Word: trumanism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Executive Energy. Harry Truman said three years ago that "the presidency is exactly as powerful as it was under George Washington. The powers are in the Constitution, and the President can't go any further than that." Strictly speaking, Truman was right. Thanks largely to Hamilton's eloquent plea in The Federalist papers for "energy in the Executive," the office was invested with broad authority but it was also artfully hedged. Every strong President has exploited his mandate to the fullest, always testing the Congress and the judiciary to see where the parameters of power may lie. Just where they...
...grounds that the presidency is a "matrix for dictatorship." Nonetheless, even the most activist Presidents have run into brick walls. "Lincoln was a sad man," F.D.R. once said, "because he couldn't get it all at once. And nobody can." At the end of one of his poorer days, Truman growled over a bourbon and water: "They talk about the power of the President, how I can just push a button to get things done. Why, I spend most of my time kissing somebody's ass." And Johnson roared recently: "Power? The only power I've got is nuclear...
...sometimes hard to tell whether the rancor aroused by Johnson stemmed from his policies or his personality. An immensely complex, contradictory and occasionally downright unpleasant man, he has never managed to attract the insulating layer of loyalty that a Roosevelt or a Truman, however beleaguered, could fall back on. Consequently, when things began to go wrong, he had few defenders and all too many critics...
...some extent purely verbal. "The most eminent presidents have generally been eloquent presidents," wrote Stanford's Bailey in Presidential Greatness. "They were eloquent with pen, as Jefferson was; or with tongue, as Franklin Roosevelt was; or with both, as Wilson and Lincoln were." Johnson is eloquent with neither. Harry Truman helped overcome a similar deficiency with a roof-raising style on the stump, Dwight Eisenhower with an avuncular manner that inspired confidence and trust. Johnson's official verbiage tends to be dull, and though he can be pungent and forceful in private, his public charisma is just about...
...abroad without a congressional by-your-leave. Jefferson sought neither advice nor consent when he dispatched a naval force to fight the Barbary pirates in 1801. Neither did Polk when he skirmished with the Mexicans in Texas, or Franklin Roosevelt when he sent troops to Iceland in 1941, or Truman when he sent U.S. forces into Korea in 1950, or Eisenhower in the Lebanon crisis, or Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs. In modern times, the possibility of nuclear conflict has made swift decision-making by the President an imperative. Says Stanford's Historian Emeritus Edgar E. Robinson: "The growth...