The accession of a new presidential regime in Washington sent me back to a monumental late-20th century study of contrasting types of presidential leadership, Stephen Skowronek,The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Harvard U. Pr., 1993, 1997).
Skowronek divided presidential history into four periods: (1) Patrician politics (1789-1832), when presidents purported to stand above faction and governed on the strength of their personal standing among elite notables; (2) Partisan politics (1832-1900), when political parties dominated and leadership utilized political patronage; (3) Pluralist politics (1900-1972), characterized by the rise of bureaucracy and bargaining among competing interests; and, finally, (4) Plebiscitary politics (1972- ), characterized by candidate-centered campaigns and a more direct relationship with the wider public, which generally prioritizes a growing economy.
More distinctively, he typed presidents in terms of a politics of reconstruction, presidents who repudiated the recent past (e.g., Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR), a politics of articulation, presidents who continue previous tradition ( e.g., Monroe, Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson), and a politics of disjunction, presidents who continue previous tradition, when that tradition is becoming inadequate to the time and politically insupportable (e.g., John Quincy Adams, Pierce, Hoover, Carter). He also discussed in somewhat less detail a politics of preemption, presidents whose repudiative authority is more limited that that of reconstructive presidents, with consequent difficulties (e.g., Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Wilson, and Nixon). He also alluded to three other more unique cases, Coolidge, Eisenhower, and Cleveland.
Skowronek's analysis is quite dense and presents an immense amount of historical detail to buttress its distinctive treatment of presidential leadership. At the end of the 20th century, the author seemed to emphasize how modern transformations in American politics have substantially altered some of the variables that have traditionally oriented the exercise of presidential leadership. In his 1997 Afterword, reflecting on the as yet unfinished Clinton presidency, he suggested that preemptive leadership might likely characterize the future.
I have not read Skowronek's 3rd edition (2020), which took his analysis into Trump's first term (but before his catastrophic final, pandemic year and electoral defeat). By then, events had challenged Skowronek's earlier expectation that historical patterns were being overtaken by contemporary developments. My understanding is that he grappled with whether Trump would prove reconstructive, despite deviating from the historic pattern (in that Obama was not a disjunctive president), and his analysis foresaw the possibility that Trump would become in effect a party unto himself, which he obviously has since become.
But whatever was the case then, we have since experienced the Biden interlude and Trump's triumphant return to power with all his reconstructive aspirations. I don't know what Skowronek would say (or maybe has said) about Biden and Trump II, but here is what I think.
The modern period of Plebiscitary politics continues. The successful presidents (i.e., those who have gotten reelected) have, for the most part, been charismatic figures with a direct connection with the electorate. This was especially true of Regan, Clinton, Obama, and now Trump. Recent elections have also illustrated how that direct connection highlighted the importance of the economy in voters' calculations.
When first describing reconstructive presidents, Skowronek wrote "Presidents stand preeminent in American politics when government has been most thoroughly discredited, and when political resistance to the presidency is weakest, presidents tend to remake the government wholesale. It is worth noting, however, that the commanding authority presidents wield at these moments does not automatically translate into more effective solutions to the substantive problems that gave rise to the nationwide crisis of legitimacy in the first place."
Presumably, Trump is not familiar with the political science language the author employs, but it seems safe to suggest he aspires to be a reconstructive president and appears well positioned to become one. A quick comparison with a line like this from Obama's 2013 Inaugural - "We cannot ... substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate" - effectively illustrates Trump's repudiation of the previous regime. (Indeed, Trump represents an apparently wholesale repudiation of virtually all previous iterations of the American constitutional regime.)
Of course, no one can know for certain how things will play out. But, from the unique perspective of our contentious present, the Biden presidency (which, once upon a time, seemed poised to be quite consequential, but now appears to have been but an interlude between the Two Trump presidencies) now seems to have the characteristics of a disjunctive presidency, in the tradition of the two Adamses, Herbert Hoover, and Jimmy Carter. Skowronek first described such presidencies as affiliates of the previous regime at a time when conditions of governance have radically altered and the regime affiliate is left "with little beyond his own personal dedication and his keen appreciation of the complexity of the nation's problems to justify his tenure." That does seem to fit Biden better, from the perspective of the present than the earlier appreciation of him - more a Carter than an LBJ. And to the extent Biden really was disjunctive - marking the final end of post-New Deal, post-Cold War liberalism, the path has been paved for Trump to become a truly reconstructive president.
On the other hand, Trump's unique personality leaves the full future trajectory of his Administration a much more open question than any historical typology may be able to accommodate.
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