On the Hustings Vs. On the Job
(My fave? Tulis' The Rhetorical Presidency, closely followed by Neustadt's Presidential Power.)
Turns out the argument over 'what makes a good president' is as old as the country itself. And that debate continued on this week, with ABC's Mark Halperin writing in the Sunday New York Times that he was rethinking whether good campaigners made for good presidents, prompting CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller – in one of his irregularly scheduled dispatches – to write in to Public Eye, basically asking Halperin 'What took you so long?'
I was surprised to read the Op-Ed piece in Sunday New York Times by Mark Halperin.
Over the years, we both covered the White House and presidential campaigns when he worked as a producer and political director at ABC News. Now, he's editor-at-large and senior political analyst at Time Magazine. I know him to be an astute and incisive political observer.
He now writes that his long-time view of presidential campaigns as predictors of leadership in office is wrong.
"For most of my time covering presidential elections, I shared the view that there was a direct correlation between the skills needed to be a great candidate and a great president," wrote Halperin.
Frankly, I can't believe he ever felt that way. It has always seemed self-evident that the best campaigners are not necessarily the best Presidents.
Halperin said he was greatly influenced by the author Richard Ben Cramer and his book: "What It Takes."
An assessment of the 1988 presidential campaign, the book offers the thesis, according to Halperin, that "prospective presidents are best evaluated by their ability to survive the grueling quadrennial coast-to-coast test of endurance required to win the office."
There's no disputing that a presidential campaign is grueling. So much so, I've always thought that anyone willing to endure it could be deemed so self-important and power-hungry as to give us reason to question his or her suitability for the highest office in the land.
It's also been apparent that there are plenty of people who might make great presidents who pass on the idea because they won't subject themselves to the indignities and physical abuse of the campaign trail.
It's often been said that anyone willing to endure the hardships of a presidential campaign should be excluded from consideration.
But it's like the ads for the lotteries tell us: you've got to play to win. But let's not believe that able and aggressive candidates always make good presidents.