll showed that, for the first time, more of the country disapproved than approved of his job performance. In an interview with 60 Minutes that week, the president joked, “If you had said to us a year ago that the least of my problems would be Iraq...I don’t think anybody would have believed it.” Then he laughed. Steve Kroft, the interviewer, asked if he was “punch-drunk.”

Read on at http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/13/is-the-presidency-too-big-a-job.html

[ProSense]

1. The media, pushing wingnut talking points as insight

"Can any single person fully meet the demands of the 21st-century presidency?"


The Presidency Is “Too Big For One Man”: Professor Glenn Reynolds posted this at Instapundit:


Media = Ridiculous clowns

[mgc1961]

2. The Presidency is only one man.

Obama can't possibly know everything nor can he reasonably be held responsible for what's beyond his capacity to do.

[ProSense]

3. I agree with that point, but

the article is a straw man. The Presidency has never been one man; the President has a cabinet and numerous federal agency sharing the task of governing.

<...>

Can any single person fully meet the demands of the 21st-century presidency? Obama has looked to many models of leadership, including FDR and Abraham Lincoln, two transformative presidents who governed during times of upheaval. But what’s lost in those historical comparisons is that both men ran slim bureaucracies rooted in relative simplicity. Neither had secretaries of education, transportation, health and human services, veterans’ affairs, energy, or homeland security, nor czars for pollution or drug abuse, nor televisions in the West Wing constantly tuned to yammering pundits. They had bigger issues to grapple with, but far less managing to do. “Lincoln had time to think,” says Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University. “That kind of downtime just doesn’t exist anymore

<...>

Even though the White House has grown with each successive inhabitant (many of whom, it’s worth noting, vowed to reduce its size), one moment stands out as the most striking expansion of the office in recent years. The 9/11 terror attacks, in some ways, made being president easier. Struggles over education and agriculture that had mired George W. Bush’s first year in office were replaced with just one big expectation: to keep America safe. Bush’s approval rating shot from 50 to 90 percent in one week.

<...>

Administration staffers and historians seem to agree on one point: the news media, often transfixed on tension and triviality, aren’t helping. “Back in the ’80s, people didn’t feel like the press was on you all the time like they have been for the past few years,” says Hagin, the former aide to Reagan and both Bushes. Eager to please their editors, reporters—many from new Internet outlets—constantly compete for whatever scraps they can procure, no matter how evanescent. Several months into Obama’s presidency, The Washington Post jockeyed to land the scoop on the breed of the first family’s new dog. Not long after, the celebrity-news Web site TMZ set up a Washington office, and Politico started a franchise to monitor D.C.’s gossip. Presidential reporters occasionally pose absurd questions—about whether Obama will take a dip in the gulf, or if it’s appropriate for a comedian to call the president “dude”—to drive Web traffic. When Obama does speak, his aides lament that a seemingly infinite army of pundits critiques every line, which, in turn, diminishes the power of the office’s bully pulpit.

<...>

It’s hard to imagine how the office could sizably shrink, allowing the president to return to a more aloof, strategic role. Academics in Eisenhower’s day imagined two presidential figures, one for serious decision making and one relegated to the office’s ceremonial duties. Modern scholars see other solutions within the Constitution. “Presidents ought to give more thought to their cabinet choices, and then give them a little more deference,” says Marc Landy, a professor of political science at Boston College. The simplest experiment could involve reducing the West Wing staff, thus relying more—by necessity—on outside agencies.

<...>

Sounds like a case for small government. The media, the Senate and the Republican Party in general are making a mockery of government.
Since the article mentions Bush, it's interesting to note that one of the few times in recent years that the media sought to hold the Presidency in esteem was during his illegal invasion/occupation of Iraq.

[mgc1961]

4. The small government argument certainly could be made.

My intent is not to advocate small government though. I'm more concerned with the extraordinary expectations that make the office either a target for assassins or an imperial throne. Neither of those two outcomes is, in my opinion, desirable.

The cover photo on Newsweek magazine, to which my fiance subscribes, is a photo of Obama with six arms, balanced on one foot, juggling a host of different issues. It reads: GOD OF ALL THINGS. That is certainly not what he is nor should that be the expectation of our country's citizens. In fact, I think the future doesn't look very promising for advocates of Presidential power as we become more intricately and unavoidably linked with the rest of the world.

Time for me to hit the streets.

Cheers!

[Blue_Tires]

5. Yeah, it's just an indirect way of saying Obama is over his head

And that talking point has been gaining traction the past couple of weeks...From the same people who prop up Palin, Romney, Huckabee and Gingrich as legit candidates...