The Strategic Presidency
I’ve now done a kind of scan-read of Team of Rivals à la a person preparing for a college final. And I have to say that, like Daniel Drezner and most others I’ve spoken to, what Obama’s doing doesn’t actually seem to follow that template in anything other than a very superficial sense.
Insofar as Obama’s following any book-based template, I’d say the one he’s following is the one James P. Pfiffner laid out in a book I read three or four years ago called The Strategic Presidency: Hitting the Ground Running. The subtitle does an excellent job of laying out Pfiffner’s main point, namely that it’s important to hit the ground running. The beginning of an administration is a very favorable moment in which to move policy, both because of “honeymoon” popularity and press treatment, and also because of an unequaled ability to set the agenda. Think of Obama as a guy who’s decided that he has four or five things he’d really like to accomplish, and he’s setting himself up to ensure that he can accomplish three or four of them for sure while offering responsible stewardship on other topics that can see him clear through the re-election.
I think that’s the team Obama’s put together. It’s ready to legislate now on his big priorities without needing to spend time getting to know the key congressional players, and it’s designed to ensure as smooth as possible a handoff of ongoing crisis management at Treasury and Defense so that the president-elect’s agenda doesn’t get derailed by events.
UPDATE: Note that in today’s presser, Obama specifically says that the vision for change comes from him, not his cabinet, and that the goal of his appointments is “to be able to hit the ground running.”
Could be a coincidence, but that’s Pfiffner’s exact phrase and it’s what’s happening.
33 Responses to “The Strategic Presidency”
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November 26th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
In what situation does a person literally hit the ground running? It sounds dangerous.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
When they’re unchained?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAsNUrjJXqo
November 26th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Note that the two major feats Bush accomplished during his entire tenure (apart from the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, though 9/11 made for an excellent artificial ‘honeymoon’), the tax cuts and NCLB, he did early on. Nothing constructive in any direction since then.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
I should just add that while NCLB was signed in January 2002, both houses of congress had passed it by late June of 2001.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Of course it’s not a coincidence! With such an uncommon phrase, I’m certain Obama’s use of it indicates that he’s read Pfiffner’s book.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Damn someBrad beat me to it.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
For origin – looks like you need to go way back
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/hit-the-ground-running.html
Obama has a special opportunity to be remembered with the most effective presidents. But if he allows the MSM to set the tone of the first 100 days as “finding his way” or “unfocused and ineffective” he will never get there.
The best way to do this is to get people that understand the job into place on day one and put someone close to him as a deputy (how Cheney managed to co-opt W’s appointments at DOD but used for good not for evil)
November 26th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
The phrase got a big boost in usage from the Reagan team at the beginning of 1981. Matt’s not old enough to remember that, but Obama and most of his team are.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I know it’s hard for some of his most fervent supporters (and assorted concern trolls) to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, but he’s a political genius, the guy that destroyed the unbeatable Clinton machine, not somebody dumb enough to treat the pablum from professional bromide Doris Kerns Goodwin as gospel. He is, in fact, intelligent enough to note the realities of our tragic political system: the chorus that sings our political narratives take Ms. Goodwin’s banal pieties as gospel. Hence hope, change, Team of Rivals, etc. Saying is not the same as believing; getting the press to talk about how brilliantly non-partisan you are is a distinct political goal and requires different behavior than running the country well.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Agreed. It seems to me that the biggest proponents of the “Obama is the next Lincoln, JFK, ect. ect” are boomer type talking heads and their cohorts. Anecdotally, my dad, a prototypical boomer, is obsessed with the Obama-as-Lincoln meme. He’s been telling me how Obama is Team of Rivalin it up for a while now.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Team of Rivals isn’t exactly the best guide to the Lincoln presidency. I’d like to think it’ll be even less useful as a preview of Obama’s.
November 27th, 2008 at 6:51 am
Reinforcing your argument is that when Pres-el Obama met Rupert Murdoch earlier this year, Murdoch supposedly told him that based on 50+ years of personal contacts with Prime Ministers and Presidents of all political persuasions and nationalities, he only ever witnessed them achieving anything of substance in their first 6 months of office.
November 30th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
I listened to Goodwin lecture a week ago; Pfiffner’s book strikes me as old management advice — good advice, but old — plugged into a transitional setting.
Getting things done fast is important. Lincoln’s presidency was hamstrung by the delay between the election and his inauguration, a five-month period during which the Confederacy got organized and went recruiting. Since Lincoln had professed no love for the idea of ending slavery in the South, one wonders what might have happened had he assumed the office before Jefferson Davis was elected and sworn in.
On the whole, Goodwin’s book is not so much a management outline as it is a study of how one particular genius got many other very bright people to work together as they never had before for an abstract goal that, had they thought about, they probably would not have found all that compelling (the preservation of the union). Because Obama inherits several crises, the book offers lots of good examples of what to do, and what to avoid.
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