Separate But Equal Branches Congress And The Presidency

272 Pages·1995·16.2 MB·English

by  Jones, Charles O

SEPARATE BUT EQUAL BRANCHES
Congress and the Presidency
Charles O. Jones
University of Wisconsin-Madison
and the Brookings Institution
Chatham House Publishers, Inc.
Chatham, New Jersey
600
D
SEPARATE BUT EQUAL BRANCHES
Congress and the Presidency
Chatham House Publishers, Inc.
Box One, Chatham, New Jersey 07928
Copyright © 1995 by Chatham House Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without prior permission of the publisher.
Publisher: Edward Artinian
Editor: Christopher J. Kelaher
Production Supervisor: Katharine Miller
Cover Design: Lawrence Ratzkin
Composition: Bang, Motley, Olufsen
Printing and Binding: R.R. Donnelley 6c Sons Company
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Jones, Charles O.
Separate but equal branches : Congress and the presidency /
Charles O. Jones,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 1-56643-015-1
1. Separation of powers—United States. 2. Presidents—United
States. 3. United States. Congress. 4. United States—Politics
and government—1945-1989. 5. United States—Politics and
government—1989- I. Title.
JK305.J66 1995
320.473—dc2o 94-36362
CIP
Manufactured in the United States of America
Contents
Introduction, vii
Part I
The Separated System
1. The Constitutional Balance ^
2. Presidential Government and the Separation
of Powers 0
3 • The Presidency in Contemporary Politics 37
4- The Diffusion of Responsibility: An S9
Alternative Perspective
5- Presidents and Agendas
Part II
Presidents Working with Congresses
6. The Pendulum of Power
105
7- Presidential Negotiating Styles
128
with Congress
8. Carter and Congress
161
9. Reagan and Congress
192
10. Bush and Congress
220
11. Clinton and Congress
247
Index
258
To Joseph Mire and the memory of Anne M. Mire
Acknowledgments
I wish to acknowledge those colleagues who commented on one or
more of the chapters included in this volume. Some were editors of
volumes in which the papers were first published, others were panel¬
ists when a paper was presented at a conference, and a few were
generous enough to have read my initial drafts for no other reason
than that I asked them to do so. The list includes Eric L. Davis, An¬
thony King, John W. Kingdon, Thomas E. Mann, Norman J. Orn-
stein, Samuel C. Patterson, Nelson W. Polsby, Bert A. Rockman,
Steven S. Smith, Randall Strahan, Stephen Wayne, Joseph White, and
James Sterling Young.
I also want to identify the various sources that provided finan¬
cial support for one or more of the papers included in this collection:
The Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, University
of Wisconsin-Madison (Graduate School and the Hawkins Chair in
Political Science), University of Pittsburgh (Falk Chair in Politics),
University of Virginia (The Miller Center and the Gooch Chair in
Government and Foreign Affairs), Gerald R. Ford Library, and John
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Chatham House Publishers provided their usual superb editorial
and publication assistance in the production of this book. Ed
Artinian even selected the title. I am very grateful for his help and
his friendship. Irene Glynn carefully edited the manuscript, offering
a number of important suggestions for improving the readability of
works written at different times. Roger and Grace Egan prepared the
index.
The chapters in this book were originally published in the
sources shown below. I am very grateful to each of the journals and
publishers for permission to reprint the selections, as revised.
Chapter i: Reprinted from Christopher J. Deering, ed., Con¬
gressional Politics (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1989), chap. 16. (Permis¬
sion granted by Wadsworth Publishing)
VI SEPARATE BUT EQUAL BRANCHES
Chapter 2: Reprinted from proceedings of a conference on “Pol¬
icy Administration Issues in the New Korea Program,” Kyung Pook
National University, Taegu, Korea, August 1993. (Permission
granted by Professor Kyong Sam Moon)
Chapter 3: Reprinted from Anthony King, ed., The New Ameri¬
can Political System, 2d version (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press,
1990), chap. 1. (Permission granted by American Enterprise Insti¬
tute)
Chapter 4: Reprinted from Governance: An International Jour¬
nal of Policy and Administration 4 (April 1991): i5°“67- (Permis¬
sion granted by Blackwell Publishers)
Chapter 5: Reprinted from James P. Pfiffner, ed., The Manage¬
rial Presidency (Pacific Grove, Calif.: Brooks/Cole Publishing, 1991),
chap. 14. (Permission granted by Wadsworth Publishing)
Chapter 6: Reprinted from Thomas E. Mann and Norman J.
Ornstein, eds., The New Congress (Washington, D.C.: American En¬
terprise Institute, 1981), chap. 7. (Permission granted by American
Enterprise Institute)
Chapter 7: Reprinted from Anthony King, ed., Both Ends of the
Avenue: The Presidency, the Executive Branch, and Congress in the
1980s (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1983),
chap. 4. (Permission granted by American Enterprise Institute)
Chapter 8: Reprinted from the British Journal of Political Sci¬
ence 15 (July 1985), 269-85. (Permission granted by Cambridge
University Press)
Chapter 9: Reprinted from Charles O. Jones, ed., The Reagan
Legacy: Promise and Performance (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House,
1988), chap. 2. (Permission granted by Chatham House)
Chapter 10: Reprinted from Colin Campbell and Bert A. Rock-
man, eds., The Bush Presidency: First Appraisals (Chatham, N.J.:
Chatham House, 1991), chap. 2. (Permission granted by Chatham
House)
Chapter 11: Reprinted from The Brookings Review, Summer
1994, 42-45. (Permission granted by The Brookings Institution)
Introduction
The post-World War II period has witnessed remarkable develop¬
ments in relations between the president and Congress. From 1901
11 WaS to ^ave split-party arrangements between the
White House and Capitol Hill. Each of three cases—the 6zd Con¬
gress (191X-13), the 66th Congress (1919-21), and the 72d Con¬
gress (1931-33) occurred in the last two years of an administra¬
tion, presaging a party change in the White House. In the 62d and
72.d Congresses, only the House of Representatives had a majority of
the other party. Since 1947, there have been split-party arrangements
a majority of the time—two years with a Democratic president and
Republican Congress (1947-49), twenty years with a Republican
president and a Democratic Congress (1955-61, 1969-77, 1987-
93), and six years with a Republican president and Senate and a
Democratic House (1981-87). Three Republican presidents—Rich¬
ard Nixon m 1969, Ronald Reagan in 1981, and George Bush in
1989—entered office with the Democrats in a majority in one or
both houses of Congress. And three Republican presidents—Dwight
Eisenhower in 1957, Nixon in 1973, and Reagan in 1985—began
their second terms under the same conditions.
Clearly, split-party government has become commonplace, and
therefore it is incumbent on students of politics that they seek to un¬
derstand how it works. Unfortunately, many observers prefer simply
to decry the emergence of divided government as an aberration to be
rectified, concentrating their attention on the palliatives. Meanwhile,
American voters continue to split their tickets, sending mixed signals
and doubling the checks and balances by separating the politics as
well as the powers in Washington.
These developments in the post-World War II period have inter-
ested me greatly, and I have from time to time written articles and
book chapters that seek to identify and analyze their importance for
the national political system. I should state at the outset that I accept
Vll
SEPARATE BUT EQUAL BRANCHES
Vlll
split-party government as legitimate in a system of separated and dis¬
connected elections. It is also evident to me that there is substantial
support among the American public for this option. Put otherwise,
most people would sooner live with the consequences of divided gov¬
ernment than sacrifice their right to split their vote among candi-
dates as they see fit. Additionally, it strikes me that even if I were to
suggest reforms, I would be well advised first to understand how the
present system works and then how change occurs. Reform and
change are not necessarily synonymous; in fact, there are countless
examples of reforms that fail to produce the desired change, and oth¬
ers that result in unwanted change.
I have organized the chapters in this book into two parts: lhe
Separated System” and “Presidents Working with Congresses.” The
first part directs attention to broad questions regarding the nature of
the separation between the executive and legislative branches. Vari¬
ous common perspectives are introduced, along with discussions of
contemporary developments that should influence analysis of the
modern national government. A diffusion of responsibility perspec¬
tive is advanced that accommodates the split-party arrangements
that are now so common. Clear, focused accountability is unlikely in
a separated government, whatever its partisan form. It is definitely
sacrificed when the two parties compete for shares of power—as
happens when a Republican is in the White House and the Demo¬
crats have a majority in one or both houses of Congress (the most
common split-party result). The chapters in this first part also seek
to downgrade the emphasis on the president as representing the
whole government. Ours is not a presidential system, as is commonly
thought. By design, it has been from the start a separated system,
with three coequal branches sharing, and sometimes competing for,
power.1 In accepting this formulation, one is encouraged to account
for the relationships among the branches, with presidential-congres¬
sional interactions being the most important for short-term, continu¬
ous policymaking. The entries in part I describe and discuss that pro-
Part II treats specific developments in presidential-congressional
relations in recent decades and analyzes the experience and styles o
presidents (focusing primarily on Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Rea¬
gan, and Bush with speculations about Clinton). Some chapters
make explicit comparisons. The effect of the entire part is to provide
evidence for the proposition that presidents are not created equal in
terms of either the resources they have available to them or their per¬
sonal capacities for making the most of those resources. Also appar-

Introduction
IX
ent 1IlTC^ese c^aPters is the emergence of a different, if not exactly
new, U.S. Congress. One of the most interesting and challenging de¬
velopments in the latter half of the twentieth century is the growth
of policy analytical capability on Capitol Hill.
The two houses of Congress have sought to prepare themselves
to participate in policy activities previously thought to be primarily
the province of the executive branch (e.g., problem definition,
agenda setting, program implementation and evaluation). Moreover,
they have justified a greater role in policy areas once judged beyond
their competence, such as national security, foreign policy, and inter-
national economic policy.
Taken as a whole, these chapters offer a portrait of institutional
adaptation to political change. The United States has formed a differ¬
ent, if not wholly new, political system. It has demonstrated a capac¬
ity to enact laws and perform governing functions in a cross-partisan
manner. For their part, American voters have regularly encouraged
each political party by awarding it part of the elected government,
u- */.ave selc*om sancti°ned strong partisan management of
their affairs. Gridlock is often declared to be the result of split-party
arrangements, but, as David R. Mayhew has shown, major laws con¬
tinue to pass. These laws may not be the best ever, but that is differ¬
ent from saying that the system cannot act at all.
The chapters have been edited for this volume to eliminate re¬
dundancy; to alter tense, since some chapters were written during an
administration now past; and occasionally to provide updated mate¬
rial.
Notes
x. Richard E. Neustadt’s reformulation of the separation of powers is
separated institutions sharing powers.” See his Presidential Power
and the Modern Presidents (New York: Free Press, 1990), 29.
z. David R. Mayhew, Divided We Govern: Party Control, Lawmaking,
and Investigations, 1946-1990 (New Haven: Yale University Press
1991), chap. 4.