Domestic Policy and Ideology: Presidents and the American State, 1964-1987

235 Pages·1989·4.749 MB·English

by  David McKay

Domestic policy and ideology
Presidents and the American state 1964-1987

Domestic policy and
ideology
Presidents and the
American state 1964-1987
David McKay
Reader in Government, University of Essex
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First published 1989
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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
McKay, David H.
Domestic policy and ideology: presidents and the American state,
1964-1987/David McKay.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographies and index.
ISBN0-521-32033-X
1. United States - Politics and government - 1945- 2. Federal
government — United States — History — 20th century. 3. United States —
Social policy. 4. Presidents - United States - History - 20th
century. I. Title.
E839.5.M34 1989
320.973—dcl9 89-518 CIP
ISBN 978-0-521-32033-7 hardback
Transferred to digital printing 2007
Contents
Preface and acknowledgements page vii
List of abbreviations xi
1 The presidency, public policy and American
political development 1
Introduction 1
A developmental approach to the policy agenda 6
Policy origins 10
Policy content and coherence 13
Policy adaptation 15
The role of Congress 16
The theme of the book 17
Notes 17
2 Explaining federal spending 21
Notes 29
3 Lyndon Johnson: executive-led ideology 33
Origins 33
Coherence 44
Institutional adaptation 54
Conclusions 55
Notes 58
4 Richard Nixon: reluctant reformer? 65
Origins 65
Welfare reform 68
The New Federalism 81
Coherence 86
Contents
Adaptation: the administrative presidency, myth
and reality 94
Conclusions 100
Notes 102
5 Carter and the politics of confusion 109
Origins 109
Welfare reform 112
Urban policy 120
Coherence 127
Adaptation 133
Conclusions 136
Notes 138
6 Disengagement under Reagan: I. The New
Federalism 143
The New Federalism: content and origin 143
The policy process 152
Coherence 154
Social theory, public policy and political
feasibility: some conclusions 169
Notes 173
7 Disengagement under Reagan: II. A centralist
strategy for devolution 179
The Reagan administrative strategy 179
Consequences and coherence 193
Conclusions 197
Notes 199
8 The presidency and regime fragmentation 203
The presidency as autonomous policy maker 208
Leadership, the presidency and the American
state 212
Notes 215
Index 217
Preface and
acknowledgements
The briefest review of the major scholarly works in American
politics over the last thirty years would reveal quite radical
shifts in perceptions of which issues are important at any one
time and how the major political institutions have dealt with
them. Even over the last ten years perceptions have changed
considerably. By 1980 the loose coalition which had held the
Democratic Party together for so long seemed at last to be in
terminal decline. At the same time, an incumbent Democratic
President looked like confirming the critics' worst fears that
the presidency was indeed a 'no-win' institution destined
always to be the victim of a capricious Congress, a fickle
public, predatory interest groups and an ever more complex
international environment. Just one year later, however, a
popular Republican President had won a famous victory by
persuading Congress to accept a substantial reduction in
federal taxes and expenditures. Claims of a 'Reagan Revol-
ution' were premature, however, for although by 1988 the
political agenda owed something to the Reagan experience,
neither candidate for the presidency in that year was a Reagan-
style ideologue. The Democrats failed to win the presidency but
they were able to return some traditional Democratic issues such
as child care and education to the centre of political debate.
These shifting perceptions tell us a great deal about the
importance of leadership and especially presidential leader-
ship in the American political system. Individual Presidents
and candidates for the office can and do make a great deal of
difference to what is debated and eventually legislated. At the
same time Presidents are obviously constrained by what is
Preface and acknowledgements
always a complex and difficult political environment. This
book is about the interaction between presidential policy
preferences and this political environment. A major motiv-
ation for writing it was the conviction that contemporary
scholarship has become so concerned with the constraints on
the office that it has consistently underestimated the capacity
of Presidents to shape the policy agenda.
The particular policies chosen for analysis - welfare and
intergovernmental relations - reflect the author's longstanding
interest in these subjects. Fortunately, these issues have also
been a prominent part of the federal policy agenda over the last
forty years. During the 1930s a new political regime was
established which transformed the role of the American state
in social policy provision. This New Deal regime is still with us,
but the political forces accounting for its creation have
declined, or at least have been transformed into new, less
stable political coalitions. A new environment has emerged
which I have characterized as regime fragmentation. In this
new political context, presidents can enjoy enhanced opportu-
nities to choose and formulate public policies, and to do so in
ways which are relatively insulated from societal and Congres-
sional pressures. These remain formidable obstacles at the
legislative and implementation stages, of course, but the
capacity to determine the agenda is a crucial one, and
Presidents and their staffs can do more in this area than any
other actor or institution in the system.
These agenda-setting powers are important in another sense:
they give to the executive branch the potential for producing
intellectually coherent and consistent policies. Congress, so we
are told, cannot be expected to do this, because legislation is
the product of trade-offs and compromises which are rarely in
the public interest.
I owe a debt of thanks to a number of individuals and
institutions. The British Economic and Social Research Council
provided me with a Personal Research Grant during 1982-3
which enabled me to spend a prolonged period studying
Preface and acknowledgements
American politics in general and American federalism in
particular. During 1985 I was able to visit the Lyndon Baines
Johnson Library in Austin Texas, thanks to a grant from the
Johnson Foundation; I am grateful to Nancy Smith, one of the
archivists at the library, for all the help she provided. I am
equally grateful to Joan Lee Roberts of the Richard Nixon
Archive in Arlington, Virginia, which proved to be an
intriguing source of information into the ever more fascinating
Nixon presidency.
The final stages of the book were completed while I was a
Visiting Professor at the University of California, San Diego. I
am grateful to the Political Science Department there for
providing such an undisturbed environment for writing. A
number of individuals have provided comments on the
manuscript or parts of it, including Richard Champagne of the
University of Wisconsin, Madison; Samuel Kernell of the
University of California, San Diego; Richard Neustadt of
Harvard University; Jon Tucker of the University of Essex, and
Graham Wilson of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I am
particularly grateful to the anonymous reader provided by
Cambridge University Press who gave me by far the most
comprehensive critique not only of the analysis, but also of my
sometimes infelicitous - and increasingly Americanized -
English. All of the faults that remain are, of course, my own.
Finally, thanks to Kathy Klingenberg of the University of
California, San Diego, who typed two of the chapters, and to
Anne Slowgrove of the European Consortium for Political
Research who struggled long and hard typing and retyping
various chapters to produce acceptable final versions.