Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal: Applying Neustadt to the Trump Presidency [1st ed.] 9783030560287, 9783030560294

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xi
Introduction: Trump’s Presidency; Neustadt’s Model (Todd M. Schaefer)....Pages 1-10
The Trump Record so Far: Are We Tired of Winning Yet? (Todd M. Schaefer)....Pages 11-22
Making Sense of the Trump Presidency Through Neustadt’s Presidential Power (Todd M. Schaefer)....Pages 23-39
Three Cases of Catastrophe (Todd M. Schaefer)....Pages 41-55
“No Place for Amateurs”: Trump as Decider and Administrator-in-Chief (Todd M. Schaefer)....Pages 57-77
Surviving at the Top?: Trump’s Buoyancy and Perseverance in Defiance of Neustadt’s Model (Todd M. Schaefer)....Pages 79-88
Trumping Neustadt?: An Altered Political Environment Helps No. 45 (Todd M. Schaefer)....Pages 89-108
Conclusion: What Trump’s Presidency Teaches Us About Presidential Power (and Presidential Power) (Todd M. Schaefer)....Pages 109-119
Back Matter ....Pages 121-141

Citation preview

Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal Applying Neustadt to the Trump Presidency Todd M. Schaefer

The Evolving American Presidency

Series Editors Michael A. Genovese Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, CA, USA Todd L. Belt Graduate School of Political Management George Washington University Washington, DC, USA

This series is stimulated by the clash between the presidency as invented and the presidency as it has developed. Over time, the presidency has evolved and grown in power, expectations, responsibilities, and authority. Adding to the power of the presidency have been wars, crises, depressions, industrialization. The importance and power of the modern presidency makes understanding it so vital. How presidents resolve challenges and paradoxes of high expectations with limited constitutional resources is the central issue in modern governance and the central theme of this book series.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14437

Todd M. Schaefer

Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal Applying Neustadt to the Trump Presidency

Todd M. Schaefer Department of Political Science Central Washington University Ellensburg, WA, USA

The Evolving American Presidency ISBN 978-3-030-56028-7 ISBN 978-3-030-56029-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface and Acknowledgments

Probably like most Americans, and nearly all political scientists, I was shocked at Donald Trump’s victory on election night, 2016. I assumed his extreme inexperience would not only hurt him directly with voters, but would also hamper him in employing effective campaign strategy and tactics. Clearly, like other “know it all” elites Trump disdains, my perceptions were off. As Trump took office, I similarly wondered how such a political neophyte, and one with his temperament, would do the job. Like others, too, I was absorbed by the drama of his presidency, but also became convinced there was a story to tell from the perspective of my field to make sense of the confusing daily picture. I began seeing patterns and examples that fit precepts Richard Neustadt, the most prominent modern scholar of the office, had enunciated. But there were other aspects about Trump’s experience that defied explanation. The ultimate result of those ponderings is this book. As it seems bringing any scholarly project to fruition is metaphorically a task somewhat akin to raising a child to adulthood, likewise it seems that “it takes a village” to do so, as one of Hillary Clinton’s favorite sayings goes. I and this book benefited greatly from the assistance of others. First, thanks to some participants at the Midwest Political Science Association meeting where I first presented a much shorter and rougher version of this work. Prof. Anne Pluta gave me some helpful initial food for thought, some of which I ate, and Prof. Shannon Bow O’Brien had v

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good things to say about working with Palgrave, once she coincidentally found out I was talking with them at the meeting about this project. In related fashion, I sincerely thank the blind reviewer Palgrave employed for their patience and diligence in reading two drafts of this manuscript. Their remarks about alternative views, particularly about Neustadt’s place in the field relative to other scholars, as well as critiques of my style, etc., forced me to address certain aspects that made the work better, as ideally good peer review should. Also, heartfelt thanks to Emeritus Prof. Tom Cronin, in whose class I first encountered Neustadt’s ideas, and who indirectly through his example got me into a career studying and teaching about politics. In addition to his mentorship over the years, he also read both my conference paper and a draft of this book and provided helpful advice I probably only partially heeded. Professor Thomas Patterson—who for his part, gave me encouraging words on the work that became my first published article decades ago— also showed an interest in the original work, which reinforced my belief about pursuing it in book form. Students also played a valuable role in the creation of this work. Those in my presidency, media and politics, and even US government courses stimulated me to think about some of these ideas and how to convey them to a broader audience. More importantly, I thank Bianca OrtizPallen, a senior political science major at Central Washington University, for editing and reading much of the manuscript, finding or at least identifying citations, and doing some of her own research on unilateral executive actions. She gave me needed clarity and “message reality checks” at times. Her positive attitude toward doing such mundane tasks on top of her other studies and rugby training was admirable. Of course I must acknowledge the assistance of the editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan. Michelle Chen both “recruited” me by being interested in the topic, and by guiding me to the Pivot option and the approval process. Rebecca Roberts then oversaw the further development. Their patience and always sunny demeanor made my efforts a little less stressful and kept me on track. Finally, I owe the biggest debt to my wife, Kathy Allen, for keeping me sane through diversions and supporting me even though it wasn’t always convenient. I am truly grateful for her understanding in leaving me alone for hours, my changing attitudes around this project, and for listening to

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my rants about Trump. The latter was doubly hard after the pandemic as she was my captive audience; I couldn’t have done this without her. And I thank you, the reader, for picking up this book. Here is hoping we can all go back to something resembling a regular life, whether with or without Trump as president. Ellensburg, USA

Todd M. Schaefer

Contents

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Introduction: Trump’s Presidency; Neustadt’s Model

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The Trump Record so Far: Are We Tired of Winning Yet?

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Making Sense of the Trump Presidency Through Neustadt’s Presidential Power

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Three Cases of Catastrophe

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“No Place for Amateurs”: Trump as Decider and Administrator-in-Chief

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Surviving at the Top?: Trump’s Buoyancy and Perseverance in Defiance of Neustadt’s Model

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Trumping Neustadt?: An Altered Political Environment Helps No. 45

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Conclusion: What Trump’s Presidency Teaches Us About Presidential Power (and Presidential Power )

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CONTENTS

Postscript on Covid-19 Crisis

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Name Index

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Place, Events and Subject Index

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Subject Index

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 6.1

Fig. 7.1

Legislative output Monthly approval of president’s job performance through first three years Selected Senators: support for Trump (Explanation: “Raw Trump Score” is the percentage of times the senator supported Trump’s position on votes in the Chamber, through February 5, 2020. “Trump Differential” is difference between their actual support of Trump, and what was statistically predicted, given percent of the vote Trump won in their state in 2016 [i.e., “Trumpiness” of their constituency]. Source Created from data from Fivethirtyeight.com) Cumulative proclamations, executive orders, and memoranda; Presidents following partisan change (Source: The American Presidency Project, “Trump in Action: Early Analyses: Comparing President Trump’s Record of Executive Orders and Actions to Other Recent Presidents.” April 29, 2017. https://www.presidency.ucsb. edu/analyses/trump-action-early-analyses)

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Trump’s Presidency; Neustadt’s Model

Abstract This chapter presents the purpose of the book, that the unorthodox and unusual presidency of Donald Trump can be understood in part by Richard Neustadt’s seminal work, Presidential Power. Fundamentally, Neustatdt’s model consists of the idea of presidential bargaining, and that presidential power is contingent on various factors, rather than absolute or assured—as he famously put it, “presidential power is the power to persuade.” Thus, his model is one of presidential negotiation and cajoling, etc., and the two main ingredients of presidential power are the president’s elite support from the Washington community, as well as support from the public at large. It also contrasts Trump’s conception of “coercive negotiation” with Neustadt’s collective bargaining. Keywords Trump, Donald J. · Presidential power · Neustadt, Richard · Bargaining and negotiation

An Unprecedented Presidency? The unorthodox, unusual, and in many ways, unprecedented presidency of Donald Trump has not only clearly challenged longstanding expectations of the public and the Washington “political class,” but also the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. M. Schaefer, Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4_1

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accumulated wisdom of the scholarly community. An extreme outsider, as the first President with no formal governing experience, Trump has done things differently, acting and communicating in ways unlike previous occupants of the office. His egoistic bluster, brusque style, refusal to divest himself of his businesses, use of close family members and business associates as official advisors or aides, and especially, his breaking of behavioral and verbal traditions, set him apart. For example, “Trump’s normshattering rhetoric deviates from that of his predecessors but…[it] both certified Trump’s authenticity as a change candidate to a constituency eager for disruption of politics-as-usual, [and] now complicates his ability to govern in a political system still accustomed to those conventions” (Jamieson and Taussig 2017). On the other hand, it could be that Trump’s presidency is not unique or even so unusual (see Herbert et al. 2019), and merely serves as a flamboyant footnote in the presidential studies literature. Indeed, as Trump himself has discovered, in other respects, like presidents before him, he is but one—albeit the most visible, and vocal—actor in the US political system. One way to understand the frenetic, protean presidency of Donald Trump is to look to scholarly analyses of the office and earlier presidents. It seems fitting, then, to turn to one of the “classic” works in presidential studies, Richard E. Neustadt’s Presidential Power (1960, 1990) to do so. His work broke new ground in the field by focusing on the personal and behavioral capacities of the individual in the Oval Office. A personalpower approach seems well-suited for explaining the turbulent trajectory of Donald Trump’s tenure, especially given the focus of so much attention is on him; and indeed, he appears to want it that way. Neustadt diverged from the scholarly conventions of his day by viewing the office from the perspective of the person holding it and the realities of presidential influence, rather than formal duties, roles and powers of the institution. Notably, his starting point was more political practice than theory. Having worked in the Truman Administration, upon becoming a professor at Columbia, he found academic views of the office “very remote from what I had experienced” (quoted in Ellis and Nelson 2020, p. 134). His book was in a sense the Dale Carnegie guide for presidents. As one scholar put it, “his work is a veritable manual of personal power: how to get it, how to keep it, how to use it. [Journalist] James Reston called it the nearest thing America has to Machiavelli’s The Prince” (Cronin 1980,

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p. 121). It launched the study of presidential power and behavior, and remains influential today. Another scholar recently noted that the “core argument of Presidential Power is now more than a half-century old, but it has aged well” (Dickinson 2020, p. 137).

What the Book Does This book attempts to make sense of the Trump presidency using the lens of Neustadt’s seminal work. It argues that his key elements of presidential persuasion, as well as other precepts, on “how to be an effective president” forged six decades ago help explain Trump’s performance and especially struggles in office. Thus in some important ways, Trump’s experience bears out the wisdom of the guidelines and model Neustadt enunciated—largely in disaffirming, or reverse fashion—but in other respects Trump defies expectation. The explanation for this paradox is largely because the political and governing environment of today differs enough that it has so far allowed Trump to survive, if not thrive, in the contemporary world of DC politics. In that sense, just as Neustadt updated his work to fit new times, so does this effort, in an attempt to illuminate both the Trump presidency and the field more generally. To do so, it is important to first review the main components of Neustadt’s perspective.

Brief Review of Neustadt and His Model Others have provided useful summaries and reviews of his major work and its updates (e.g., Cronin 1980; Cronin and Genovese 1998; Edwards 2000; Shapiro et al. 2000), which I highly recommend and will not try to duplicate. Still, since his model and ideas will be applied to Trump’s presidency in subsequent chapters, and form the basis for those analyses, a discussion of his work’s major points follows. Bargaining and the Power to Persuade Neustadt is most famous for his adaptation of a quote by Harry Truman, that “presidential power is the power to persuade” (1990, pp. 101–111). Rarely could presidents give commands, and even then they usually were a last resort. His innovative and key insight was that, beyond limited formal powers, viewed from the Oval Office, the presidency was more a source of

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potential weakness than strength. Neustadt rightly noted the distinction between powers and power. Grants of formal power in many cases did not translate into “real” power, or influence—or, as President Lyndon Johnson once quipped, “…the only power I’ve got is nuclear, and I can’t even use that!” (quoted in Zelizer 2015). Because of the fragmented, shared, and conflictual nature of the American system, presidents had to be active advocates and power brokers. Simply put, his model was one of elite bargaining, and importantly for presidents to remember, bargaining necessarily means compromise. Yet one can bargain from a position of strength or weakness—therefore, what determines the president’s bargaining context? According to Neustadt, presidential power was related to three main sources. First, were bargaining advantages in the job itself, “with which to persuade other men [sic] that what he wants of them their own responsibilities require them to do too. Second are the expectations of those others regarding his ability and will to use the various advantages they think he has. Third are those men’s [sic] estimates of how his public views him and of how their publics may view them if they do what he wants” (1990, p. 150). The president’s “vantage point” in the Oval Office, or his intersection with other actors in the political system, along with their reciprocal personal and professional needs, gave presidents one set of advantages. Similarly, in related fashion were the responsibilities, authority and gravitas of the position itself. Furthermore, the two main components of presidential power, which determined the strength of the presidential hand, were what he called reputation (elite support) and prestige (popular support). Reputation Presidential reputation is the standing, at any one time, of the president in the minds of others with whom he must deal in governing and policy-making (pp. 50–72). Neustadt defined it as “the impressions in the Washington community about the skill and will with which he puts those things to use” (p. 185). Neustadt, writing from the perspective of the Washington of the 1950s, where governing was conducted largely through interactions between elites, often behind closed doors, saw reputation as crucial to success. Presidents must guard it at all costs, for its loss meant the loss of

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influence: “what other men [sic] think of him becomes a cardinal factor in the president’s own power to persuade” (p. 52). Prestige Support of the public outside the Beltway is also a currency of presidential power (pp. 73–90). Popular support is especially important in dealing with members of Congress, but even unelected officials in the bureaucracy and courts, interest group representatives, and foreign officials, must take into account the degree to which the nation is behind the president. As presidents themselves, such as Lincoln and Wilson, have noted, a president with an aroused public on their side is more formidable than one whom the public distrusts, disapproves, or ignores. Presidents must thus worry about their public standing as well, to the degree they can. But Neustadt astutely noted that many of the forces impacting prestige were out of a president’s control, and the public only paid attention when presidentially relevant events touched their lives. “A president concerned to guard prestige must keep his eye on the hopes and what happens to those hopes for lives lived outside Washington… what threatens his prestige is popular frustration” (p. 83). Of course, merely having these main ingredients in place does not equal a complete dish. How presidents manage their power is crucial too. As Cronin (1980, p. 124) summarized it, “[p]residential power is not easy to come by and even the most skillful presidents… [will have to be flexible], always sensitive to the need for multiple channels of influence, always frugal in using power resources to get their way, and always employing the art of persuasion in bargaining situations, thereby avoiding at almost all costs the direct issuance of a controversial command” [emphasis added]. To Neustadt, then, it was the ability to get others to do things without force, and with as few concessions as possible, that was the real measure of presidential power. I thus use these ideas and concepts to analyze the behavior of Donald Trump and to a lesser degree the record of the Trump presidency through its first two to three years.

What Follows This section provides an overview of the remainder of the book. Before actually applying Neustadt’s model, Chapter 2 first briefly makes the case that Trump has been rather unimpressive in terms of accomplishments,

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and arguably has been a subpar president. It documents a number of struggles he has had in the White House, and how despite some favorable circumstances, he has achieved few major successes, beyond the tax cut of his first year. This argument sets up the next two chapters—namely, why Trump has had limited power to influence events and political actors, and how he himself has not played his power cards well. Chapter 3 applies Neustadt’s elements of presidential power, reputation (elite standing), and prestige (mass standing), to Trump’s presidency so far. Both of these lead to the conclusion that Trump is in a weak power position, or at least, he has failed to guard his power and strategically use it to his advantage—not that he’d read or much less heed Neustadt, but that even his own power instincts are largely wrong. In terms of reputation, it is clear that Beltway elites have little respect for him, and even some members of his own party despise and/or are appalled by him. In particular, the chapter examines how Trump’s negativity, nastiness, and flip-flopping make it hard for elites, even some Republicans, to support him. Regarding prestige, Trump, especially for an early-term president with a good economy (again, through year two plus), has historically low approval ratings. I argue much of this state of affairs is due to Trump’s own behavior and persona, though there are other factors. This reality in turn means he has little persuasive power, especially with non-Republicans in the electorate. This lack of support is also evidenced by the large field of Democratic candidates who stepped forward seeking to replace him in 2020. Utilizing one of Neustadt’s methods, Chapter 4 puts President Trump’s bargaining and persuasion in context by examining three specific case studies. These were all noteworthy, major initiatives that were immediate (if not longer term) tactical and policy defeats, caused mainly by Trump’s mishandling of them, and/or neglecting to follow Neustadt’s lessons. They include: the Republican-led effort on health care to “repeal Obamacare,” and its ultimate defeat in 2017; the US government shutdown and fight over the budget for Trump’s “border wall” in December 2018–January 2019; and the President’s failed second summit with Kim Jong Un in February 2019, and North Korean nuclear policy more generally. Chapter 5 focuses on Trump as chief executive, and in particular, his relationship with and leadership of the White House staff, the Cabinet, and to a lesser degree the bureaucracy. This chapter places his organizational style within major models of scholarship on previous

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administrations, and notes his adaptation of the “competitive” one used by Franklin Roosevelt, which Neustadt did admire, but most research suggests is challenging at best. Notably, Trump is a governing if not political novice, wasn’t a real CEO as a businessman, and has little understanding of how to manage the executive branch. His large staff turnover and infighting; scandals and corruption within his administration; decision processes and policy reversals; and general lack of effective implementation or day-to-day oversight, all hamper his ability to do the job and achieve his goals. These features also go against Neustadtian precepts and illustrate one of his minor points from the original 1960 work, “the presidency is no place for amateurs” (1990, p. 151). However, given Trump is an extreme “anti-government” President who wanted to “drain the swamp,” and “deconstruct the administrative state,” in other respects his failure to fill positions, oversee the government, along with other techniques like personnel and budget cuts, have in a sense given him some success by sheer neglect. Despite the apparent utility of Neustadt’s model in explaining Trump’s meager accomplishments and/or lack of persuasive power, nevertheless he does appear “relatively better off” or “more successful” than the model would predict. So, Chapter 6 explores the “other hand” of some of the achievements and even impressive power features of the Trump presidency. Despite his weak power position and lack of strategic power protection, he had a high level of success with Congress in his first two years; is realigning, at least to some degree, the courts; and has forced all other Washingtonians to play on his field—whether it be issues like trade, nationalism, or immigration, or simply the Trump-caused controversy of the week. In particular, he has been able to reshape the Republican Party in his own image, and Republican politicians—even many that opposed him— have come around to backing him, as witnessed by strong intra-party unity in the Senate in acquitting him in his February 2020 impeachment trial. Also, despite his relatively low public standing, his position has remained very stable—it never seems to go down much, even as it doesn’t go up much either. He has a core of devoted followers, and importantly has even won over most skeptical Republicans (in the electorate, that is) who stick with him through thick and thin. Thus, while his ceiling of support may be relatively low, his floor is quite high. This characteristic allows him to influence others in DC, and also, among other things, has kept him a strong contender for reelection in 2020.

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Chapter 7 attempts to resolve the paradoxes identified in Chapter 6, or at least offer a tentative explanation. While elements of Neustadt’s work remain relevant, the fact of the matter is that his rules or suggestions were based on a view of 1950s Washington, which no longer exists today. Certain changes in the political environment in turn have changed the game of presidential power and governance, and Trump’s presidency reflects those. Three main developments of relevance include party polarization; the transformed and new media landscape; and the “unilateral presidency” of independent executive actions. Neustadt actually said little about them, probably because they really weren’t a factor in his time, or hadn’t become what they are today. The concluding chapter sums up the work, and reflects on what it means for presidential scholarship within political science, and presidential power more broadly. Namely, models or ideas like Neustadt’s help us understand the presidency, but even practical analytic frameworks need to be adaptable to changes in the real world. It also addresses and rebuts some of the criticisms of Neustadt’s theory and methods. In the end, perhaps the norm-breaking presidency of Trump will help us to see which conceptual tools may be useful, and which may not be, as well as what scholars need to continue to work on. It also addresses the implications of Trump’s lack of persuasion and yet, not utter lack of success, for the US political system.

The Art of the Deal Meets President Power: A Study in Contrasts A final reason why Neustadt’s ideas are intriguing in the case of Donald Trump is the two men’s contrasting visions of bargaining strategy and skill. Trump came into office claiming particular knowledge and expertise at negotiation, and criticizing his predecessors for poor deal-making for the United States. His negotiating philosophy supposedly stems from his first, and most famous, ghost-written bestseller, Trump: The Art of the Deal (Trump and Schwartz 1987). Several follow-up books, albeit mostly (not surprisingly) about him and his life, have also added to the picture. One international leadership scholar insightfully summarized Trump as a “coercive negotiator.” Drawing on a variety of sources, he described Trump’s approach as: “spotting and exploiting vulnerability is his trade; leverage and bravado are his tools. He first assesses the strengths and weaknesses

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of the opposing side; he then applies all levers of power to threaten those vulnerabilities, while using bravado to play up the advantages of making an agreement on his terms. This way, he presents a stark structured choice to his interlocators, leaving them the least maneuvering space” (Kogan 2019, p. 65). Notably, then, Trump’s conceptions of persuasion and negotiation, while having some commonalities, differ markedly from Neustadt’s. The latter’s idea of persuasion is not the power to change minds, but rather convincing others that what the president wants (or what is good for the president) is good for them, or their interests and their followers, etc., as well (see Dickinson 2020, p. 135). Still, that process is a reciprocal, “two-way street” of interrelationships among people who will need, or will encounter, each other again. “With the array of vantage points at his disposal, a President may be far more persuasive than his logic or charm may make him. But outcomes are not guaranteed by his advantages. There remain the counter-pressures those whom he would influence can bring to bear from their vantage points… persuasion becomes give and take” (Neustadt 1990, p. 32). Neustadt thus looks at persuasion as akin collective bargaining, rather than dominance, noting that compromise or deal-making are part of the equation. Instead, to Trump, “deals” really are competitions where he hopes to come out on top; in other words, they are zero-sum affairs meant to show his superiority (again, see Kogan 2019). Whether the Trump model from the business and real estate fields—and arguably, it may have limited utility there either—translates well into the world of Washington, DC power politics, is one of the provocative questions of his time in office. But it is Neustadt’s model—derived by his real-world experience as an advisor to presidents—which will be tested with the Trump presidency. Such an analysis hopefully will shed light not only on experience of Trump’s administration, but presidents and presidential power more broadly.

References Cronin, T. E. (1980). The State of the Presidency. Boston: Little, Brown. Cronin, T. E., & Genovese, M. A. (1998). The Paradoxes of the American Presidency. New York: Oxford University Press. Dickinson, M. (2020). Resolved, Presidential Power Is (Still) the Power to Persuade: Pro. In R. Ellis & M. Nelson (Eds.), Debating the Presidency:

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Conflicting Perspectives on the American Executive (5th ed., pp. 134–140). Washington: CQ Press. Edwards, G. C., III. (2000). Neustadt’s Power Approach to the Presidency. In R. Shapiro, M. J. Kumar, & L. R. Jacobs (Eds.), Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Columbia University Press. Ellis, R. J., & Nelson, M. (Eds.). (2020). Debating the Presidency: Conflicting Perspectives on the American Executive. Thousand Oaks: CQ Press. Herbert, J., McCrisken, T., & Wroe, A. (2019). The Ordinary Presidency of Donald J. Trump. Cham: Springer. Jamieson, K. H., & Taussig, D. (2017). Disruption, Demonization, Deliverance, and Norm Destruction: The Rhetorical Signature of Donald J. Trump. Political Science Quarterly, 132(4), 619–651. Kogan, E. (2019, January). The Art of the Power Deal: Four Negotiation Roles of Donald Trump. Negotiation Journal, 35(1), 65–83. Neustadt, R. E. (1960). Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York: Wiley. Neustadt, R. E. (1990). Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Free Press. Shapiro, R., Kumar, M. J., & Jacobs, L. R. (Eds.), (2000). Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Columbia University Press. Trump, D. J., with Schwartz, T. (1987). Trump: The Art of the Deal. New York: Warner Books. Zelizer, J. (2015, January 17). 9 Things I Wish People Understood About Lyndon Johnson. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2015/1/17/7558391/lyn don-johnson-facts. Accessed February 10, 2020.

CHAPTER 2

The Trump Record so Far: Are We Tired of Winning Yet?

Abstract This chapter reviews the political and policy record of the earlyto-mid Trump presidency, making the case that despite some advantages coming in, the record—in terms of both skill and effectiveness at getting things done, plus the results themselves—is less than stellar. By a number of metrics, such as bills passed, promises kept, as well as the evaluation of expert and public opinion, his time in office has been underwhelming. Keywords Trump, Donald · Presidential power · Presidential performance/greatness

Introduction: How Effective a President Has Trump Been?---That Is the Question The previous chapter introduced the goal and schematic of the book, namely the application of Richard Neustadt’s (1960, 1990) classic work on presidential power and persuasion to the Trump presidency. It briefly reviewed the precepts of his model and ideas. In this chapter, before explaining Trump’s performance and behavior in office from the standpoint of Neustadt, we first must examine his record. Such an exercise shows Trump has failed on a number of counts © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. M. Schaefer, Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4_2

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and in a number of areas, both to get what he wants, and in terms of results. I present the case that Trump—despite his claims to the contrary—has not been a very good, and is arguably a bad president in terms of effectiveness in using political power, in achieving his policy aims, and even in governing the country well. First, the chapter reviews standards for evaluating presidential performance, and the scholarly literature on “presidential greatness,” as a guide to judging Number 45. Next, it provides evidence that Trump’s record is less than impressive. One must of course separate the notion of “success” in terms of the results of influence, actions, policy, etc., from the notion of political success at exercising power—in other words, getting others to go along or support one’s goals or policies, or in Neustadt’s terms, persuasion. For example, one might argue that President George W. Bush was extremely successful in getting Congress, the media, the public, and even many in the foreign policy establishment to support going to war against Iraq in 2003—yet the war itself, while efficient in overthrowing Saddam Hussein and defeating Iraq’s army, was far less successful, and arguably a failure, in stopping terrorism or rebuilding the Iraqi polity as a democratic regime. In fact, the continued US occupation, as well as related economic, military, strategic, and diplomatic efforts have been very costly, and especially so in humanitarian terms. That country still suffers from instability and violence to this day. President Obama, in similar fashion, was able—as Bill Clinton and Harry Truman were not—to get Congress to enact major, near-universal health care reform legislation, informally known as “Obamacare.” Yet difficulties in implementation, and political struggles with Republicans, limited its subsequent policy success in practice, though it did have some positive effects. A backlash against it also likely hurt his party in subsequent elections, and with it, much of his future political strength. Both political skill and its results are important metrics, and will be used to evaluate Trump. Presidents, of course, want to achieve greatness, or have their policies be successful as well as be enacted, and are judged by history to some degree on the results. On the other hand, given the fragmented nature of the US system, as Neustadt noted (1990, p. 29), they must first succeed at influence and the “power game” to even hope to achieve policy ends. Indeed, research into the question of presidential stature has a long and distinguished pedigree in the field, stemming back to such studies as polls

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of experts by noted Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. in the 1940s and carried on by his son in later years. Others have followed up these efforts, often with varied methods, and include popular assessments done through public opinion polls by the likes of Gallup and Harris, which continue to the present. To cite just a few examples, Landy and Milkis (2001) focus on a subset of presidents they deem worthy of emulation, whereas Simonton (e.g., 1991, 2006) emphasizes psychological and event factors in explaining presidential ratings, and Felzenberg (2008) examines political, personal and policy ones to rank the presidential pantheon. However, as Morris (2010) points out, the direct role of policy performance in analyzing presidential greatness has been limited. Another thorny issue in judging presidential performance is how to do so—not only which benchmarks to use, but also how to properly interpret the data. As noted, various scholars have addressed the issue of rating presidents, the keys to “presidential greatness,” etc., and come to somewhat different conclusions. Nevertheless, there is some consensus on the “greats” and the “failures.” Washington, Lincoln, and the Roosevelts are some who fall in the former category, and Grant, Harding, Hoover, and Nixon are placed in the latter. One notable pair of presidential scholars argue that all serious attempts to evaluate presidents necessarily involve some types of viewpoint, criteria, or even political, slant. “[W]hen ranking presidents we often learn more about the raters than the rated. Even the most serious efforts at evaluating presidencies invariably involve subjective or partisan biases” (Cronin and Genovese 2004, p. 100). Robert DiClerico cogently notes how, in many ways, identifying presidential “success” is thus in the “eye of beholder.” He goes on to list some additional complications in accurate evaluation. These include the problem of perspective or historical reevaluation (views change over time, such as Truman being rated retrospectively much higher than he did upon leaving office); how to weight presidents “being ahead of the times,” in terms of raising new issues that become important later, even as they were unable to achieve policy changes in those areas during their tenure; and whether presidents really deserve the credit or blame for things that happen during their term (DiClerico 2013, pp. 429–435). Admittedly, therefore, some might take issue with the assessment offered here. Notably, the Trump White House itself regularly crows about

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its (supposed) achievements, and has claimed great successes (whitehouse.gov, n.d.). Of course, that is far from an unbiased or even balanced assessment, and presidents shouldn’t get to judge themselves. Still, most experts look for major, concrete accomplishments, and whether the president provided leadership for the common good or met the challenge(s) of the day (see for example, Curry and Morris 2010). So although there may be no neutral or entirely objective way to measure presidential performance, the sections below document how in many respects Trump is not the “winner” he claimed he would be, or even continues to claim he is. (In fact, one area he almost universally receives low marks on is honesty.)

Trump: Less Than Successful During the campaign, Trump made the boast that under him, Americans would “win so much, [they’d] be tired of winning” (e.g., Lutey 2016; Abebe 2017).1 Instead, by a number of measures, the Trump presidency—through its second year—has been far from impressive. At the very least, as will be addressed in more detail subsequently (see Chapter 5), his administration has been marked by volatility, a lack of focus, almost daily controversies, and staff defections of unprecedented proportions. In addition, besides scandals and discord, his tenure is a record of limited political achievements. According to PolitiFact (2019), Trump has failed to achieve most of his promises through his first two years in office. As one of their analysts put it, “at his term’s halfway point, almost half of his promises from 2016 have been blocked or dropped. On the positive side, close to a third of his goals were achieved or saw partial progress.” They noted that he had two years with friendly Republicans in Congress and yet failed to get two of his major goals, repealing Obamacare and building a wall along the border and making Mexico pay for it. The three of his other five major promises were achieved, but most were partial or compromises from what he claimed, such as lowering the corporate tax rate to 15 percent (it was lowered to 21). Based on their calculations, his scorecard on 100 promises through August 2019 was 17.6% promises kept, and 16.7% promises broken, with 10% “compromises” and the bulk “stalled” or “still in the works.” By contrast, President Barack Obama in his two terms, kept 48%, with 27% compromised and 24% broken—and notably, also out of a greater total number of 533 (Politifact 2019). Trump’s

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record is likewise low by other historical standards. Fishel (1985, pp. 42– 43), in one of the first detailed works on the subject, examined the success of presidential party platform proposals from Kennedy through Reagan’s first term, and found presidents not only tried to keep, they generally kept their promises—ranging from a low of 34% (Nixon) to a high of 62% (Johnson). A cross-national, meta-analysis—or study of studies—on parties keeping their promises provides a different context, albeit with similar conclusions. An examination of 18 articles and book chapters over the past 40 years from European and North American cases found that, on average, parties kept 67% of their promises, though there was wide variation across time, countries and regime types (Pétry and Collette 2009). Nevertheless, by this metric it would seem Trump’s record would fall on the low end of that spectrum. Another major area where he has contradicted his own promised stance is on the role of lobbyists and special interests in his administration. He campaigned on “draining the swamp” of these influence-peddlers—always a popular target for presidential ire—and instead, he has filled it. A study by the nonprofit journalism outlet Propublica found that through the halfway point of his term, Trump had hired (not that they all kept their jobs, as is his wont) an incredible 281 lobbyists to work in his administration, or one lobbyist for every 14 political appointments he made (Mora 2019). This was four times the number Obama had hired through six years in office, and many of them were in a position to influence the regulation of the industries they regulated, such as Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, whom Trump successfully appointed to be head of the Environmental Protection Agency. A related study, examining a government report, found numerous instances where Trump officials had violated the very ethics rules the administration put in place; and despite Trump’s ethics rules being weaker than some previous administrations, it still found notable violations in several agencies and departments (Kravitz 2019). Trump also claimed to have been a legislative dynamo in the beginning of his administration, signing more bills than most other presidents. In fact, Politifact found that not only did Roosevelt and Truman sign far more bills through their first 150 days in office, Presidents Kennedy and Clinton came close (Carroll 2017). Trump made a similar claim at the end of his first year in office, after he inked the Republican tax bill (“our numbers are off the charts” [Keith 2017]). In fact, this too was wrong:

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based on a National Public Radio study, Trump trailed his previous six predecessors with 96 bills signed into law, versus Obama (124), W. Bush (109), Clinton (209), H. W. Bush (242), Reagan (158), and Carter (249) (see Fig. 2.1). He even signed fewer bills than the presidents who served before those six, and again, the records of Truman and Franklin Roosevelt far surpass his (Keith 2017). Taking a somewhat longer view, if one compares the number of bills passed by a “full” (two-year) session of Congress in the first part of a president’s term, at least since the Nixon administration, the 443 under Trump place him fifth out of the last seven presidents (govtrack.us; again, see Fig. 2.1). He does best his two previous predecessors, Obama and W. Bush, and is just below fourth-ranked Clinton, but has far less than Carter (804), H. W. Bush (665), and Reagan (529), the latter two of whom faced at least one chamber controlled by the opposition. As some analysts noted, quoting political scientists, a better way to judge legislation is by significance. And on that measure, too, Trump ranked below his predecessors because many of his laws were either minor changes or extending other actions (again, see Carroll 2017, etc.). His claims of being a great legislator-in-chief were thus rated as exaggerations or false. Another measure examined Trump’s own supposed priorities. Trailing Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump gave a list of 60 policies he titled a

Legislative Output 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 Carter

Reagan

Bush 41

Clinton

Laws Y1

Fig. 2.1 Legislative output

End Y2

Bush 43

Obama

Trump

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“Contract with the American Voter” (a loose ripoff of the 1994 Republican House platform), and tweeted 10 proposals he’d pass in the first 100 days if elected. Examining Trump’s record three years later, Bump (2019) found that “almost none of his proposed 100-day legislative agenda has seen the light of day, even 1000 days into his presidency,” and despite the fact, as noted, his party controlled both houses of Congress for two of those years. Only two of them were partially enacted (middle class tax relief, part of the GOP tax bill of 2017, and increased defense spending), while the other eight—including issues such as immigration “reform” and the border wall, enacting tariffs to prevent US corporations from shipping jobs overseas, school choice, lobbying (‘drain the swamp’) reform, and a trillion dollar-infrastructure investment—remained unfulfilled. In the foreign policy realm, his achievements are scant as well. Major trade battles and supposed “resetting of the deals” with countries like China and Canada and Mexico were rocky, and have either led nowhere or to relatively minor changes (e.g., Raleigh 2019), in contrast to Trump’s rhetoric about “trade wars being easy to win.” One analyst characterized the deal with China as “underwhelming” and merely a “cease fire in the war,” not a comprehensive new agreement (Johnson 2020). His efforts to bring the North Korean regime and its nuclear program to heel have largely come to naught. (The case of North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un is discussed in detail later.) He also was only partially successful in getting Western allies to burden more of the defense and NATO commitments. A Council on Foreign Relations analysis argues that while the first two years of the administration “have been marked by a surprising degree of stability,” and “have not translated into obvious disaster,” the president has “outlined a deeply flawed foreign policy vision that is distrustful of US allies, scornful of international institutions, and indifferent, if not downright hostile, to the liberal international order the US has sustained for nearly eight decades” (Cohen 2019). True, this perspective in part depends upon one’s view of America’s role in the world. But other measures are clearer. Despite his claims of making the United States “stand tall” and be respected again, our nation is arguably less influential thanks in large part due to him. The United States is now not leading in a number of areas like responses to technology giants, air safety, etc. (Johnston 2019). US standing in terms of global opinion also faltered. Favorability toward US and American power declined in most

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nations since Obama, or is even lower than Bush during the Iraq War, though granted some measures also weakened under his predecessors. Most notably, a repeated cross-national study by Pew Research Center shows majorities in many nations view Trump and his administration unfavorably—a median of two-thirds having “no confidence” in Trump to do the right thing in international affairs, a situation that has not improved much during his first three years (Pew 2018, 2020). By some indicators, America’s “soft power” stature has declined significantly just since he took office from first to fourth in the world (Portland/USC 2019).

Political Struggles and Unsuccessful Power Dynamics Despite winning in a surprise election, and being dealt a relatively good hand in terms of a healthy economy and a Congress controlled by his own party the first two years, Trump appears to have made governing a struggle and an ongoing dog fight, largely due to “unforced errors” of his own making. Major legislative accomplishments, have been few and far between—like tax cuts at the end of 2017, and criminal justice reform in December 2018. Trump has had difficulties with Congress, including some members of his own party, and exhibited an inability to keep focused on a clear agenda, even during his first year when most presidents rack up some of their most impressive victories. As one Congressional scholar put it in 2018, looking back: “Governing is always hard in polarized times, but it has been especially hard during US President Donald Trump’s first year in office. Undisciplined and unpopular, Trump has been largely unable to advance his agenda on Capitol Hill despite Republican control of both houses of Congress” (Binder 2018, p. 78). More notably, overall both experts, and the public, seem to agree Trump has been “underwhelming.” A survey of presidential scholars in the American Political Science Association rated Trump the worst president in American history (Kostur 2019, etc.), despite his limited tenure in office at the time. The public, at least into his third year, thought similarly: in a 2019 poll, 47% expected that his presidency wouldn’t be successful in the long term. Furthermore, not only were fewer undecided about this question at this point in his term than they were about other presidents, they were more pessimistic about his administration than any in 25 years (Enten 2019).2

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His chaotic approach to the job, controversial persona, if not his policies, also cost him and his party dearly. In the 2018 elections, despite a tax cut, a relatively favorable electoral map, and a good economy, his party lost the US House of Representatives, especially in traditionally Republican suburban areas. While Republicans did gain in the Senate, they still underperformed, due in part to his approval ratings and record (Yglesias 2018). The election was, at least in large part, a referendum on Trump himself (e.g., Jacobson 2019). The result of this mishap was to weaken Trump’s political power hand in the second part of his term, opening him up to congressional investigations into potential wrongdoing and mismanagement by him and his team. Some of these issues directly sparked investigations of his administration by the new Congress, and even led to his impeachment over the Ukraine “extortion” scandal, though notably not his removal from office.

Conclusion While there may be no neutral, objective standard for judging presidential performance or even “greatness,” this chapter has demonstrated that, at a minimum, Donald Trump is unlikely to be added to Mount Rushmore. The fact that he is ranked last by presidential scholars after only two years in office, along with members of the public giving him low marks, serve to reinforce that conclusion. One can also argue that although his surprise election may not have handed him a mandate, he was dealt a relatively favorable political hand in other respects, and failed to capitalize on it (e.g., Binder 2018). His record is spotty at best. His presidency has been marked by rancor and discord, and an inability to focus. Furthermore, the Republicans’ poor performance in the 2018 elections, and notably the loss of control of the US House, were in large part due to him—his behavior, his stances, and his handling of his job. The next two chapters attempt to make sense of this state of affairs by utilizing Richard Neustadt’s (1960, 1990) presidential power and persuasion framework. The first of these concerns the ingredients of presidential power, and how Trump has approached his job in relation to them. The second examines three key political events in his first term, and how Trump’s decisions and actions contributed to their negative outcomes.

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Notes 1. In a different sense, Abebe (2017) makes the insightful point that “winning” for Trump, and perhaps US culture, is a broad notion that goes beyond mere competitions (elections, etc.) where it makes sense, and also is no longer used in the context of mutual gains—e.g., “win-wins”—but is instead a kind of bipolar view of dominance versus submission (indeed, perhaps related to Trump’s “Art of the Deal ” negotiation approach). [In] “the core Trump worldview… winning and losing seem like existential issues – not the outcome of specific conflicts, but an almost theological separation of beings into two types. Winners take bold actions, dominate others, and impose their will upon the world; losers hem and haw, dither and consult, exercise restraint.” He further argues this drove Trump in office to make bold claims about rather meager accomplishments, congressional votes, etc. One can see this in Trump’s supposed ballyhooed “phase one” trade deal with China, which left many issues unresolved and didn’t change much for the United States despite the harm his tariffs did; even the conservative outlet The Federalist declared it did “almost nothing for the United States” (Raleigh 2019). 2. Perhaps the public was right or prescient, given Trump’s changing fortunes and botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic that would come in 2020.

References Abebe, N. (2017, June 20). Tired of Winning? You Should Be. New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/magazine/tiredof-winning-you-should-be.html. Binder, S. (2018). How to Waste a Congressional Majority: Trump and The Republican Congress. Foreign Affairs, 97 (1), 78–86. Bump, P. (2019, October 25). Three Years Later, Evaluating the 10 Laws Trump Said He’d Pass in His First 100 Days. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/25/three-yearslater-evaluating-laws-trump-said-hed-pass-his-first-days/. Carroll, L. (2017, April 27). Trump Has Signed More Bills in 100 Days Than Any President Since Truman, Says Spicer. Politifact. https://www.politifact. com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/apr/27/sean-spicer/trump-has-sig ned-more-bills-100-days-any-president/. Cronin, T. E., & Genovese, M. (2004). The Paradoxes of the American Presidency (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Cohen, E. A. (2019). America’s Long Goodbye: The Real Crisis of the Trump Era. Foreign Affairs, 98, 138.

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Curry, J. L., & Morris, I. L. (2010). The Contemporary Presidency—Explaining Presidential Greatness: The Roles of Peace and Prosperity? Presidential Studies Quarterly, 40(3), 515–530. DiClerico, R. E. (2013). The Contemporary American President (1st ed.). Boston: Pearson Publishing. Enten, H. (2019, January 28). More Americans Pessimistic About Trump’s Presidency Than Any in 25 Years. CNN . https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/19/ politics/poll-of-the-week-trump-unsuccessful-president-record/. Felzenberg, A. S. (2008). The Leaders We Deserved (And a Few We Didn’t): Rethinking the Presidential Ratings Game. New York: Basic Books. Fishel, J. (1985). Presidents and Promises. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Govtrack.us. (n.d.). Historical Statistics About Legislation. https://www.gov track.us/congress/bills/statistics. Accessed February 8, 2020. Jacobson, G. C. (2019). Extreme Referendum: Donald Trump and the 2018 Midterm Elections. Political Science Quarterly, 134(1), 9–38. Johnson, K. (2020, January 16). 5 Takeaways from Trump’s New China Trade Pact. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/16/trumpnew-china-trade-pact-takeaways/. Johnston, N. (2019, March 22). Under Trump, America Increasingly Losing its Global Lead. Axios. https://www.axios.com/united-states-foreign-power-don ald-trump-dba9ddc9-42e3-4c52-b7b0-b948a7b428e0.html. Keith, T. (2017, December 23). Trump Signed 96 Laws in 2017. Here They Are and How They Measure Up. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2017/12/ 27/573546883/trump-signed-96-laws-in-2017-here-is-what-they-do-andhow-they-measure-up. Kostur, J. (2019, February 18). Scholars Poll Ranks Trump as ‘Worst President of All Time’. Hill Reporter. https://hillreporter.com/scholars-poll-ranks-don ald-trump-worst-president-time-2162. Kravitz, D. (2019, October 23). The Trump Administration Says It Violated Its Own Ethics Pledge. Propublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/thetrump-administration-says-it-has-violated-its-own-ethics-pledge. Landy, M., & Milkis, S. (2001). Presidential Greatness. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Lutey, T. (2016, May 26). Trump: ‘We’re Going to Win So Much, You’re Going to be So Sick and Tired of Winning’. Billings Gazette. https://bil lingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/trump-we-regoing-to-win-so-much-you-re-going-to-be-so-sick/article_2f346f38-37e75711-ae07-d1fd000f4c38.html. Mora, D. (2019, October 15). Update: We Found a Staggering 281 Lobbyists Who’ve Worked in the Trump Administration. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/we-found-a-staggering-281-lobbyi sts-whove-worked-in-the-trump-administration.

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Morris, I. L. (2010). The American Presidency: An Analytic Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. Neustadt, R. E. (1960). Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York: Wiley. Neustadt, R. E. (1990). Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Free Press. Pétry, F., & Collette, B. (2009). Measuring How Political Parties Keep Their Promises: A Positive Perspective from Political Science. In Do They Walk Like They Talk? (pp. 65–80). New York, NY: Springer. Pew Research Center. (2018, October 1). Trump’s International Ratings Remain Low, Especially Among Key Allies. https://www.pewglobal.org/ 2018/10/01/trumps-international-ratings-remain-low-especially-among-keyallies/. Pew Research Center. (2020, January 8). Trump Ratings Remain Low Around the Globe, While Views of US Stay Mostly Favorable. https://www.pewres earch.org/global/2020/01/08/trump-ratings-remain-low-around-globewhile-views-of-u-s-stay-mostly-favorable/. Politifact. (2019). Trump-o-Meter: Tracking Trump’s Promises. https://www.pol itifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/. Portland/USC Center on Public Diplomacy. (2019). The Soft Power 30: A Global Ranking of Soft Power. https://softpower30.com/country/united-sta tes/. Accessed 23 January 2019. Raleigh, H. (2019, December 17). New Trade Deal with China Does Almost Nothing for the United States. The Federalist. https://thefederalist.com/ 2019/12/17/new-trade-deal-with-china-does-almost-nothing-for-the-uni ted-states/. Simonton, D. K. (1991). Predicting Presidential Greatness: An Alternative to the Kenney and Rice Contextual Index. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 21, 301–305. Simonton, D. K. (2006). Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership: Estimates and Correlations for 42 Chief Executives. Political Psychology, 27, 511–526. Whitehouse.gov. (n.d.). Trump Administration Record of Accomplishment. https://www.whitehouse.gov/trump-administration-accomplishments/. Yglesias, M. (2018, November 13). Democrats’ Blue Wave was Much Larger than Early Takes Suggested. Vox. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/ 11/13/18082490/blue-wave.

CHAPTER 3

Making Sense of the Trump Presidency Through Neustadt’s Presidential Power

Abstract This chapter will apply the two main ingredients of power, according to Neustadt, reputation (elite standing), and prestige (mass standing), to Trump’s presidency so far. Both of these lead to the conclusion that Trump occupies a weak power position, or at least, he has failed to guard his power and strategically use it to his advantage. Namely, he has alienated many in the political establishment, even some from his own party. His mendacity and vacillation has hurt him not only with power brokers in DC, but the public at large. Notably, despite some successes and a strong economy his approval ratings are below comparable presidents, and large segments of public don’t trust or admire him. These factors weaken his ability to effectively govern and persuade. Keywords Trump, Donald · Elite support · Public opinion · Presidential approval · Presidential power

Introduction The first chapter discussed Richard Neustadt’s seminal work on the presidency, Presidential Power (1960, 1990) and in particular, its model of presidential influence. It laid the theoretical and analytical framework that © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. M. Schaefer, Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4_3

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will be applied throughout the rest of the book to the Trump presidency so far (roughly through most of his third year in office). The previous chapter then turned to some of Trump’s travails and otherwise underwhelming performance in office, namely in an attempt to imply that it is the president’s very approach to the job that in large part is the reason for these difficulties. It is nevertheless useful to again review the tenets of Neustadt’s theory. As the title of his work indicates, he looked at the presidency from the viewpoint of the occupants of the Oval Office and how they could best get others to do their bidding, with the smallest amount of compromise. He astutely recognized that the formal powers of office do not equate to actual power to influence others or achieve the president’s goals. His model of power is thus based on bargaining—the fact that presidents can rarely give orders and must instead negotiate, cajole, etc., to get what they want; in his famous phrase, echoing Truman, “presidential power is the power to persuade” (1990, p. 11). The office alone did not guarantee compliance, for “…outcomes are not guaranteed by his advantages…[c]ommand has limited utility; persuasion becomes give and take” (1990, p. 32). In this sense, he agrees somewhat with Donald Trump, who emphasizes his own individual deal-making abilities. Presidents do have important resources that can aid them in this bargaining relationship. Beyond the formal situational advantage of the presidential office, two others he identified were professional “reputation” and popular “prestige” (i.e., 1990, p. 185). Presidents can gain the upper hand, or help insure success if not avoid defeat or capitulation, based on the assessments of their prowess by the Washington community (elite standing/reputation) and buttressed by support of the public outside DC (prestige). These two factors, interacting with others, are the main currencies of presidential power. First, one must admit that in a few minor respects, Trump does follow some of Neustadt’s suggestions. He clearly does have a “will to power,” and a desire to use it, and appears to be his own “Chief Politician.” Trump is thus far from delegating these roles to others, like Eisenhower did (e.g., Neustadt 1990, pp. 137–138) though in fact that might be preferable in some instances. Nevertheless, these traits are not necessarily beneficial in his case, since his power obsession seems aimed mainly for himself, or to intimidate others, not persuade them. More importantly, the bulk of Trump’s behavior in office ignores if not directly contradicts the prescriptions of Presidential Power (for another

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who thinks so, see Bond (2019)). Applying Neustadt to Trump does seemingly help to shed light on his tenure in office and why he hasn’t been more successful. Examining the two main ingredients of presidential persuasion, then, one can readily see how Trump is in a weak power position, and how he has failed to protect much less promote his standing in the political game. In other words, this chapter explains the situational power context Trump finds himself in, while the next chapter explores some particular case studies where Trump’s weakness, but also strategic and political miscues, led to political failure or at least outcomes that could have been different had he heeded Neustadt’s advice.

Presidential Reputation and Elite Standing Neustadt recommends that presidents’ relationships with other elites, especially in Washington, DC, are key to their success. Their reputation and status bolster their power, and should be protected at all costs. What is Trump’s professional reputation? Measuring presidents’ elite standing is arguably a more difficult enterprise than their public one, given we have no elite opinion monitor akin to public opinion polls. Several scholars have tried (Gleiber et al. 1998; Jones 2001), but assessing it remains rather impressionistic. One scholar of the “scientific study school” of the presidency noted that research on the president’s professional reputation and policy success was far more limited than that of public prestige’s impact (see below), in part because it is “far more difficult to develop indicators of professional reputation that are valid and reliable across a set of presidential administrations” (Morris 2010, p. 95). Nevertheless, it is fairly easy for an informed observer to see that the opinion of Donald Trump in the eyes of other professional Washingtonians is rather low. Why? His political origins and limited experience, lack of focus, as well as his penchant for changing his mind, if not outright lying, all mean that to trust Trump or believe he will keep a bargain, do what he says, etc., is a fool’s errand. To some degree, these traits do create “uncertainty in the minds of others” which Neustadt (1990, p. 55) notes can be a presidential advantage, and sometimes actually is for Trump. But at the same time, such a modus operandi means that many in DC simply don’t take him seriously or believe he is out of his depth in the office. Furthermore, his lack of empathy and extreme egotism hampers

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his ability to see the political and power stakes for others, and how being opposed to him on one issue or situation, might not preclude supporting him on another. For one, as a wealthy, celebrity businessman Trump seemingly would be part of the elite, but he bases much of his political appeal on decrying it. He ran for office as a populist outsider, and that he was not a politician in the usual sense. He even was more of an “outsider” than previous successful aspirants like Carter, Reagan, and Clinton. Furthermore, Trump came to power in part by disparaging other elites, not only his campaign rivals within the Republican Party but also Hillary Clinton and other national political figures. In and of itself, running against the “mess in Washington” and “career politicians” is not unique, but his method and demeanor was atypically harsh and sometimes borderline libelous. He called Gov. Jeb Bush “lowenergy,” Sen. Marco Rubio “Little Marco,”—leading Rubio in a televised debate to famously ridicule Trump’s hands, in veiled reference to his manhood—and Sen. Ted Cruz, “Lyin’ Ted.” He further implied Cruz’s father, a Cuban, was involved in the Kennedy Assassination. He gave Clinton the “Crooked Hillary” moniker, and called for jailing her over the email server scandal. He taunted and threatened others, including reporters (who would later cover and portray him in office), and even the disabled and military families opposed to his ethnocentrism. Granted, these attacks didn’t ultimately cost him the election and even may have solidified his popularity with some in the electorate. But they clearly were not going to help in governing after the election. He has continued this behavior in office. The feeling also seems to be mutual, if off-the-record and even some on-the-record sentiments from certain individuals within the executive and legislative branches are any indication. All administrations have detractors, insider “tell-all” books, and the like, but it is notable that under Trump, the message coming out of Washington is that the political class is simply appalled, not just at his public actions, but his private antics, and his violations of what is considered “presidential” behavior. One notable example concerns the unusual public admonitions issued by an “Anonymous” White House official. In September 2018, this unknown insider wrote a highly placed, and conspicuous, op-ed in the prestigious New York Times entitled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” (Anonymous 2018). The official went on

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to describe how a number of senior White House and other administration officials work continuously to prevent President Trump from doing various ill-conceived, controversial or even illegal actions, behaving as “adults in the room” akin to preventing a bratty child from running rampant. The same author went on to publish a highly anticipated book in 2019, A Warning (Anonymous 2019). Needless to say, these pieces are remarkable works of elite disdain and outright thwarting of presidential command, an extreme sign of Neustadtian weakness and loss of repute. Critics have argued the revelations of these works is not only obvious to informed observers, it naively hopes persuadable members of the public and the Republican Party will turn against Trump, or Trump will change. And some noted that given the high staff turnover in his administration (see Chapter 5), those subordinates who could “restrain” Trump were dwindling. Still, the portrait it paints is of a White House in disarray and a chief executive who is far from in control, not just of his presidency but his faculties. However, the fact that the person remained “anonymous” and did not want to be revealed does suggest that—as will be discussed in Chapter 7—Trump retains an aura of formidability and retributive power. The president called the official “gutless,” and asked them to resign. Trump seemingly goes out of his way to antagonize other political figures (and celebrities as well, though they fit into Neustadt’s power framework less significantly). Up through May 2019, the New York Times had identified nearly 600 people, places, organizations, and things Donald Trump had insulted on Twitter since he ran for, and was elected to, the office (Lee and Quealy 2019), with most being criticized multiple times. Most notably, some of his targets were members of his own party in Congress. Republican Senators who have drawn presidential ire, and thus media attention as well, during his term include Bob Corker (R-TN), Jeff Flake (R-AZ)—whom he once supposedly toyed with spending $10 million of his own money to defeat (Isenstadt 2017)—and Ben Sasse (RNE). In the House, there were of course “never-Trumper” members who stayed that way, like Mark Sandford (R-SC) and Justin Amash (R-MI, who switched to being independent, and voted for Trump’s impeachment). But Trump also attacked—though occasionally, also praised, due to their key relationship—Paul Ryan (R-WI), Speaker of the House for his first two years, who resigned in part because of frustration with the president. While all presidents have had difficulties with recalcitrant members of their party to one degree or another, they generally are limited as to—or

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more importantly, are restrained by—the degree to which they “go after” them in public or directly seek revenge. Partly, these constraints are due to the fact other actors in the US system have separate sources of political support or authority beyond presidential reach. But also, it is because previous presidents have wisely recognized that—as good lobbyists do— that an enemy today could be an ally tomorrow. On top of this, public fights with same-party members attract media attention because of their controversy and rarity (i.e., Groeling 2010). However, even attacks with opposition members or political figures, especially those that might be in a position to help (or hurt) the president, are ill-advised. Trump and the “Two Jo(h)ns” As noted, examples of Trump’s elite attacks are quite numerous, but two noteworthy cases from each side of the aisle in the US Senate are illustrative. The first—since it arguably cost Trump a valuable elite ally on issues like foreign policy, if not a key legislative victory—was his volatile relationship with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). The second, has been his approach to Jon Tester (D-MT), a “red state” Democrat potentially susceptible to persuasion by a Republican president. It goes without saying that McCain was an important figure in American politics and Trump’s Republican party—a longtime leading GOP Senator, the party’s presidential nominee in 2008, and a widely respected pol in Beltway circles, especially on foreign policy; he was a regular guest on Sunday talk shows, etc. Thus, from Neustadt’s perspective, here would be a key compatriot, or at least figure to court. Yet Trump chose to attack and disparage him in public. This began during the 2016 campaign when he said McCain—a POW and decorated Vietnam vet, unlike Trump—“was no hero” and he personally “liked people who weren’t captured.” McCain later rescinded his endorsement of Trump’s candidacy after Trump’s nonchalant references to sexual assault emerged, and also disagreed with him over some aspects of his “America First” foreign policy once Trump was in office. The two sometimes battled in the news. More significantly, however, Trump apparently made no attempts to woo McCain. This bad blood came back to haunt him on the eve of the key 2017 Senate vote on repealing Obamacare (mentioned more in Chapter 4), when McCain, suffering from a brain tumor, dramatically returned to the Senate floor to cast the deciding vote to kill the bill.

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While he also had legitimate reservations about the substance of it, one has to believe that McCain’s relationship with and treatment at the hands of Trump played a role. Indeed, in the early part of 2019, he managed to rekindle the public feud with McCain—or really, his family—since the Senator was by then deceased. Inexplicably, in a speech Trump decried McCain’s family’s lack of appreciation for his facilitation of the Senator’s official funeral; attacked him again for his vote against the health care bill; inaccurately accused him of disloyalty in helping start the investigation into Russian involvement with the 2016 election; and publicly stated he, Trump, personally was “not a fan.” Apparently unable due to his ego to let bygones be bygones, this latter tantrum led to another round of controversy, rebukes of him by prominent members of his own party, and negative media attention (e.g., Bolton 2019). Not only was this tirade newsworthy for Republicanon-Republican violence as a case of “man bites dog,” it was an even stranger one of “man bites ghost.” True, McCain was unable to directly affect Trump’s fortunes then or in the future, but such spats serve no real governing purpose.1 Among Democrats, beyond leaders such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Shumer, with whom he clashed, Trump notably also targeted Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), partly because he understandably questioned Trump’s handling and staffing of the Veterans Administration. In a familiar pattern, Trump personally took affront that Tester, the top Democrat on the Veterans Affairs Committee, uncovered allegations that Dr. Ronny Jackson, White House physician and Trump’s pick to head the troubled agency, created an unsafe work environment, abused alcohol on the job and may have been too easy in giving out prescription medications. These charges led Tester to understandably call for an investigation before a Senate confirmation vote could take place. While not all the claims were substantiated, Jackson withdrew under fire. The president then went on Twitter and called for Tester’s resignation for the “untrue” attacks. He also began raising money for the Senator’s defeat, and later publicly attacked Tester again for being “weak” on immigration, despite the fact he was one of the more moderate Democrats on that issue. Trump would seemingly have leverage with Tester, given he represents a state Trump easily won in 2016. However, the president’s heavy-handed approach has not paid dividends, as Tester opposed Trump on both his health care bill, and confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme

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Court. It is probably no coincidence that Tester held the lowest “Trump Score”—i.e., deviation in the percentage of floor votes with Trump, based on what one would expect given their state’s vote for Trump in 2016 (see FiveThirtyEight (n.d.)—of any Senator of the Trump era, at least through the end of 2019.2 As if to add injury to Trump’s insults, despite the president campaigning heavily against him, Tester went on to win reelection against a Trump-endorsed and professed Trump admirer in 2018. While Tester did tout working the president on some issues, he relied on his independence in fighting for his state as a badge of honor, as well as benefited from strong Democratic turnout in giving him his first victory by an absolute majority in three campaigns (Robillard 2018). Admittedly, there are always larger ideological, political, electoral, etc., factors at work that help explain the behavior of these two Senators, as with Presidents or other politicians. But the point these examples make is that Trump’s actions hurt his ability to gain political capital or draw on goodwill when he may need it. As Neustadt counseled, presidents must temper their actions with an eye to future interactions, and must astutely respond so as to not damage their persuasive power or harm relations with those with whom they must deal. “His [sic] general reputation will be shaped by signs of patterns in the things he says and does. These are the words and actions he has chosen, day by day. His choices are the means by which he does what he can do to build his reputation as he wants it” (Neustadt 1990, p. 71). Choices of what not to do are clearly as important as what to do. One-Sided Loyalty, Personal Affronts, and Lack of Trustworthiness Trump also craves loyalty and praise, yet seems not to return it. There is a long list of people who have worked for or supported Trump, later to be fired, attacked and/or blamed, discarded, etc. Even once-valued administration members are blindsided by his statements or Tweets, such as former Secretaries of State and Defense Rex Tillerson and James Mattis. He called Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon, “dumb as a post,” and Mattis, a four-star general and veteran commander in Afghanistan and Iraq, “overrated” as a military leader. While neither responded publicly, both privately and indirectly let it be known their dismay about Trump’s leadership. (More will be said about Trump’s administrative style and record in Chapter 5.) Without belaboring the

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point again, he seems to put politicians into camps of friends and foes, and likely has an enemies list longer than Nixon’s (Isenstadt 2017; Zelizer 2018). Neustadt, in reflecting on the impact staff loyalty had on Nixon’s fate in Watergate, noted “if there is such a thing as negative influence, misguided loyalty – up or down – can be a major source of it” (Neustadt 1990, p. 191). Lastly, one has to mention the sheer mendacity of Trump and his administration. While almost all politicians lie or exaggerate to one degree or another, Trump has taken it to a new level. By one measure, he told more than 7500 falsehoods in his first two years, averaging 15 per day in 2018 (Kessler 2018). This figure does not even count those his press secretary and top White House aides have advanced on a regular basis. One major part of his press secretary’s job appears to be to attempt to justify the shaky claims of the boss, such as Sean Spicer insisting Trump’s inauguration crowd was larger than Obama’s first, or Sarah Huckabee Sanders that White House aide Rob Porter—who later resigned from FBI-proved allegations of domestic violence—had “highest integrity and exemplary character.” As Robert Prentice (McCombs School of Business, University of Texas) put it in Trump’s first year in office: “No president in popular memory bests Trump in spouting spectacular, egregious, easily-disproved lies. The birther claim. The voter fraud claim. The attendance at the inauguration crowd claim. And on and on. Every fact-checker— Kessler, Factcheck.org, Snopes.com, Politifact—finds a level of mendacity unequaled by any politician. Factcheck.org found 70% of his campaign statements to be false, partially false, or pants-on-fire false” (Prentice 2017). This lack of credibility, when combined with erratic behavior and slithery qualities, are not characteristics that would make most elites want to work with you. In the end, as Neustadt notes: “the professional reputation of a president in Washington is made by the man[sic] himself. No one can guard it for him; no one saves him from himself…everything he says or does (or fails to say, omits to do), becomes significant in everyone’s appraisals” (Neustadt 1990, p. 68).

Popular Support and Prestige Neustadt argued popular support aids in Washington power relations. Other scholars have gone further in seeing it as a source of political capital

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in its own right (Edwards 1983; Kernell 1993; Lowi 1985), if an unstable one or a fickle mistress. This latter feature, as Neustadt recognized, is due to it being caught up in events—or their portrayal and framing (see Brody 1991; Entman 2004)—of the moment, over which presidents may have little control. Regardless, public opinion remains a key factor in the political climate of a presidency. To cite just one—albeit the most prominent and important—measure, the Gallup, etc., job approval poll, generally speaking the percentage of Americans approving of his job has been notably lower than comparable presidents, particularly in their first year if not term. Indeed, through his third year, Trump’s ratings had never once broken 50 percent support, unique among presidencies (Gallup Job Approval Center 2019). Trump also failed to receive the traditional “honeymoon” from the public in the months after his inauguration, and his ratings have failed to budge much despite a vibrant US economy in terms of unemployment and inflation, a key explanatory factor in approval variations (e.g., Brace and Hinckley, 1990; Brody 1991, etc.). (See Fig. 3.1) And, of all previous presidents so rated, his trend line through his second year most resembles that of Gerald Ford after his pardon of Nixon through a parallel point in his term (see FiveThirtyEight, 2019a)—not exactly encouraging.

% Approval through 36 Months

Eisenhower Eisenhower Kennedy Kennedy Nixon Nixon Nixon Carter Carter Carter Reagan Reagan Reagan Bush 41 Bush 41 Bush 41 Bush 41 Bush 41 Clinton Clinton Clinton Bush 43 Bush 43 Bush 43 Bush 43 Bush 43 Obama Obama Obama Obama Trump Trump Trump

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Fig. 3.1 Monthly approval of president’s job performance through first three years

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Trump also has been completely unable to win over crucial segments of the public, especially nonpartisans—or at least, non-Republicans (see Gallup, 2019). Even if one excludes partisanship from the approval equation (of which, more will be said in Chapter 7), his rating among independents, such as can be found, has also lagged behind other incumbents not mired in scandals or recessions, in the upper 30s (Pew, “Independents,” 2019).3 Furthermore, Trump is also noteworthy for the percentage of respondents that fall into the “strongly disapprove,” and to a lesser degree, “strongly approve,” categories, meaning that he engenders strong reactions that are resistant to change (see Jones 2018). Another interesting aspect of Trump’s presidency is the degree to which his personal favorability ratings match, if not trail, his relatively low job/performance ratings (see for example, Marcin 2019; Pew 2018). This is quite the reverse of most other presidents, with the exception of Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal—when large majorities approved of his job performance, but understandably not of him personally. Traditionally, most Americans admire the president as a person, while not necessarily viewing their job as favorably (see the discussion in Edwards and Gallup 1990). Trump gets low marks for honesty and leadership ability, too (e.g., Pew 2018). Explaining presidential approval is a multivariate exercise, possibly more complex now than in the recent past—and as Neustadt himself astutely noted, “the question is unfocused, as is the response” (1990, p. 81). Still, one can argue that much of Trump’s weakness with the public stems from self-inflicted wounds. His arrogant, demeaning attitude and persona; vicious attacks on not only politicians and celebrities but regular Americans, women, minorities, immigrants, the disabled, and the like; his lying and flip-flopping; combined with his generally negative disposition, certainly weaken his ability to “win friends and influence people.” He often undermines his own positive messages or public relations efforts about the economy or other issues by going on Twitter rants and other media temper tantrums, and his chaotic White House breeds bad media coverage (e.g., Kruse 2019). The close connection between his personal and job approval ratings indicates that—for those who aren’t his supporters (and even some of them probably don’t admire him personally)4 —his approach to the job, not the results or environmental factors, is what is limiting him from at least majority support.

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Further evidence of this interpretation can be found in an analysis by Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal, even more notable given that outlet’s conservative bent. Examining public opinion near the end of Trump’s third year, he noted polls showed Americans satisfied with their lives, and optimistic about the economy, all things that should point to presidential support. Yet Americans saw the country as “on the wrong track” and a sizable portion saw him as part of the problem. “Trump likes to say – and his followers echo that sentiment—that his slashing, pugilistic style is necessary for him to succeed. Yet there is mounting evidence that the opposite might be true: that he would be having a far more successful presidency, and stand on an easier path to reelection, if it were not for the ample doubts about his personality created by his combative approach” (Seib 2019). These “prestige deficits” do affect Trump in his relations with Congress (e.g., Edwards 2017). For example, his weak standing likely played a role in the defections of Republican Sens. Murkowski (AK) and Collins (ME) in the health care vote, discussed in Chapter 4 (see also Dickinson and Reinmuth 2017). His relatively low popular support also impacts his public leadership. In the wall and government shutdown fiasco (also discussed in Chapter 4), Trump was unable to move the public, much less Congressional Democrats. His brief speech after shutting down the government, appealing to the public for support, was generally seen as a failure (Fleischman 2019).

Conclusion As this chapter has documented, Trump’s difficulties, or at the very least, limited success in office can be understood through his weak power dynamics. He has failed, as Neustadt counseled, to protect his reputation and his public prestige, and these in turn help explain why his presidency, as detailed in Chapter 2, has not achieved more, both politically and in terms of substance. To use a poker analogy, all presidents are dealt political power hands, which vary in strength, but how effectively they play those hands is up to them. Trump’s loss of the popular vote in 2016 and extreme outsider status did suggest some structural weakness. On the other hand, his surprise victory, unorthodox political stances and style, and partisan

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control of Congress gave him advantages. These, arguably, he did not make the most of—and in particular, he lost a key one when the 2018 elections saw a “Blue Wave” of Democrats take the House, mostly a referendum on him. In sum, to Neustadt, presidential power is the power to persuade, and that power comes through reputation and prestige, which he must take care to manage. “The president is depicted as being constantly challenged by threats to his power, and constantly needing to enhance his reputation as a shrewd bargainer” (Cronin 1980, p. 122). Trump’s approach to elite relations, especially his take-no-prisoners, either-my-friend-or-my-foe disposition, limits his persuasive power. Likewise, his public persona seems to bleed public support or at least has a double-sided magnet, “one side repels while the other attracts” quality. In both respects, his early term actions undercut the potential strengths he had. While he remains a force to be reckoned with, his weak record, if not his precarious position going into 2020, is in part due to his own choices. “If choices are a President’s own means to guard his power, he is likelier to hurt than to help himself unless he knows what power is and sees its shape in what he does” (Neustadt 1990, p. 101). For if presidents fail to “take into account their own personal interest, they likely make choices that do not further their influence” (Ragsdale 2000, p. 36).

Notes 1. As clear proof Trump hasn’t learned the lesson, he repeated his “speaking ill of the political dead” performance at a rally in Michigan—a key battleground state he needs to win again in 2020—by attacking deceased longtime Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), whose seat is now held by his late wife. After noting Rep./Mrs. Dingell’s vote for his impeachment, he suggested John “might be looking up [from Hell],” and in similar fashion to McCain implied the family didn’t appreciate official funeral arrangements by his administration, some of which was factually untrue; Congress had the authority over the ceremony, and as a WWII veteran Dingell was eligible for burial in Arlington National Cemetery. This outburst led to another round of elite criticism, some from the Republican congressional delegation, and calls from her for more civility in public discourse (Cummings 2019). Rep. Dingell even fundraised for her reelection off of the incident. 2. Regrettably, the views of this key subgroup have been largely ignored by analysts and in stories about Trump’s approval in the media, who tend to

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focus on Trump voters or demographic subgroups. It is the case that independents include many “leaners” that behave like partisans, and that true independents are less political, but overall their approval ratings provide a neutral or “bellwether” guide without the filter of party, and are important indicators for that reason. 3. Admittedly, as a red-state Democrat, Tester has more “room” to deviate from predicted support than say, the two Senators from California, and others with very low scores relative to their states include Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Doug Jones (D-AL), though Tester is still lower. His absolute level of support (in the 30–35% range, as of Fall, 2019) is even on par with some Eastern Democrats, and is much lower than his home-state Republican colleague Steve Daines, who is slightly a bit above expectation, as clearly partisanship does play a role. I say more about this measure as an indication of Trump’s power regarding Republicans in Chapter 7. Also, while it is hard to argue cause and effect, especially regarding general voting patterns, in that Trump’s attacks may be due to Tester’s opposition, his support score in the new session of Congress hasn’t changed direction, and may even have become worse. The point is that Trump’s public targeting of Tester certainly doesn’t help this relationship. 4. Another minor, albeit it illustrative, statistic about Trump: he’s also the first incumbent president since it began in the 1940s never to top Gallup’s (and other organizations) list of “Most Admired Men” in the nation, as throughout his first three years in office, former President Obama has come in first, for 11 years in a row. Truman lost out to Gen. Douglas MacArthur twice in the late 1940s; Nixon and Ford to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; and Jimmy Carter once to Pope John Paul. In 2019, Trump did improve, barely tying Obama—but still, it is clear evidence he is not highly regarded as person.

References Anonymous. (2018, September 6). I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration. New York Times, p. A23. Anonymous. (2019). A Warning. New York: Twelve/Hachette Book Group Inc. Bolton, A. (2019, March 21). Trump’s Attacks on McCain Exacerbate Tensions within Senate GOP. The Hill. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/435 025-trumps-attacks-on-mccain-exacerbate-tensions-with-senate-gop. Bond, J. R. (2019, December). Contemporary Presidency: Which Presidents are Uncommonly Successful with Congress? A Trump Update. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 41(4), 898–908.

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Brody, R. (1991). Assessing the President: Media, Elite Opinion, and Public Support. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Cronin, T. E. (1980). The State of the Presidency. Boston: Brown, Little. Cummings, W. (2019, December 19). ‘Some Things Should Be Off-Limits’: Dingell Calls for Civility After Attacks on Late Husband. USA Today. Dickinson, M., & Reinmuth, K. (2017). Trump, Congress and Health Care: All Politics Is National. The Forum, 15(3), 431–450. Edwards, G. C., III. (1983). The Public Presidency. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Edwards, G. C., III. (2017). No Deal: Donald Trump’s Leadership of Congress. The Forum, 15(3), 451–497. Edwards, G. C., III, & Gallup, Alec. (1990). Presidential Approval: A Sourcebook. Baltimore: John/Hopkins University Press. Entman, R. M. (2004). Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. FiveThirtyEight. (2019a). Presidential Approval. https://projects.fivethirtyeight. com/trump-approval-ratings/. Accessed March 21, 2019. FiveThirtyEight. (n.d.). Where Members of Congress Stand in the Age of Trump. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/?ex_cid= rrpromo. Accessed December 18, 2018, March 23, 2019, and December 23, 2019. Fleischman, G. (2019, January 14). Just 2 Percent of Voters Say Trump’s Border Wall Speech Changed Their Minds, Poll Says. Fortune. http://fortune.com/ 2019/01/14/trump-speech-wall-government-shutdown-quinnipiac-poll/. Gallup. (2019, January 18). Trump Approval Sets Record for Polarization. https://news.gallup.com/poll/245996/trump-job-approval-sets-newrecord-polarization.aspx. Gallup.com—Job Approval Center. https://news.gallup.com/interactives/185 273/presidential-job-approval-center.aspx?g_source=link_NEWSV9&g_m edium=TOPIC&g_campaign=item_&g_content=Presidential%2520Job%252 0Approval%2520Center. Accessed February–March, 2019. Gleiber, D. W., Shull, S. A., & Waligora, C. A. (1998). Measuring the President’s Professional Reputation. American Politics Quarterly, 26(3), 366–385. Groeling, T. (2010). When Politicians Attack: Party Cohesion in the Media. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Isenstadt, A. (2017, July 10). Trump’s Enemies List. Politico. Jones, C. O. (2001). Professional Reputation and the Neustadt Formulation. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 31(2), 281–295. Jones, J. M. (2018, December 21). Trump’s Approval More Stable Than Approval for Prior Presidents. Gallup.com. https://news.gallup.com/opi nion/polling-matters/245567/trump-approval-stable-approval-prior-presid ents.aspx.

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Kernell, S. (1993). Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: CQ Press. Kessler, G. (2018, December 30). A Year of Unprecedented Deception: Trump Averaged 15 Lies Per Day in 2018. Washington Post. Kruse, M. (2019, March 29). Donald Trump’s Talent for Turning Wins into Losses. Politico. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/03/29/ donald-trumps-talent-for-turning-wins-into-losses-226339. Lee, Jasmine C., & Quealy, K. (2019, May 24). The 598 People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter: A Complete List. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donaldtrump-twitter-insults.html. Lowi, T. (1985). The Personal President: Power Invested, Promise Unfulfilled. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Marcin, T. (2019, January 28). Trump Disliked Both as a Person, and as a Leader, as Favorability, Approval Fall. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek. com/donald-trump-approval-rating-favorability-disliked-most-americans-per son-1307606. Morris, I. L. (2010). The American Presidency: An Analytical Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. Neustadt, R. E. (1960). Presidential Power. New York: Wiley. Neustadt, R. E. (1990). Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents. New York: Free Press. Pew Research Center. (2018, October 1). Trump Gets Many Negative Ratings for Personal Traits, but Most Say He Stands Up for His Beliefs. https://www.people-press.org/2018/10/01/trump-gets-negative-rat ings-for-many-personal-traits-but-most-say-he-stands-up-for-his-beliefs/. Pew Research Center. (2019, March 14). Political Independents: Who They Are, What They Think. https://www.people-press.org/2019/03/14/political-ind ependents-who-they-are-what-they-think/. Prentice, R. (2017, February 10). Being a Liar Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Be a Good President, But This Is Crazy. Dallas Morning News. https://www.dal lasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/02/10/being-a-liar-doesnt-meanyou-cant-be-a-good-president-but-this-is-crazy/. Ragsdale, L. (2000). Personal Power and Presidents. In R. Shapiro, M. J. Kumar, & L. R. Jacobs (Eds.), Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Columbia University Press. Robillard, K. (2018, November 27). Jon Tester was Donald Trump’s Top Target. Here’s How He Survived. Huffington Post. https://www.huffpost. com/entry/jon-tester-2018-midterms_n_5bf48044e4b0eb6d9309508e.

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Seib, G. (2019, December 24). Trump’s Combativeness Reveals Its Limits. Wall Street Journal, p. A4. Zelizer, J. (2018, August 19). The New Enemies List. The Atlantic. https:// www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-new-enemies-list/567 874/.

CHAPTER 4

Three Cases of Catastrophe

Abstract This chapter puts Trump’s ability to persuade in context, both in general stemming from power dynamics (elite and popular support, respectively) through case studies, akin to Neustadt’s book, Presidential Power. All three are noteworthy, major initiatives that failed to come to fruition, mainly due to Trump’s mishandling and/or insensitivity to rules of effective bargaining. They include: the Republican-led health care plan to repeal Obamacare in 2017; the US government shutdown and fight over Trump’s “wall” in December 2018–January 2019; and Trump’s failed second summit with Kim Jong Un and North Korean nuclear diplomacy in 2019. Keywords Trump, Donald · Presidential power · Negotiation · Health care · Government shutdown · North Korea · Case studies

Introduction The previous chapter explained Trump’s “power situation” from the standpoint of Richard Neustadt’s (1960, 1990) model of presidential power and its components—what he referred to as reputation (a president’s elite standing) and prestige (popular support). As noted, mostly © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. M. Schaefer, Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4_4

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due to his own making, Trump has placed himself in a weak situation in both aspects at least roughly through his first three years. His combative, impulsive personality; vacillating and duplicitous stances; and “friend or foe” political style, among other behaviors, have impacted his ability to persuade. Notably, he has gone farther than other outsider presidents in disparaging and alienating the DC establishment, and his related public persona and approach to the public relations side of the job has limited his popular appeal, undermining his capacity to draw on the “power of the people” as a resource in getting other political actors to accede to his wishes. This chapter examines Trump’s bargaining skills, use of power, and the impact of his approach to both. Following Neustadt in form, this chapter uses three illustrative cases to explain how Trump’s failures to practice good presidential power relations skills are related to the outcomes of those events. These include the final attempt to “reform” or at least, incompletely repeal, Obamacare; the budget negotiations and shutdown over Trump’s border wall; and relations with North Korea over its nuclear program, especially the second summit with Kim Jong Un. All were significant early-term events. As such a practice utilizes the method Neustadt himself employed, its connection to the larger purpose of his work is discussed first. The basic argument of the chapter is that, despite his own claimed aptitude, in each of these cases, Trump’s lack of sensitivity to timing and power dynamics, along with his own decisions, contributed to his inability to prevail in major bargaining or negotiation situations.

The Role of Cases in Neustadt’s Analysis Because Neustadt’s approach to presidential power was an individualistic one, centered on the actions of presidents themselves, it is thus important to examine illuminating presidential decisions in depth. As he so strongly put it: “the purpose here is to explore the power problem of the man [sic] inside the White House…” and as that “purpose is analytical, and my framework unconventional, I have illustrated every major step in the analysis with cases from the record of recent Administrations” (Neustadt 1990, pp. xx–xxi). Since, under his definition, power means specifically the president’s influence (1990, p. 4), looking at examples where a president attempted to wield that influence is key to understanding a presidency. The bargaining model developed within his work thus sees presidents as having to negotiate to get what they want, if not on a direct, personal

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level, then an implied institutional one (i.e., the office speaking for the person). As Ragsdale (2000, p. 33) notes, this focus on the president more than the presidency guided his method: to Neustadt, “the best way to study the office is to study the occupant, and the best way to study the occupant is to rely on a series of case studies examining the president’s use of personal power.” As noted in Chapter 1, Neustadt believed presidential bargaining power was tenuous, and needed to be guarded by its practitioner. It was far easier to lose one’s reputation—i.e., make a bad impression on fellow elites, showing the president was an inept negotiator, or incompetent or untrustworthy—and also, due to the nature of public opinion, to lose public support for one’s presidency and/or policies, than it was to gain or rebuild either. Presidential choices are a key part of that equation (Neustadt 1990, pp. 48–49), and thus are important to study. The case examples in his evolving work delve into the details of political decisions and the relationships of Washington power players. These stories have a prescriptive element, aiming to instruct presidents in how to use their power effectively. In fact, the original edition of his book was meant more as a primer or “how to” guide for presidents than it was a scholarly treatise for political scientists. Its stories of negative results or failures were meant to be a warning to presidents of the pitfalls of bargaining politics— “this could happen to you” (see Ragsdale 2000, p. 37). As we shall see, the three cases examined here have that same quality, and thereby use Neustadt’s technique to help explain the Trump presidency.

Persuasive Power and Bargaining Skill: The Trump Presidency in Action Perhaps no president has come into office bragging of their prowess at negotiation than Donald Trump. Part of his justification or even aura as a candidate was his supposed business acumen, as a real estate mogul who had built his empire on his bargaining skills alone. He criticized previous presidents of both parties as “losers” who had stupidly failed the American people through bad deal-making, especially in trade matters. He even had a book, The Art of the Deal (Trump and Schwartz 1987), supposedly delineating his mastery of the process, that gave (and perhaps still gives) him “street cred” on that score. Coupled with his image from the

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mid-2000s reality TV show The Apprentice, much of Trump’s public identity was built around him being a tough, no-nonsense dealmaker. (For a discussion of his apparent philosophy of negotiation, see Chapter 1.) Yet when it comes to political negotiation as president—and Neustadt’s edict to do everything necessary to bargain from a position of strength, not weakness—Trump’s actions and skills have been less than impressive. Repeatedly, Trump folds or behaves in ways that undermine his ability to influence the outcomes. Three “cases of catastrophe” reviewed in this chapter illustrate his shortcomings: the failed repeal of Obamacare; the government shutdown and “emergency” over the border wall; and his strategy toward North Korea and especially second summit with Kim Jong Un. While these three unsuccessful efforts are examples of Trump’s own personal bargaining weaknesses, they also relate back to the power dynamics discussed in Chapter 3 that also hampered him. Repealing “Obamacare”: A Failure to Plan or a Plan for Failure? The defeat of the (final, compromise) Republican health care plan, or the “skinny repeal” of Obamacare, in the US Senate in June 2017 was one of the biggest setbacks of his first year. Republicans had called for the repeal of Obama’s signature health law for years, with no success (and partly with no plan). With their control of both houses of Congress after the 2014 midterm elections, and a fellow Republican ensconced in the White House, it seemingly was an opportune time to do so. Trump himself wanted to get rid of the law, and supposedly replace it with something better. Typically, however, he was vague in the campaign and after about what this plan would entail. He also clearly did not understand the issues involved, famously saying months after being elected, essentially, who “knew health care could be so complicated?” Differences between House and Senate Republican plans, and especially the conundrum of how to keep certain popular parts of Obamacare, like banning exemptions for preexisting conditions, as well as the failure of various other versions, led the bill to be scaled down to getting rid of individual and employer mandates and making the Medicaid provisions block grants, among other points. One of the major problems was that Republicans could not agree, and as President Obama and the Democrats had discovered, there was no easy fix, especially one that was broadly supported by the US public. Namely, after the House passed,

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with some Republican defections, the American Health Care Act—a stronger version of repeal that was even opposed by major physician groups like the American Medical Association, and which polling showed was highly unpopular—the Senate not surprisingly was unable to pass a similar measure. The legislative process and factional differences within the GOP in turn created other problems. In spite of these difficulties, Republican Senators were encouraged by their leaders to believe that these other issues would be worked out in the conference committee, given differences in the bill passed by the House (see Scott and Kliff 2017). Majority leader Mitch McConnell then brought this pared-down version, the “Health Care Freedom Act,” to the Senate floor. Yet when the bill came up for a final vote in the Senate, the Republicans, and by extension, Trump, were unable to muster enough votes to pass it. In particular, two of the more moderate Senate Republicans, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, refused to support even this measure, citing concerns about losses of coverage under the plan, especially for their constituents. In a final blow, as noted in Chapter 3, Senator John McCain, suffering from brain cancer, returned to the floor of the Senate after his initial surgery and cast the definitive vote—as Vice-President Pence could’ve broken a tie—to kill the bill, 49-51. Thus, the bill failed because of defections by key Republicans, but also because Democrats remained firm. While Trump is not solely to blame, his limited understanding of the issue, and mixed signals about what he wanted in a health care bill, contributed to the confusion (Graham 2017). He also didn’t really attempt to persuade or offer concessions to members, especially Democrats, and largely stayed aloof (see Taddonio 2018). Trump’s limited attempts to influence wavering Senators appear to have been incompetent, idle threats, rather than concessions. While tying into his “coercive negotiator” (Kogan 2019) approach (discussed in Chapter 1), these efforts were strategically flawed, especially in the case of Sen. Murkowski (R-AK). One scholar of presidential relations with Congress went so far as to say that “Trump’s efforts at what might look like ‘bargaining’ are amateurish at best….” After Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke threatened that the Trump Administration would withdraw support for policies related to energy exploration in Alaska if she didn’t vote for repeal, Murkowski didn’t blink and voted “no” anyway. Then, “she schooled the White House on how a professional plays hardball

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politics. As chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, she postponed indefinitely a nomination that the Interior Department badly needed approved” (Bond 2019, p. 905). In the end, Trump’s ineffectual leadership was not the sole factor— after all, Republicans had been trying and failing to really repeal it for years—but he clearly did not improve the prospects for success. Notably, Trump changed his position on health care financing at least five times… [before he] backed the last-ditch effort to repeal… Aside from promising to repeal Obamacare and replace it with “something great,” Trump’s White House did not lay out any clear health care policy positions that would have provided Congress with any coherent alternative to it. Nor did Trump make broad public appeals for a specific alternative policy. He may have been counting on his vaunted reputation for making deals, but he did not provide the political or policy leadership necessary to shepherd the administration’s signature legislation through Congress. (Pfiffner 2018, pp. 157–158)

Trump’s weak command of specifics and credibility on health care meant he had little influence on the final vote. His elite reputation, especially with McCain (whom he had criticized and feuded with before), if not Murkowski, also undermined any reason for Republicans to “give him a win” on this issue. And that may have been part of the problem— he apparently was far more interested in winning the political game the vote represented than he was in trying to craft real policy or offer incentives that might have brought him the votes. Granted, in many respects, substantively it was better for the nation as well as Republicans, not to pass it, though it did come back to haunt them in the 2018 elections by giving Democrats a clear campaign issue. 2018–19 Government Shutdown Over His Wall: Brinkmanship Without a Ship Trump’s limited power, and inept bargaining skills, were also evident in the border wall funding and government shutdown battle in December 2018–January 2019. Without going into too much detail, Trump essentially caused the longest partial government shutdown in US history due to his own poor timing and weak agenda-setting, his position-changing, and general lack of strategy. Indeed, it is hard to even chronicle all the ways he failed to use his power effectively, except by his position of saying

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“no” or threatening to veto bills funding the government without the $5 billion for his wall, which Republican leaders in the Senate prevented by not scheduling a vote. Not only did he draw a line in the sand after the sands had shifted, apparently driven by criticism from media pundits, he publicly said he’d take the blame for the impass, and then later tried to deflect it. He essentially believed he could wait out the Democrats in Congress, despite the fact the wall issue was unpopular nationally, and especially within the Democratic coalition. The ordeal finally ended with his capitulation after 35 days. For some reason, perhaps that his own partisans in Congress didn’t fully support it, and wanted to emphasize other priorities, Trump chose not to move on this promise earlier in his term, when his party still controlled Congress. Trump also rejected an earlier compromise bill while the Republicans still held power that would have given him more funding for his wall in exchange for other immigration reforms. Instead, he chose to play a game of chicken with Congress after the election, when the Democrats had won the House, mainly on an anti-Trump platform. He also was clearly outplayed by recently restored Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Not only did she skillfully manage to keep her caucus completely unified—indeed, when Trump offered to meet any wavering House Democrats, none took up his offer—she also provoked Trump in a televised meeting into publicly declaring he would “take the blame” for the shutdown (Klein 2019). As two different expert observers noted, Trump made fatal strategic and tactical errors, stemming from his flawed business negotiation experience, and belief in the power of public opinion (which wasn’t on his side): …one of Trump’s major mistakes has been to insist upon largely negotiating this in public and via Twitter… making it exponentially more difficult for anyone to compromise…. Trump also made any resolution more difficult with his changing positions and undermining his own negotiators and Senate Republican allies. (Latz 2019) The truth that Trump still doesn’t grasp is that presidential negotiating is much more complicated than negotiating something like brand licensing agreements. It requires knowledge of often complex policy issues and a deep understanding of all the forces at play with the other side. And that might be where Trump’s failure is most profound. (Waldman 2019)

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Again, perhaps Trump’s actions made sense from his Art of the Deal “coercive negotiator” style (see Chapter 1), thinking that he could use his veto as a blunt instrument to get his way. He may have also wrongly thought the public would flock to his side, or just wanted to cause discord to please his base. Whatever the reason, his tactics didn’t work. Thus, drawing on Neustadt, it is easy to see why Trump failed. His reputation and credibility were already strained by his previous actions; he refused to offer the other parties significant concessions or rewards for giving in on their position; his position was unpopular overall, and the means of getting it (the shutdown) was even so among his base supporters. In the end, he moved to do what Neustadt recommended against, the issuance of a controversial order—his “emergency declaration” to use money allocated for defense to construct a scaled-down version—even after he admitted it wasn’t such an emergency. Again, as Cronin phrased it, Neustadt’s strongest dictum was “even the most skillful of presidents will have to get by catch-as-catch can… always frugal in their use of power resources…, and always performing the art of persuasion… thereby avoiding at almost all costs the issuance of a controversial command” (Cronin 1980, p. 124). This action was initially blocked and its fate was to be determined in the Courts. In addition, his action to attempt to spend money Congress specifically denied him led to the unusual step of both houses, even the Republican-controlled Senate, in March 2019 passing a resolution against his emergency declaration, forcing him to veto it. Although Trump may have later partially prevailed through his unilateral authority through the “national emergency” in practice (discussed in another chapter), the immediate result was clearly not a success, particularly for a supposed master negotiator. Nuclear Negotiations with North Korea and the Second Summit with Kim: Personal Relations Don’t Equal International Relations Similar patterns can be seen in the foreign affairs example of Trump’s approach toward North Korea and its dictator Kim Jong Un. Particularly through personal (if not Twitter) diplomacy, Trump has attempted to achieve some kind of breakthrough in US relations with the brutal and intransigent regime in Pyongyang, regardless of the fact the country is a clear threat to US interests and allies in the region.

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For decades, North Korea has sought to become a nuclear power, in order to protect its sovereignty and existence, increase its status, and intimidate its neighbors. In the process, it has been a thorn in the side of successive US administrations, who have attempted various strategies to rein in its ambitions (see for example, Scalapino 2007). In his own peculiar way, President Trump has brought his unpredictable, “keep them guessing” style and personal contact methods to this issue. Trump has essentially gone from issuing provocative threats and taunts (calling Kim “Rocket Man,” etc.) in 2017 to suddenly warming up to Kim from 2018 on. His main belief that he alone can solve the issue, combined with his desire to achieve peace where other presidents have failed, led him to the unprecedented step of directly and publicly communicating with Kim in a likely naïve belief a deal could be reached. The second summit meeting with Kim in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019, illustrates President Trump’s flawed negotiation and diplomatic skills, and limited understanding of national versus personal interests. Notably, Trump’s years in office “have had no effect on his conviction that the presidency is about himself, whereas foreign leaders he meets are looking out for their national interests” (Mathews 2019, p. 14). The Hanoi meeting meant to build on a surprising and relatively cordial first summit between Trump and Kim in Singapore the previous June, which ended with few specifics but a joint statement of cooperation (see Council on Foreign Relations n.d.). After relaxing some of his hostility, Trump lept at the chance to meet with Kim, believing some kind of breakthrough would happen. Granted, some experts thought Trump was “taken” by Kim even before that meeting began, and he went on to make other concessions, while getting nothing in return. For one, Trump already gave North Korea a major public relations victory simply by the high-level meeting of heads of state. He also placed such great stakes on the result that “the table [was] set in such a way that virtually any outcome [was] a win for North Korea, but only a narrow range of outcomes [would] save the US from an embarrassing failure… it’s a formulation that [put] the Americans at a significant disadvantage even before talks [began]” (Fisher 2018). Another analyst noted that an even bigger gift to Kim—and for which he did not have to concede anything—was Trump’s unilateral declaration to indefinitely suspend US– South Korean military exercises. This move was “a serious mistake that is going to be either hard to live with, as readiness atrophies over time, or

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undo, since North Korea will be compelled to respond if large-scale exercises are resumed.” Furthermore, “the drama of the first-ever meeting between these longstanding antagonists was enough to distract the media, for a while, that nothing was actually agreed to in Singapore” but it soon became clear Trump’s grandiose claims of the removal of North Korea’s nuclear threat were empty (Mathews 2019, p. 14). Still, the fanfare of the aftermath, and subsequent talks between North and South Korean leaders, led to anticipation of future progress. Thus, the two prepared to meet again—albeit on short notice, which was probably not a good sign—in an attempt to more concretely halt North Korean nuclear development in exchange for lifting of US and international sanctions. At least, that’s what the Americans and apparently Trump thought. In the end, at Hanoi the president surprised everyone in following one of his Art of the Deal principles by ending the summit early, and walking away from what he saw—or uncharacteristically was persuaded by advisors, like National Security chief John Bolton, to see—as a flawed bargain (Graham 2019). The basic crux of the matter was that the United States was unwilling to release all the sanctions absent more concessions on the North Korean side. Nevertheless, the summit failed mostly because Trump himself was unrealistic about what the summit could accomplish, much less understood the real issues involved. In addition, diplomatic experts on the outside criticized his approach, as well as his administration, for not preparing the groundwork at lower levels, as is typically done in these kinds of high-level meetings (e.g., Carter and the Camp David Accords). First, there were, and still are, many interests—in the United States, Japan, and South Korea, as well as international human rights organizations—that favor a strong, if not hard-line response to the North. That does not mean that a “thawing” of US relations and progress on North Korean nuclear development can’t happen—it means it isn’t easy, nor is it likely to be achieved by the kind of diplomacy Trump employed (Kelly 2019). As one expert on inter-Korean affairs put it: …Changing the relations with the North will require a major, serious effort. The notion Trump could simply swoop in and turn the allies’ relationship with North Korea on its head in just a few months with a few meetings was always provocative, and likely to produce a serious backlash from the many interested parties… resistance was predictable, but

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Trump approached negotiating with North Korea as he has so many other major initiatives in his career… with a mix of bluster, laziness, and media over-exposure. (Kelly 2019)

Trump apparently thought, and possibly still does, that the meaning of “denuclearization” is the North giving up its weapons, whereas for the North, and others, it is the removal of all nuclear weapons—including the US umbrella—from the peninsula. This fundamental error, coupled with the short time frame from announcement to meeting, doomed major progress from the start. The President’s “failure to engage in the most preparatory work for this summit—and his longstanding penchant for putting personal convictions ahead of his experts’ opinions—meant that there was no way he could have come out of this summit with a denuclearization deal,” said a former diplomat (Vinograd 2019). The conclusion is not that Trump (for once) listened to his advisors or even strategically broke off a deal that was potentially bad for the United States. Rather, the summit should never have happened at all under the circumstances, and it again demonstrates Trump’s failure to learn how high-level diplomacy works. Unlike the wall or Obamacare repeal fiascos, where Trump was the one asking for the other party (Congress) to acquiesce, here Kim and the North Koreans were the ones seeking some kind of deal, giving Trump leverage. From his perspective or that of his defenders, that meant that he had the upper hand, at least in the short run. Yet he was unable to capitalize on this small advantage. But the larger, more illustrative point remains. The fact is Trump is especially vulnerable in one-on-one negotiations with foreign leaders “because he is neither well-informed on the issues nor especially willing to put in the time to learn, meaning he comes to a negotiating table already tilted against him” (Graham 2019). Perhaps due to his inexperience—which Neustadt also cautioned against (e.g., “expertise in power is not a substitute for expertise in policy” [1990, p. 125])—Trump was in fact overconfident of his own skills, and lacked a larger understanding of the political stakes. All told, Trump’s “nice guy” praise of his counterpart—partly due to Kim’s own understandable flattery in order to inflate Trump’s well-known ego and thus win him over—has had no noticeable effect on actual North Korean nuclear behavior. His unsurprising failure to achieve results in the talks has instead allowed that country to continue testing and building

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its nuclear arsenal (Brunnstrom and Lambert 2019), as witnessed by several short-range missile launches in May 2019. These actions were likely even due to Kim’s disappointment with Trump at Hanoi (Albert 2019). Furthermore, it is also clear Kim and his country can match President Trump tit-for-tat in suddenly changing tactics, and “unpredictability squared” is not by itself a recipe for diplomatic success (see Mathews 2019). By December 2019, in fact both countries had reverted to their old adversarial ways, and negotiations were clearly stalled. North Korea threatened a “nasty Christmas present” for the United States if there wasn’t new evidence of movement toward their position, and even resumed further missile tests. While both sides stopped short of scuttling future talks, it was clear that Trump’s warnings and entreaties were not working (Sanger et al. 2019). A foreign policy journalist retrospectively described the causes of this diplomatic disaster as follows: The story of how Trump’s North Korea policy collapsed is in part one of Pyongyang’s intransigence, obfuscation, and bad faith in talks about its nuclear program, as well as one in which US and North Korean officials misread one another… But it’s also a tale about the American president undercutting his own success. …He shifted the paradigm with North Korea in style but not substance. While transforming the role of the president in negotiations with North Korea, he did not bring the same inventiveness to the negotiations themselves. (Friedman 2019)

Conclusion: What These Cases Illustrate These three cases admittedly are not the sum of Trump’s record or a full account of his performance in office. Nevertheless, they are telling in that they fit a larger pattern of how he strategically approaches political and governing situations where bargaining, or at least, power politics and the games one must play, are vitally important. Though they cover different issues areas with distinct circumstances and contexts, all share a common theme: Trump’s presidential inability to succeed at persuasion, in spite of some favorable factors on his side, due to his poor choices and ineffective tactics. Trump’s high-profile (if not high stakes) involvement in certain issues, actually decrease rather than increase his likelihood of success. He himself

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appears to believe he is the center of the universe, and as one biographer put it, thinks there’s “no such thing as over-exposure” (Slater 2005). While this might work in a political campaign or the public relations side of the job in some respects, overall it undermines his political and policy effectiveness. Trump apparently doesn’t understand that the rules of political negotiation are different from those of real estate or the business world, though his approach may have limited utility there as well. He also fails to see that his power is far from absolute, or that he may not automatically be in a superior position to those with whom he interacts. He seems to believe that a show of bluster and potential threats will cause others to cave, not realizing that they may have a correspondingly equal degree of selfconfidence, egoistic pride, or bottom line. (Indeed, this notion appears to be part of his “America First” foreign policy—while the United States may be stronger than other nations or hold upper hand in some situations, it still doesn’t mean that intimidation or threats will work.) This observation is as true with Speaker Nancy Pelosi as it is with Chairman Kim Jong Un. While Trump’s unpredictability does give him some leverage, overall these early-term missteps, along with his lack of credibility create an impression among the Washington and foreign elite, if not the public, that he is incompetent if not impotent. As Neustadt astutely put it regarding presidential missteps: “the greatest danger to a president’s influence with them is not the show of incapacity he makes today, but its apparent kinship to what happened yesterday, last month, last year. For if his failures seem to form a pattern, the consequence is bound to be a loss of faith in effectiveness next time. The boy who cried wolf came to a sad end because nobody listened to his final cry” [emphasis added] (1990, pp. 52–53).

References Albert, E. (2019, July 25). North Korea’s Military Capabilities. Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/northkoreas-military-capabilities. Bond, J. R. (2019). The Contemporary Presidency: Which Presidents Are Uncommonly Successful in Congress? A Trump Update. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 49(4), 898–908.

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Brunnstrom, D., & Lambert, L. (2019, March 5). North Korea Rebuilds Part of Missile Site as Bolton Threatens Sanctions. Reuters. https://www.reuters. com/article/us-northkorea-usa-nuclear-idUSKCN1QM1ZA. Council on Foreign Relations. (n.d.). North Korean Nuclear Negotiations: A Brief History, 1985–2019. https://www.cfr.org/timeline/north-korean-nuc lear-negotiations. Accessed May 2019. Cronin, T. (1980). The State of the Presidency. Boston: Little, Brown. Fisher, M. (2018, March 9). 7 Things to Understand About Trump’s Talks with North Korea. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/ 09/world/asia/trump-kim-north-korea-explainer.html. Friedman, U. (2019, December 19). Inside the Collapse of Trump’s Korea Policy. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/ 12/donald-trump-kim-jong-un-north-korea-diplomacy-denuclearization/603 748/. Graham, D. (2017, July 28). ‘As I Have Always Said’: Trump’s Ever-Changing Positions on Health Care. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/pol itics/archive/2017/07/as-i-have-always-said-trumps-ever-changing-positionon-health-care/535293/. Graham, D. (2019, February 28). The One Time Trump Didn’t Blink. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/ 02/trump-took-his-own-negotiating-advice-north-korea/583843/. Kelly, R. E. (2019, March 5). Trump Is 0-2 in His On-the-Fly Diplomacy with Kim. Time to Stop. Lowry Institute. https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-int erpreter/trump-0-2-his-fly-diplomacy-kim-time-stop. Klein, E. (2019, January 25). The Vindication of Nancy Pelosi. Vox. https:// www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/25/18197685/nancy-pelositrump-shutdown-over. Kogan, E. B. (2019). Art of the Power Deal: The Four Negotiation Roles of Donald J. Trump. Negotiation Journal, 35(1): 65–83. Latz, M. (2019, January 20). Donald Trump’s Weak Negotiating Skills Caused this Record Government Shutdown. USA Today. https://www.usatoday. com/story/opinion/2019/01/20/donald-trump-weak-negotiation-skillsgovernment-shutdown-column/2631551002/. Mathews, J. T. (2019, April 19). What Happened in Hanoi? New York Review of Books, pp. 14–17. Neustadt, R. E. (1960). Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York: Wiley. Neustadt, R. E. (1990). Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Free Press. Pfiffner, J. P. (2018). The Contemporary Presidency: Organizing the Trump Presidency. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 48(1), 153–167.

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Ragsdale, L. (2000). Personal Power and Presidents. In R. Shapiro, M. J. Kumar, & L. R. Jacobs (Eds.), Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Columbia University Press. Sanger, D. E., Wong, E., & Crowley, M. (2019, December 22). New Missile Test Looms as Trump Fails to Sway Kim. New York Times, p. A1. Scalapino, R. A. (2007, March). US Relations with North Korea. Pacific Focus, 22(1), 5–17. Slater, R. (2005). No Such Thing as Over-Exposure: Inside the Life and Celebrity of Donald Trump. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Scott, D., & Kliff, S. (2017, July 31). Why Obamacare Repeal Failed. Vox. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/31/16055960/why-oba macare-repeal-failed. Taddonio, P. (2018, April 10). Why President Trump Couldn’t Close the Obamacare Deal. PBS Frontline. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/ article/watch-why-president-trump-couldnt-close-the-deal-on-obamacare-rep eal/. Trump, D. J., & Schwartz, T. (1987). Trump: The Art of the Deal. New York: Warner Books. Vinograd, S. (2019, February 28). Hanoi Summit Failed Because Trump Refuses to Prep. Daily Beast. https://www.thedailybeast.com/after-the-hanoi-failheres-a-textbook-for-trump-summiting-for-dummies. Waldman, P. (2019, January 10). Donald Trump Is the World’s Worst Negotiator. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ 2019/01/10/donald-trump-is-worlds-worst-negotiator/?utm_term=.8625ce c5cd27.

CHAPTER 5

“No Place for Amateurs”: Trump as Decider and Administrator-in-Chief

Abstract This chapter examines Trump as Chief Executive, placing his style in the context of other models of presidential organization. His relations with staff, the Cabinet, and the bureaucracy is contrasted with views of scholars, including Richard Neustadt. It notes Trump is a governing if not political novice, wasn’t was a real CEO as a businessman, and has little understanding of how to manage the executive branch. The large staff turnover, scandals and corruption within his administration, infighting and decision/policy reversals, etc., along with generally ineffective implementation are linked to his personality, background, and failure to comprehend the job. At the same time, as one of his goals was to “deconstruct the administrative state,” his lack of attention, incompetence, and regulatory and budget cuts have hampered the efficacy of the executive branch—yet, also, arguably his own authority. Keywords Trump, Donald · Chief Executive · White House staffing · Administrative presidency

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. M. Schaefer, Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4_5

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Introduction The previous two chapters applied Richard Neustadt’s (1960, 1990) model of presidential power and influence to explain major political and policy difficulties of the early-to-mid Trump presidency. Essentially, they argue that Trump’s weak power position—in terms of both elite relations and popular support—coupled with poor strategic and tactical decisions in some important cases (health care, the 2019 budget and government shutdown, over “his” border wall, and diplomatic relations with North Korea) can be understood in part through Neustadt’s and related presidency research. This chapter turns to the question of the president as Chief Executive, at least in certain important respects. It first examines why the administrative, executive, and organizational role of the president is important for decision-making and power, and what the literature on such matters says about how to create effective presidential modus operandi. It then discusses Neustadt’s perspective on these questions, before turning to the administrative history and practice of President Donald Trump. It finds that Trump has adopted a “competitive” approach to advising, staffing, etc., akin to Neustadt’s recommendation, but that his own political inexperience, personal temperament and misguided priorities (i.e., loyalty over competence) have undermined even the few virtues of the Neustadt/Franklin Roosevelt model, the closest to Trump’s in practice. On the other hand, he has had some success in hampering the administrative state below him, one of his main goals, though ironically that in some ways may limit his own power.

The Chief Executive Role: The President and the Presidency The president’s role as chief executive, while perhaps the most obvious part of the job, is nonetheless multifaceted and has become more complex as the government of the United States has grown. In addition, the structure and political contexts of the executive branch give presidents limited control over their “own” turf (e.g., see Howell 2017, pp. 241–246). Voters also don’t select candidates for the office primarily based on their managerial skills. In Trump’s case, some may have been drawn to his claims of business acumen, and his career as head of his own company. But

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in other respects, he clearly is the least-experienced—in terms of supervising any government organization—person to hold the job, and was far less so than his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton. Managing the executive branch also isn’t the most glamorous side of being president, and many presidents seem to prefer focusing on other aspects, such as public relations or foreign policy. Having said that, if presidents do not pay close attention to their administrative duties or the implementation of policy—especially in their appointments of others to oversee such tasks—it can create headaches for them later on. Notably, scandals (e.g., Harding’s Teapot Dome) or bureaucratic failures (e.g., Obama’s rollout of the Obamacare website) derail priorities and can undermine other parts of the presidential job. Politicization Versus Competence The modern administrative state reflects a built-in tension between political responsiveness and technical expertise. The US federal government addresses this dilemma through empowering presidents to appoint toplayer administrative and White House staff positions, with unelected, merit-based civil servants filling out the rest. Presidents, especially newly elected ones, must navigate this inherent conflict. On the one hand, they want—or should want—competent people in the leadership of various executive organizations, but they also want control over subordinates and people who agree with them, and are under pressure to reward their supporters with jobs. Most presidents attempt to balance these competing issues by using the personnel system to recruit people who are both competent, and loyal to them personally (Pfiffner 2011, p. 118). Still, presidents who focus too much on politicizing the executive branch can run the risk that their underlings and advisors will recommend, or even carry out policies or actions, that are unwise, if not illegal or unethical. The Watergate scandal in the Nixon Administration is an extreme example. Organizational Design for Advice and Decision-Making In addition to having “one President” solely vested with executive power under the Constitution, presidents must also be “deciders” (as George W. Bush put it), and thus need quality input and help to be effective. If they are not given a broad range of advice, or are separated from different

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points of view, they may make ill-informed or poorly-thought-out decisions. Having an adequate support apparatus is thus key to their success. “If the greatest threat to presidential decision-making is isolation, or not receiving the advice necessary, then organizing the White House staff as well as managing the flow of information becomes a critical task” (Han and Heith 2018, p. 272; see also Buchanan 1991). Since Franklin Roosevelt created the modern institutional presidency, presidents have generally chosen three types of executive staffing and advisory systems, with some variations: the competitive, the hierarchical, and the collegial models (e.g., Han and Heith 2018, pp. 273–276). In the competitive model, advisors and staff generally do not have set roles; the president assigns them tasks, often secretly overlapping ones, and sets them to work against each other. Solely utilized by Franklin Roosevelt—and discussed in more detail below—this model gives the president multiple sources of potentially useful information. But it also takes great initiative and skill on the part of the president, as well as requires great energy and time that could be spent on the deliberation of decisions themselves (Buchanan 1991, pp. 84–85). If not managed properly, it also grates on the staff or advisers involved, and may be inefficient in terms of having multiple people doing the same tasks. Perhaps for this reason, all subsequent presidents up through Obama have avoided it. The hierarchical model, though not always perfectly “pyramidal” in form, is more structured with clear lines of authority and portfolios, responsibilities, etc., for personnel. First employed by Eisenhower, given his military background, and adopted by a number of others (usually Republicans) such as Nixon and the two Bushes—it relies on a strong chief of staff who sets agendas, controls access to the president, and is seen as the president’s right hand. The upside to this model is its efficiency: strong organization, division of labor, and controlled flow of information to the president. The downside is that the president may be insulated from alternative perspectives, especially those that either disagree with (or are assumed by gatekeepers to be against) presidential inclinations, or are intentionally prevented from being brought to the president’s attention for political or other reasons. The president may in turn be given bad advice, or worse yet have simple “yes men and women” who tell the president what they want to hear, or do not critically analyze alternatives, which can lead to poor or even illegal decisions.

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Lastly, the collegial model—selected by Democratic presidents such as Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton—is a more open, flexible model schematically akin to a wheel, with the president as the hub (or center) and key advisors as the spokes. The Chief of Staff generally is weaker, and a cadre of top aides—though they may include Cabinet secretaries or others outside the White House—are generally co-equals with access, status, and cooperative input to the president. This has the advantages of preventing presidential isolation, and giving the president a wide range of views, etc., but its disadvantages are that it may take too much time, overly involve the president in disputes or matters best left to subordinates, and is not as clearly organized in terms of duties. The conventional wisdom among scholars who study White House organization and presidential advisory systems is that some modified form of the strong-chief-of-staff model is preferable to all the others. That is, with one important caveat: provided the chief is an “honest broker” and allows different views and some kind of access to the president to be heard, as opposed to blocking off or “deciding for” the president (see Pfiffner 2011, pp. 92–93). As we will see, Trump’s administration has not followed such recommendations.

Neustadt’s View of Staffing and Presidential-Executive Relations The administrative side of the presidency does not play a central part in Neustadt’s discussion of presidential effectiveness. His focus on presidential persuasion through bargaining did recognize the need for political and power-handling skills with the president’s own branch (cabinet, staff, larger federal bureaucracy), much like other actors in the Washington community. The president’s limited ability to issue orders to or expect cooperation even with his supposed subordinates, and the ways his minions or associates in the administration could intentionally or unintentionally undermine the president’s goals, was discussed, but more within the framework of his larger picture of power relations. He himself admitted later in subsequent editions that in retrospect originally he spent too little space on the question of staffing, and because the “President’s associates can so contribute to his own personal destruction” the topic should be discussed on its own (1990, p. 218). Nevertheless, he does provide nuggets of wisdom here and there, as well

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as observations about how a president should act in this realm that in turn shed light on the Trump presidency. Two points from his book seem most applicable to Trump: the general importance of the incumbent’s experience and expertise, and the central role of the president in astutely running the institutional presidency. First, as Neustadt thundered in his original edition, “the presidency is no place for amateurs” (1990, p. 151). Though he meant this in terms of presidential skills in seeking and using power—namely, that those without relevant prior governing experience would be unlikely to possess them—this point also applies to overseeing the executive branch and the operation of presidential staffing and advisory systems. It is true that after witnessing the problematic experiences of Johnson and Nixon—two of the more formally experienced persons to serve in recent memory—he did retract the statement a bit. He reflected that perhaps it was the kind of previous experiences, and what an individual learned from them, more than the amount of previous experience, that mattered (1990, pp. 203–209). Ronald Reagan, an outsider who nonetheless showed an ability to play the Washington game effectively is a case in point, although he had his own challenges in his second term. Nevertheless, even Neustadt would likely be taken aback by Trump, not just for his complete lack of political and government experience, but also that unlike other outsiders—Carter, Reagan, and Clinton—he appears to refuse to listen to advice. Nor does he learn from some of the more experienced members of his team, like General James Mattis, his one-time Defense Secretary, or Reince Priebus, his one-time chief of staff, preferring to “go with his gut” as he once claimed in Art of the Deal (1987, p. 28). Second, Neustadt focused on the “chief administrator” role primarily in terms of the president as executive ringleader, shrewd intelligencegatherer, and paramount decision-maker. In this sense, the White House apparatus was there to “help the President” in both the administrative side of the job, as well as the political and end-seeking parts of it. It is thus useful to delineate Neustadt’s view of the president as chief executive. For him, no amount of organizational structure or strategy was a replacement for a president’s personal skills, social intellect, and “will and thrill” to power. As Bert Rockman, an insightful student of the administrative presidency, noted: while the growth of the presidency in the post-Depression era required organization and effective

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internal governance, for Neustadt, “the presidency was fundamentally about leadership, not management” (Rockman 2000, p. 159). Along those lines, Neustadt did not think highly of the strong-chief-ofstaff, or hierarchical, corporate board model.1 He believed the president needed to be actively involved in managing his choices, information, and power. These were duties the president alone should perform, and that “systems of management are for business school curricula and not for political leaders” (Rockman 2000, p. 162). Neustadt in fact admired the Roosevelt approach discussed above, much as he admired FDR as a political leader and tactician in general. He saw in Roosevelt a man who was not only intensely curious, and a sociable yet manipulative master of human relations, but also a sly protector of power and prerogative. He also quoted admirably about his competitive style from biographers like Arthur Schlesinger. This led him to believe that the Roosevelt system allowed the president both inside information as well as time to make proper choices: “Not only did he keep his organizations overlapping and divide authority among them, but he also tended to put men of clashing temperaments, outlooks, and ideas, in charge of them. …. Administrative competition gave him two rewards. He got the choices and the due notice, both. …He also got that treasure for a President, time to defer a decision” (Neustadt 1990, p. 132). Neustadt saw the president as the driver of the presidential car. Therefore, staff and administration were necessary to serve the president’s political as well as governing needs, and only individual presidents could determine what would work best for them. “In the end, Neustadt presumes a president of intense curiosity, angling to know what his options are—not as they appear immediately, but as they constrain future choices and political resources. …But such a (largely hypothetical) president must not only have a well-honed taste for power, but must also be extraordinarily (perhaps impossibly) wise” (Rockman 2000, pp. 162–163).

Trump in Practice: FDR in Form, Not FDR in Function First, it is obvious to any observer that Trump is foremost a salesman, and not a CEO. Indeed, despite his “Apprentice” image, he is not manager,

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with his companies largely run informally through cronies and connections to him, and sold on his name as the brand. Unlike his first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson of Exxon, Trump has never been head of a large corporation. As one biographer noted, “Trump’s operation was small (20,000 employees) in comparison to large companies; it was highly segmented, and depended entirely on the man at the top. It was no accident that the main business strategies Donald Trump adopted had to do with managing his own persona and building his own celebrity” (Slater 2005, p. 14). As he put it in Art of the Deal: “…we [The Trump Organization] are not a bureaucracy… in our organization, anyone with a question could bring it directly to me, and get an answer immediately. That’s precisely why I’ve been able to act faster than my competitors on so many deals” (1987, p. 209). Kruse (2016) noted that Trump’s role in his business organization was quite unlike a normal corporate executive because the Trump Organization is a family-owned limited liability company that doesn’t have to abide by many of the corporate transparency or other laws, where managers are subject to a degree of oversight, such as with a Board of Directors. Furthermore, his managerial style was characterized by “impulsiveness, his affinity for broad brush thinking over nitty-gritty policies, his preference for small staff, his taste for internal competition, and a kind of creative chaos, his reflexive reliance on blind loyalists instead of more disciplined surrogates, [and] his reluctance to cede control” (Da Vinha 2019; Kruse 2016). Trump echoed an old Republican line that “government should be run like a business.” However, being CEO of the United States is different, and indeed government does not and cannot run like a business. This reality and his Republican affiliation would lead one to think that he would adopt the strong chief-of-staff model. However, with the exception of a scheduler, Trump is otherwise “micromanager-in-chief.” Since rebuilding and rebranding his business in the 1990s, Trump has maintained a hands-on approach, rarely leaving the office, yet at the same time, he encouraged his hundreds of acquaintances, associates and contacts to “drop by any time” (Slater 2005, p. 20). As Trump himself noted in The Art of the Deal , “I leave my door open. You can’t be too entrepreneurial if you’ve got too much structure” (Trump 1987, p. 1). Trump appears to have continued that more open, free-wheeling organization, with multiple centers of power and access, in the White House. In his first year, Reince Priebus officially had the Chief of Staff title,

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but political director Steve Bannon and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner jockeyed for the president’s ear and influence, with specific duties apparently less defined. Prior to John Kelly’s tenure as Chief of Staff, it was reputed that more than ten people had “walk in” privileges to the Oval Office (Pfiffner 2018). Similarly, it was reported that Trump remarkably had over half of his day—up to 9 hours, by some accounts—devoted to “unstructured” executive time, mostly watching TV, tweeting, or calling people (Johnson and Lippman 2018). On the surface at least, it does appear Trump follows the competitive model of Roosevelt. He has a preference for an unstructured White House operation, and favors subordinates who compete for his attention and assignment of tasks (Lewis et al. 2018). However, there are some key differences that not only make Trump’s style problematic in general, but also show he lacks certain qualities of FDR and his presidency. Notably, Roosevelt was also a master of human relations and subtle manipulation, coupling it with his witty personality and sunny disposition to ensure staff morale. Furthermore, he’d honed his skills as Secretary of the Navy and Governor of New York prior to winning the White House. These are key distinctions, as such a style is both demanding of the president, and his aides and other administration members. Namely: As an outsider, President Trump does not have the political expertise of Roosevelt and so far he has not demonstrated a desire to acquire it. As a novice to government, President Trump does not know where administrative power lies and, apparently, many on his staff do not either. The president values a particular kind of competence—talent that mirrors his own, including the ability to be successful in the private sector and be a forceful presence on television or social media. President Trump’s impatience with Gary Cohn and H. R. McMaster and selection of television personalities John Bolton and Lawrence Kudlow are illustrations of this preference. (Lewis et al. 2018, p. 494).

Trump not only doesn’t have FDR’s governing skills and experience, he is that type-A personality executive who screams at his staff and blames others, and apparently thinks competition is an end in itself, making the winners stronger. Two “insider” publications (Anonymous 2018; Rucker and Leonnig 2020) paint a picture of a White House struggling to keep things running, under internal stress and conflict, and trying to prevent

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their tempestuous, ill-informed, and vainglorious boss from acting rashly and foolishly. For example, Trump berated his communications team for inconsistencies in their public statements about his controversial firing of FBI Director James Comey, but these were mainly due to his own shifting claims (Pfiffner 2018). In a more extreme case, Trump was reportedly “verbally and emotionally abusive” toward his Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, who resigned in April 2019 (Sheth and Relman 2020), despite the fact she attempted to carry out some of his more controversial policies toward immigration. Early academic assessments of Trump’s White House and job as chief administrator concluded there was a lack of discipline, process, and policy focus. His competitive style led to staff infighting and disappointment, sapping energy, and leading to inefficiency (see Pfiffner 2018; Lewis et al. 2018). Likewise, one scholarly appraisal of his foreign policy decision-making in his first year concluded, “despite some similarities in appearance and rhetoric, Trump’s management style has differed significantly from Roosevelt’s ‘competitive adhocracy,’ …Aloof to the details and complexities of the policy-making process, Trump’s mercurial personality and instinctual behavior have hindered the development of a thoughtful and structured policy process” (Da Vinha 2019, p. 300). It is also obvious that Trump values loyalty and political allegiance over policy expertise. Appointees who praise him in public, and don’t resist his often changing moods and positions, are celebrated in Tweets; others who don’t, such as Rex Tillerson, his first Secretary of State, are subject to public scorn. One of the reasons it appears he relies on family members and gives them significant portfolios—such as son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was the administration point person on Middle East and criminal justice issues, and daughter Ivanka Trump, on women’s and family issues—is that he can rely on them. As an inexperienced outsider, he also does not understand that the government does not work directly for him. This misunderstanding was most vividly displayed in his dismay over his first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions who not only recused himself from the Russia “meddling” investigation, but favored the independent counsel work surrounding it (possibly understanding that it would be more credible and help Trump in the long run). The danger for Trump, as with any president, is that misplaced loyalty can lead to disastrous oversights if not tunnel vision.

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Attempts to “rein” Trump in or make the White House more structured have had little success. Trump appears to have learned few lessons on the job and continues his notable lack of self-reflection (Stewart 2018). His second Chief of Staff, retired general John Kelly (July 31, 2017–January 2, 2019) honestly tried to bring some structure, organization, and discipline to the White House. While Kelly appeared to have some early successes, nevertheless, in this regard Trump continued to undercut or blindside major decisions or actors, especially through public comments, Twitter rants, and the like. After Kelly’s departure, one report noted, “In any White House, the chief of staff is arguably the most punishing position. But in this White House—a den of disorder ruled by an impulsive president—it has proved to be an especially thankless job. The two people to hold the job were left with their reputations diminished after failing to constrain the president, who often prefers to function as his own chief of staff” (Rucker et al. 2018). In the third era of the Trump White House, under acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, notably also continuing in his job as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, it appeared Trump had won, maintaining his competitive, open, is-his-own-man style. Mulvaney did not try to “manage” Trump and played less of a broker.2 As one retrospective report on Kelly’s dissatisfaction with the job, after his departure from the White House put it: “Kelly represented a faction of the administration that maintained at least some independence from Trump, however small. That cadre is mostly gone, forced out and replaced by what seems to be evermore sycophantic Trump devotees. That Kelly is publicly breaking with the president after the fact may bolster his image as a one-time moderating influence on Trump, albeit one that, like so many others, ultimately proved unsuccessful” (Lutz 2019).

Appointments, Staffing, and Executive Team---“The Apprentice” Comes to Washington In his executive branch appointments, he has not just favored loyalty over competence, he has actively sought people that either have no experience, and/or are directly at odds, with the agencies they are to lead (see Pfiffner 2018). He also likes to keep nominees, staffers, and the media in suspense, as if they are in a reality television show. Again, Trump was notable in deviating from past presidential practice. Yes, some presidents like Reagan appointed heads unsympathetic to

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their organizations’ goals, or others like Nixon and W. Bush used subcabinet posts to place loyalist allies to control them. Trump is even more extreme, appointing heads who supported cutting the budgets of many of the departments and agencies they oversaw. Examples of this practice abound. Scott Pruitt, appointed to head the Environmental Protection Agency once was Attorney General of Oklahoma and actively fought with, and sued, the agency. Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services, had been a staunch opponent of Obamacare and Social Security as a congressman. Rick Perry, former Governor of Texas, was put in at the Department of Energy, an agency he famously forgot the name of as one he wanted to eliminate when he ran for president. Betsy DeVos appointed as Secretary of Education, was linked to the multilevel marketing company Amway, and was a proponent of school choice and privatization. Ben Carson, a physician-turned-presidential candidate, with no prior management or other relevant experience, was tapped as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. In addition, the instability, demand for loyalty under ever-changing conditions, and so on, has indeed taken a toll on Trump’s team. Much like his televised persona on The Apprentice, President Trump likes to fire people, if they don’t quit in frustration first. Not surprisingly, his administration has been marked by massive turnover, well over that experienced by other recent presidencies. According to a Brookings Institution study continuously monitoring such activity, turnover in Trump’s “A” team (major officials in the Executive Office of the President) was a staggering 80 percent as of January 2020 (Tenpas 2020). A different study, counting all major staff, cabinet, undersecretary, etc., positions, found that by May 2019, at the time it was published, a total of 430 people who’d left since the inauguration (in 850 days), making for an average of roughly one every two days. Of these, 45 percent were those who left after being hired by Trump (Cobb 2019). Such a measure also shows the degree to which experienced staff or agency officials agree to stay on to work with the new administration. Based on those statistics, Trump had well over two times the turnover of the Obama and W. Bush Administrations in a comparable period of time. Also, Trump had lost 14 of his 21 cabinet secretaries in two years. As the latter report noted, “the record high turnover of the Trump Administration is indicative of the chaotic and destructive nature of his presidency” (Cobb 2019).

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However, the “staffing gap” of Trump’s presidency didn’t just start with an inhospitable work environment, it was also due contextual factors, some of which Trump’s people should have foreseen. The consensus of observers is that Trump’s transition team was unprepared to facilitate hiring and also didn’t anticipate normal first-year patterns of Senate politics, such delaying tactics by opposition Democrats and patronage desires by Republicans. According to one estimate, Trump’s nominees took twice as long for confirmation as Reagan’s three decades earlier, and as of the third year, only 515 of the 715 jobs requiring Senate confirmation were filled with permanent occupants, leaving 170 with no nominee, a record (Cook 2020). A result of this poor organization has been that Trump has also set a record for the number of “acting heads” who are appointed to fill vacancies but haven’t been yet confirmed by the Senate, due to recess or other temporary appointments. In fact, Trump appears to “like it that way,” commenting in a press conference that it gives him flexibility (Naylor 2019). However, an alternative characterization by a set of public administration scholars concluded, “[h]aving agencies run by a succession of acting officials is neither good for management nor a winning strategy for accomplishing the president’s administrative goals. …Managing the administrative state with acting officials is a little like running a school with a team of substitute teachers” (Lewis et al. 2018, p. 488).

Effects: Lack of Deliberation, Lack of Focus, Lack of Ethics Trump’s organizational and operation style do impact his actual policy and decision-making. Pfiffner (2018) notes a number of cases just in the first year of his administration where a lack of a clear policy development and decision-making process led to unnecessary challenges in areas as disparate as firing FBI Director James Comey, Obamacare repeal, and the Paris climate agreement withdrawal to name a few. One scholar noted years ago that “organizational efficiency” is one power resource, beyond personal ones, that presidents actually can control. “Not only need he [sic] concern himself with the ability to persuade effectively those with different institutional vantage points and different political responsibilities, he must rein in a cumbersome White House organization to maximize his ability to do so” (Kerbel 1991, p. 160).

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In particular, the rollout and implementation of Trump’s “travel ban” on certain Muslim-majority countries and halting refugee admittance through executive order in the first days of his presidency reflects a quickly crafted, undeliberated, and secretive process of loyalists rather than experts (Pfiffner 2018, p. 156). Drafted within the White House by special assistants to the president Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, few congressional members were consulted about it (and they had nondisclosure agreements). The document also did not go through the normal interagency or even White House process for legal and policy clearance for such orders. Consequently, when it was attacked as religiously discriminative, White House spokesman Sean Spicer and DHS Secretary (later Chief of Staff) John Kelly denied it was aimed at Muslims, yet they were undermined by President Trump himself, who Tweeted that was its purpose. Furthermore, the White House was unprepared when the action was later challenged in court, causing delays and controversy, though ultimately the Supreme Court did allow parts of it to be implemented. Still, though it reflected one of Trump’s campaign promises, it could have been vetted and better-designed before being announced. Another illustrative if more obscure case was an imposed ban on abortions for undocumented migrant minors (Rayasam 2018). It revealed how an ad hoc, no chain-of-command, and almost random policy was being set by low-level officials of the administration. A lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union brought to light that the policy was designed by a single Trump appointee within the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Homeland Security, and was communicated via emails, memos, and conversations to staff. This was not the ordained or legal protocol for such matters, according to a former Obama official from ORR. In this case, “the new guidelines created confusion for shelters caught between concerns about violating state law and fears of losing their HHS contract to house unaccompanied minors” (Rayasam 2018). After examining three major cases—withdrawal from the Paris climate accords, decertifying the Iran nuclear agreement, and recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s legitimate capital—one scholar concluded, “…during the administration’s first year in office, deliberation was not the norm in formulating US foreign policy… More precisely, in seeking to gain Trump’s approval and influence policy, aides are tempted to exceed their mandate and assume risky moves that can potentially create problems for the president” (Da Vinha 2019, p. 302).

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Trump also claimed he would pick “the best people” for his administration. But his lack of an organized transition team, combined with general weak personnel management have created two other pathologies of his administration beyond loyalty and inexperience mentioned above: poor vetting of nominees and related ethical transgressions and shortcomings. First, the Trump administration has demonstrated, not just early on in the transition from President Obama—and with whom, on this score, notable contrasts can be made—a lack of proper screening of its nominees, who in turn end up having ethical or other problems (see Lu 2019). Notably, three Trump selections for cabinet secretary posts— Andrew Puzder (Labor), Dr. Ronny Jackson (Veterans Affairs), and Patrick Shanahan (Defense)—withdrew after serious charges came to light. In Puzder’s and Shanahan’s cases, it was accusations of domestic violence against their family and spouses; Jackson, as noted in Chapter 3, withdrew under a slew of allegations, from being drunk on the job, to being too lenient in passing out medications. Next, the administration also has been plagued by unethical if not illegal actions by a number of officials. These are almost too great to list in their entirety (see Longman, 2019). David Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and David Shulkin, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, ran up huge bills with private jets and family-related travel; Price also had dubious ties to lobbyists. Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, also was charged with running up private-jet costs and for spending department money on personal matters. Scott Pruitt, EPA Director, engaged in a variety of illegal actions including first-class travel, gifts from lobbyists, and installing a $43,000 sound-proof phone booth in his office. Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing, as noted above, was cited in an inspector general’s report for spending over $30,000 of government money redecorating his office. Alex Acosta, Secretary of Labor, was found to have given notorious accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein a “sweetheart” plea deal when he was a US Attorney in Florida. Pruitt, Zinke, and Acosta all resigned in disgrace. These examples do not even include Trump’s own family and other forms of corruption (see Leonhardt and Ian 2018). Admittedly all administrations suffer from some degree of discord, scandals, or error, and staff continuity like that of the first W. Bush Administration (due to 9/11) is rare. Nevertheless, by any standard, the dysfunction of the Trump Administration does seem extreme—possibly the most maladroit and corrupt since Ulysses S. Grant.

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Similarly, while not all of these features of Trump-as-executive tie directly into Neustadt’s model or prescriptions, they do relate to his notions of the importance of elite reputation, and avoiding bad choices that can hurt presidents’ power down the line. The scandals and controversies at a minimum create bad press and detract from the president’s agenda; they also portray an image of incompetence, even as some in the DC political community hate to admit it in public. While this motif does have the advantage of distraction from some of the effects of his actions, it leaves Trump open to be blamed if and when an “administrative disaster” like Hurricane Katrina under George W. Bush strikes. Trump may think it creates an exciting reality show of drama and intrigue, but his chaos, disorganization, and lack of a unified structure negatively impacts real policy implementation.3

“Deconstructing the Administrative State”---Success Through Neglect? Neustadt, like many liberals of the mid-twentieth century if not insiders of all political persuasions, naturally believed government was a necessary, potentially positive force that needed to be effectively managed to work. However, for some extreme conservatives today, or even some populist followers of Trump, government is instead an evil that needs to be stopped, shrunk, or at least handicapped. From this perspective, then, Trump’s chaotic administrative style and direct attack on the executive apparatus of government is a good thing, and serves an alternative purpose. First, as noted above, Trump has appointed top officials with little experience and even outward hostility toward the agencies they lead. But Trump has gone farther, by realizing that while he cannot fire most lowlevel agency bureaucrats (due to civil service and union protections), he can make them leave voluntarily. Whether through budget cuts, or simply government reorganization that makes their job less palatable, it has the same effect. For example, Mick Mulvaney, OMB Director and Chief of Staff, noted that US Department of Agriculture eliminated two-thirds of officials from its Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture by forcing them to relocate from Washington, DC to Kansas City, as officials chose to resign rather than move. Perhaps not coincidentally, the ERS publishes studies about how climate change

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and Trump’s tariffs will affect the farm industry, information the administration doesn’t want out (LeTourneau 2019). The “swamp” Trump is draining is not lobbyists or corrupt officials, but neutral, expert “brains.” Second, through budget cuts and simple attrition via not filling positions, he has shrunk the executive branch in some respects. Trump has the largest number of vacancies in recent memory. Even Republican Senators became concerned that Trump had too many unfilled, if not acting, officials. Taken together, such actions undermine morale and work efficacy from the top down. Probably the most extreme if not telling example is the US State Department. Through a combination of sluggishness in subcabinet appointments, coupled with weak if not hostile leaders like Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, Tillerson’s successor as Secretary, as well as by an obvious down-grading of diplomacy, Trump has not only weakened liberal internationalism, he has undermined the department’s bureaucratic esprit de corps itself (Drezner 2019). Ironically, this erosion in turn has hampered his ability to, for example, make progress in key realms like policy toward North Korea (addressed in Chapter 4) (see Fisher 2018). Trump has also used executive orders and other presidential prerogatives to cut back on regulations and even question the basic authority of certain agencies, like the Consumer Protection Bureau. One order demanded each agency reduce the costs of two rules for every new one enacted, and as of late 2018, the administration claimed agencies had far exceeded its rule-busting goals (see Hill 2018). Trump also has another weapon: going public, via media attention and Twitter (Elder 2019). Bureaucrats, as well as their political bosses, fear bad publicity, and Trump’s thumbs can deliver it at a moment’s notice. For example, the State Department apparently recalled Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch from Ukraine back to DC early to avoid her “being fired by Tweet,” by the president. Lastly, when these factors are combined with Trump’s own neglect of detail and poor administrative apparatus, the result is that in many respects the government simply does not govern effectively. Thus, whether by default or design, to use his phraseology, Trump may be “winning” in his aim to hamper the administrative state.

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Conclusion: Trump the Executive---A Very Mixed Bag In many ways, Trump appears to follow the administrative style of FDR that Neustadt admired. But clearly, he does not possess the requisite political or experiential skills. His past practices and peculiar business background are not relevant to the job, and he himself appears unable to take advice from anyone except maybe some of his family members. The massive turnover, lack of vetting or at least, lack of concern about skill and competence of those he appoints to major jobs, likewise show him to be an ineffective manager if not, recruiter- and administrator-in-chief. One early analysis—which could easily have been penned at the end of his third year—concluded, “The president claims expertise as a manager, but during his first year his approach had few of the visible hallmarks of successful executives in business or government” (Lewis et al. 2018, p. 498). Trump’s ineptitude and simple failure to perform due diligence in most aspects of the executive side of the job, combined with staff attrition and his emphasis on loyalty over competence, demonstrate that whatever he may gain in initiative and agenda-setting via his unpredictable style, he loses in efficiency and deliberation. Granted, bureaucratic cuts and neglect, along with his ability to undercut careerists with going public strategies, have given him some success at reining in if not reducing the executive establishment. Nevertheless, such a governing and advisory style also opens the door to disaster, as we have seen with other presidencies, ala Nixon with Watergate and W. Bush with Katrina. The fact Trump has avoided such glaring debacles is probably more due to sheer luck than design.4 This paradoxical, or “mixed bag” aspect of Trump’s presidency also sets the stage for what follows. The next chapter examines areas and aspects where Trump has been successful, or at least has failed to perform as badly as one might expect, given Neustadt’s prescriptions.

Notes 1. This was true through his 1990 edition, apparently. Eventually, Neustadt did change his mind, and agreed that a chief of staff was useful, provided the chief wasn’t a powerful presidential surrogate like Sherman Adams

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(Eisenhower) or J. R. Haldeman (Nixon), akin to the conventional wisdom above (see Neustadt 1991). 2. Mnuchin’s tenure also soon proved to be short-lived. On March 6, 2020, Trump announced in dramatic fashion (and on a Friday night) the appointment of Rep. Mark Meadows, an early official Trump endorser, to be his fourth chief of staff in just three years (Bresnahan et al. 2020). Meadows not only was a Trump supporter, he pushed Trump to initiate the disastrous government shutdown over the border wall, discussed in Chapter 4. 3. This chapter was completed prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and crisis, which arguably demonstrates Trump’s lack of “organizational efficiency” (Kerbel 1991, pp. 22–23) and functional decision-making apparatus in the face of an unusual but not unheard of policy challenge, which has literally cost American lives. 4. As with note 3, it appears that with the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump’s luck may have run out.

References Anonymous. (2018, September 15). I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/ 09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html. Bresnahan, S. J., Sherman, J., & Cook, N. (2020, March). Trump Taps Key Hill Ally Mark Meadows to be Chief of Staff. Politico. https://www.politico.com/ news/2020/03/06/mark-meadows-white-house-chief-staff-123210. Buchanan, B. (1991). Constrained Diversity: The Organizational Demands of the Presidency. In J. P. Pfiffner (Ed.), The Managerial Presidency (pp. 78–104). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Cobb, A. (2019, May 19). Tracking Turnover in the Trump Administration. Forensic News. https://forensicnews.net/2019/05/19/tracking-turnover-inthe-trump-administration/. Cook, N. (2020, January 20). Trump’s Staffing Struggle: After 3 Years, Unfilled Jobs Across the Administration. Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/ 2020/01/20/trumps-staffing-struggle-unfilled-jobs-100991. Da Vinha, L. (2019). Competition, Conflict, and Conformity: Foreign Policy Making in the First Year of the Trump Administration. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 49(2), 280–309. Drezner, D. W. (2019). Present at the Destruction: The Trump Administration and the Foreign Policy Bureaucracy. Journal of Politics, 81(2), 723–730. Elder, M. (2019, November 4). The US Bureaucracy Lives in Fear of Trump’s Twitter Account. BuzzFeed News. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ miriamelder/donald-trump-ukraine-ambassador-impeachment-twitter.

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Fisher, M. (2018, March 9). 7 Things to Understand About Trump’s Talks with North Korea. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/ 09/world/asia/trump-kim-north-korea-explainer.html. Han, L. C., & Heith, D. J. (2018). Presidents and the American Presidency (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Hill, K. W. (2018). The State of the Administrative State: The Regulatory Impact of the Trump Administration. Emory Corporate Governance and Accountability Review, 6(1). http://law.emory.edu/ecgar/content/volume-6/issue1/essays/administrative-state-regulatory-impact-trump-administration1.html. Howell, W. G. (2017). An American Presidency: Institutional Foundations of Executive Politics. New York: Pearson. Johnson, E., & Lippman, D. (2018, October 29). 9 Hours of Executive Time: Trump’s Unstructured Days Define His Presidency. Politico. https://www.pol itico.com/story/2018/10/29/trump-daily-schedule-executive-time-944996. Kerbel, M. R. (1991). Beyond Persuasion: Organizational Efficiency and Presidential Power. Albany: SUNY Press. Kruse, M. (2016, July/August). The Executive Mr. Trump. Politico. https:// www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/2016-donald-trump-boss-emp loyer-company-hired-fired-employees-workers-management-business-214020. Accessed May 11, 2020. Leonhardt, D., & Ian, P. P. (2018, October 28). Trump’s Corruption: The Definitive List. New York Times. LeTourneau, N. (2019, August 9). The ‘Swamp’ Trump Is Draining: Expertise. Washington Monthly. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/08/09/ the-swamp-trump-is-draining-expertise/. Lewis, D. E., Bernhard, P., & You, E. (2018). President Trump as Manager: Reflections on the First Year. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 48(3), 480–501. Longman, M. (2019, May 17). Trump Has Assembled the Worst Cabinet in History. Washington Monthly online blog. https://washingtonmonthly.com/ 2019/05/17/trump-has-assembled-the-worst-cabinet-in-history/. Lu, C. (2019, June 26). Obama Didn’t Want a ‘What Now?’ Moment if He Won. Trump Didn’t Plan and Now We Have Chaos. USA Today Online. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/06/26/trump-vet ting-disaster-obama-transition-contrast-column/1559183001/. Lutz, E. (2019, March 7). John Kelly Unloads. Vanity Fair. https://www. vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/john-kelly-unloads-working-for-trump-wasawful-his-border-wall-is-stupid. Naylor, B. (2019, April 9). An Acting Government for the Trump Administration. National Public Radio Online (npr. Org). https://www.npr.org/2019/ 04/09/711094554/an-acting-government-for-the-trump-administration. Neustadt, R. (1960). Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York: Wiley.

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Neustadt, R. (1990). Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Free Press. Neustadt, R. (1991). Does the White House Need a Strong Chief of Staff? In J. P. Pfiffner (Ed.), The Managerial Presidency (pp. 29–32). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Pfiffner, J. P. (2011). The Modern Presidency (6th ed.). Boston, MA: WadsworthCengage. Pfiffner, J. P. (2018, March). The Contemporary Presidency: Organizing the Trump Presidency. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 48(1), 153–167. Rayasam, R. (2018, February 28). Trump’s Abortion Policy Sheds Light on Ad Hoc Decision-making. Politico. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/ 28/abortion-policy-trump-administration-372452. Rockman, B. A. (2000). Staffing and Organizing the Presidency. In R. Y Shapiro, M. Joynt Kumar, & L. R. Jacobs (Eds.), Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Columbia University Press. Rucker, P., Dawsey, J., & Costa, R. (2018, December 11). There Was No Plan B—Trump Struggles to Find Chief-of-Staff After Top Candidate Turns Him Down. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ there-was-no-plan-b-trump-scrambles-to-find-chief-of-staff-after-top-candid ate-turns-him-down/2018/12/10/9b6d0424-fc9c-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8 199_story.html. Rucker, P., & Leonnig, C. (2020). Very Stable Genius: Donald Trump’s Testing of America. New York: Penguin Press. Sheth, S., & Relman, E. (2020, January 15). Trump Reportedly ‘Verbally and Emotionally Abusive’ Toward Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-verbally-and-emo tionally-abusive-kirstjen-nielsen-2020-1?amp%3Butm_medium=referral. Slater, R. (2005). No Such Thing as Over-Exposure: Inside the Life and Celebrity of Donald Trump. Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Press. Stewart, J. B. (2018, March 1). Trump Management Style, Year 2: See Year 1. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/business/trumpmanagement-style-year-2-see-year-1.html. Accessed January 12, 2020. Tenpas, K. D. (2020). Tracking Turnover in the Trump Administration. Brookings Institution Report. https://www.brookings.edu/research/tracking-tur nover-in-the-trump-administration/. Accessed January 15, 2020. Trump, D. J. with Schwartz, T. (1987). The Art of the Deal. New York: Ballantine Books.

CHAPTER 6

Surviving at the Top?: Trump’s Buoyancy and Perseverance in Defiance of Neustadt’s Model

Abstract Despite the effectiveness of Neustadt’s model in explaining Trump’s meager accomplishments and/or lack of persuasive skill and power, nevertheless he does appear “relatively better off” or “more successful” than the model would predict. Notably, despite his poor relations and personal and power skills with other elites, he has had notable success in Congress in his first two years, passed some bipartisan legislation like criminal justice reform, and has won over, if not demanded loyalty from, his partisans. His public support, while somewhat low by historic standards, is also stable, and while it doesn’t go up much, it doesn’t drop much either, despite the controversies and setbacks of his term, up to and including impeachment. He also appears quite competitive for reelection in 2020.

This chapter’s title loosely refers to one of the books Donald Trump “wrote” before he assumed office (Trump and Leerhsen 1990). Notably, as with his more famous and earlier work, The Art of the Deal , his coauthor or ghostwriter has also gone on to disparage the image of the sly businessman that the book presented, and to express regrets about the misleading impression it may have created (Leerhsen 2019). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. M. Schaefer, Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4_6

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Keywords Trump, Donald · Presidential performance · Leadership · Relations with Congress

Introduction The previous chapters of this work made the case that Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency, and with it, a number of political and policy failures in the first half or more of his term, can be explained using Richard Neustadt’s model of presidential influence from his classic work, Presidential Power (Neustadt 1960, 1990). The basis of that model is the premise that presidential power is the power to persuade, namely through bargaining with other political actors. Beyond the advantages conveyed by the office itself, presidential power comes from presidents’ cultivation of their “reputation” or standing with political elites, and their “prestige,” or popular support (see Neustadt 1990, pp. 29–90). Such an analysis of Trump finds him lacking in several areas. Trump has attacked or alienated political elites of all stripes, even from his own party, and has largely disdained the DC establishment, thereby making governing more difficult than it should have been. Trump also has been a relatively unpopular president, and has stirred strong dislike from some sectors of the electorate. This characteristic is especially unusual for a president early in his term, and one who presided over a period of general peace and prosperity. His lack of attention to these aspects of his power, and his own personal foibles and misjudgments, have cost him in major policy priorities such as health care, border security, and relations with North Korea (see Chapter 4). Furthermore, Trump’s management (or mismanagement) of his staff and the executive branch, discussed in Chapter 5, have indirectly contributed to many of his difficulties in the political and legislative realms. This chapter, however, explores the “other side of the story”—namely, the paradox that even with Trump’s self-inflicted troubles and lack of attention to the edicts of presidential power that Neustadt posits are necessary for success, he has nevertheless managed to survive, and not only produce some achievements, but also more crucially maintain his political support. That Donald Trump has performed as well as he has as President flies in the face of what such a model would presumably predict. For example, his ability to politically squash most resistance to his position within his party, largely resist the strident attacks of his opposition,

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in addition to making some policy changes in the face of controversy and discord he has sown by his own poor decisions in other respects, is by this standard quite remarkable.1 Trump does see the world—political and otherwise—in competitive, zero-sum, terms. He very much wants to be, and assumes he is, a winner.2 As Trump put it in his second book: “Life is a series of challenges. Some of the challenges you face turn out well. Some don’t. What separates the winners from the losers, I’ve learned – is how a person reacts to a twist of fate. You have to be confident as you face the world, but you can’t be too cocky” (Trump and Leerhsen 1990, pp. 3–4). While at times one might wonder whether he really believes this, or even behaves this way as President, beyond certain major setbacks, in other respects during his first few years in office he has been potent, and persevered.

Areas of Political and Policy Success Despite the strong support for Neustadt’s model described in Chapters 3 and 4, the Trump presidency has been far from—to use one of the president’s favorite terms—the “disaster” one might expect given that earlier analysis. Trump has been and remains a formidable political actor, and not just because he occupies the Oval Office. In a number of notable areas, the Trump experience seems to defy Presidential Power expectations, though this list is by no means exhaustive. Trump: Agenda Control and Presidency as Nation’s Focal Point First, Trump has put the presidency back in the center of the political world, and clearly has seized the spotlight, but also the political agenda. Issues such as immigration, trade, alliances, and US manufacturing were certainly part of the political landscape before his ascendancy, but took a back seat to other issues like health care, terrorism, and the budget, to name a few (see Gallup data reported in Jones, 2019). In particular, concern with immigration has risen (perhaps partly due to his policies), and concern with “government” has as well. He has achieved this change through a combative and controversial style, but has done it nonetheless. He is the main topic of political conversation in DC and the nation. In many respects, he has continued his dominance of the news cycle—or at least, broad swath of attention,

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despite the ups and downs of the 24/7 media agenda—that he had during the 2016 campaign. A Harvard University study found that during his first 100 days, Trump received a stunning 41 percent of the coverage in major newspapers and television networks, three times the amount of previous presidents (Patterson 2017; Warren 2017). While this extreme pace has ebbed, nevertheless he does seem to “monopolize the public space” (see Miroff 1982) of politics in the media and popular mind. His adroit use of new communication tools and framing of issues has abetted this process. Other researchers, examining in particular Trump’s usage of Twitter regarding tax reform and North Korea, found he did have an effect on changing the network news agenda. However, they noted that a president’s (or even Donald Trump’s) ability to “disrupt” the media and public agenda through attention-grabbing social media messaging should not be overstated (Wiemer and Scacco 2018). And, as discussed earlier, he may not stay on message. Nevertheless, Trump intuitively knows how to garner attention, and thus by default makes others respond to him. Relations and Relative Success with Congress Despite his apparently weak power position and inept bargaining skills, and notable setbacks such as failing to repeal “Obamacare” (discussed in Chapter 4), by other measures Trump has been extremely successful with Congress. According to Congressional Quarterly, Trump’s success rate with Congress for both of his first two years in office was at record highs —98.7% in his first year, which was the highest ever recorded, and 93.4% in his second year, the third highest recorded (CQ 2019). Remarkably, on this measure—which granted, to use a baseball metaphor, is more like a batting average than slugging percentage—Trump appears more successful than even the famed legislative master Lyndon Johnson, much less Ronald Reagan, in his first two years. After losing the House in his third year, his support in the House fell to record low levels, though thanks to a slight increase in the GOP seats in the Senate, and his lack of position-taking on bills outside of nominations, his overall support score was 73%, better than Obama, Clinton, or H. W. Bush in their third years. Still, he prevailed on few major votes (CQ 2020). On the other hand Trump also has been able to effectively “pack” the federal courts, insuring a legacy far beyond his tenure (e.g., Relman 2019), even after the 2018 midterms. And, beyond government shutdowns, policy disputes over Russia, immigration, and conflicts with leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen.

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Chuck Shumer, Trump also has had some notable “bipartisan” legislative achievements, though the extent to which he worked with Democrats or received their support varied. Two of the most notable were in the areas of criminal justice reform and responding to the opioid crisis (White House 2019). The First Step Act, which was lobbied for by members of his administration like his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was signed by Trump in December 2018. This law made significant reforms to sentencing, such as eliminating the “three-strike” mandatory life sentence for federal drug crimes, as well as revised policies and procedures to help reduce recidivism and help prisoners reenter society. Earlier that year, Congress also passed the SUPPORT act that provided more resources for communities facing massive opioid addiction, the “largest single piece of legislation to address a drug crisis in history,” according to his administration (White House 2019). He also signed the VA Mission Act, which made several significant reforms to the Veterans’ Administration in terms of structure, medical care, appeals process, and an increase in its budget for medical services (White House 2019). Granted, his attempt to “privatize” and carry out other more extreme reforms, however, failed—but that bill did essentially create private options and incentives in some areas that did not exist before (Beaton 2019). Public Opinion and Electoral Prospects While his overall job approval rating has been relatively low, historically, it’s also been remarkably stable (Skelley, 2019). Regardless of what happens, Trump’s approval rating never goes below the upper thirties in percentage terms, indicating he has a core support “floor.” Yes, good news like the economy or positive world events don’t increase his approval much, but bad news—or controversies, scandals, etc., of which Trump has many—likewise have little impact. This feature gives him a solid base on which to draw. Even impeachment news, and the heavy negative media coverage it spawned, failed to move his approval ratings. Furthermore, despite his relatively weak standing in the polls, as of his third year, Trump remained a likely strong contender for reelection, especially given the Electoral College (White and Shepard 2019).

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Elites: Falling in Line, or Ineptly Opposing Him Even with an apparently weak reputation, as of his third year Trump continues to engender subtle elite support, if not fear, and attacks on him seem to have little effect. Republicans who once disparaged Trump or criticized him during the election have largely fallen in line, if not backed Trump publicly. Indeed, FiveThirtyEight.com’s “Trumpscore,”— a measure of how often members vote on bills in the way Trump wants, taking into account the “Trumpiness” of their state/district—graphically illustrates the point about his Congressional support mentioned above (FiveThirtyEight 2019b). Some of the most “disproportionally” proTrump Senators, even after controlling for their constituency’s vote for Trump in 2016, include Marco Rubio (fifth), Susan Collins (13th), Ted Cruz (15th), John McCain (16th), and even Jeff Flake (19th). Only Bob Corker (R-TN) and Rand Paul (R-KY) even have negative scores, indicating they vote(d) with Trump less than expected (see Fig. 6.1). Significantly, Rubio, Cruz, and Paul ran against and fought with Trump in the 2016 primaries; whereas Corker, Flake, and McCain publicly feuded

Selected Senators: Support for Trump 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 -20 -40 -60 Raw Trump Score

Trump Differential

Fig. 6.1 Selected Senators: support for Trump (Explanation: “Raw Trump Score” is the percentage of times the senator supported Trump’s position on votes in the Chamber, through February 5, 2020. “Trump Differential” is difference between their actual support of Trump, and what was statistically predicted, given percent of the vote Trump won in their state in 2016 [i.e., “Trumpiness” of their constituency]. Source Created from data from Fivethirtyeight.com)

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with or outwardly criticized him (and all no longer serve); Collins, a more moderate member of the party caucus from Maine, publicly refused to support or vote for him in 2016. Also, newcomers seated after the 2018 midterms like Martha McSally (R-AZ) and Rick Scott (R-FL), although not hailing from Trump strongholds, have quickly learned to fully support him, and both top the list of pro-Trump deviants (again, see Fig. 6.1). Scott even paid for ads to attack former Vice-President Biden in the Democratic primaries. Elite opposition to Trump has likewise been ineffective. Democrats may be able to thwart him in some areas, but overall their message and attacks have failed to counter him. Not only did Trump survive impeachment, he emerged almost stronger than before in public and especially elite Republican circles. Even criticism by members of his own party and the media, which should be credible to the public, have little impact and thus lead to elite acquiescence. (More about what explains this dynamic is discussed in the next chapter.) Foreign, Domestic, and Economic Policy Climate Trump has managed to avoid major foreign disasters or entanglements, despite some risky moves on his part, such as pulling US troops (granted, temporarily) out of Syria or killing one of Iran’s top generals. As he endlessly reminds us, the economy—at least by a number of measures— has performed well under his watch, with historically low unemployment, inflation, and a strong stock market, even as the deficit, and income inequality, have increased (see for example, Brown and Alberti 2020).3 The economy also remained buoyant despite his trade wars, and even these—with China and the North American neighbors—have at least come to tentative agreements, though as noted in Chapter 2 were likely more hype than real change. While these contextual factors are largely beyond a president’s control, they do interact with personal traits, bargaining skills, etc., to influence a president’s power equation and increase (in this case) or decrease the probabilities of success (see Kerbel 1991, esp. pp. 129–151). As noted in Chapter 5, Trump has also utilized his control over the executive branch and his appointed officials to alter government policies such as on immigration and the environment. Similarly, his has used his executive power to greatly reduce government regulations on business in certain areas, even exceeding his goal of cutting two regulations for every one introduced by agencies (see Crews 2018), though some of these were challenged in courts, etc., on procedural grounds.

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Conclusion By a number of measures, Trump’s performance in his first two and half years in office have been more successful than at first glance, at least if one applies the power currencies of reputation and prestige, and a wise, sly, Franklin Rooseveltesque approach to governing as the standard. True, Neustadt is not here to provide his analyses of these trends, but it seems clear that Trump has managed to achieve a degree of success that belies his lack of skill or attention to the forces and parts of the presidential job Neustadt saw as critical. Trump has proven relatively effective in refocusing the Washington community on his policy priorities, dominating the public space, gaining the support (at least in some respects) of Congress, and maintaining public and elite support at least among his own party. His chaotic, discordant, and “revolving door” executive branch, combined with budgetary tools and regulatory changes, have had the effect of undermining the capacity of the federal government in a number of respects, as was noted in Chapter 5. While in a sense this undermines the very branch he leads, one of his goals was to attack the so-called “Deep State” and the bureaucracy. All told, however, the picture is a mixed one, and certainly one that the model developed by Neustadt cannot fully explain. The next chapter attempts to decipher how and why Trump has managed to “survive at the top”: namely, the political and governing environment of Washington, DC is very different than the one Neustadt experienced as a staffer for Harry Truman, and observed as a young professor in the 1950s–1960s.

Notes 1. This narrative and analysis is up through roughly year three of his presidency, and before the disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic and related crises, though some of the observations fit even then. 2. See note 1 in Chapter 2 regarding Trump’s concept of “winning” as dominating others, and an existential mindset of superiority rather than mutually beneficial, e.g., “win-win” (Abebe 2017). 3. Again, this chapter was written before the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, and applies to the period, up to roughly March 2020, at which time the economy took a rapid nosedive under the lockdowns and health threat. Unemployment skyrocketed to about 15 percent; economic growth was expected to contract, and enter into recession, and the stock market plunged (though did recover somewhat).

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References Abebe, N. (2017, June 20). Tired of Winning? You Should Be. New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/magazine/tiredof-winning-you-should-be.html. Beaton, T. (2019, June 7). President Trump Signs Bill to Expand Privatization of VA Healthcare. Healthpayer Intelligence. https://healthpayerintelligence. com/news/president-trump-signs-bill-to-expand-privatization-of-va-health care. Brown, C., & Alberti, D. (2020, February 16). How Trump’s Economy Stacks Up. Axios. https://www.axios.com/presidents-economy-gdp-trump5d042c64-ace6-4904-8602-40003f917719.html. Crews, W., Jr. (2018, October 23). Trump Exceeds One-in-Two-Out Goals on Cutting Regulations, But It May Be Getting Tougher. Forbes. https://www. forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2018/10/23/trump-exceeds-one-in-two-outgoals-on-cutting-regulations-but-it-may-be-getting-tougher/#7d4f2e8f3d40. CQ Magazine. (2019, February 25). CQ Vote Studies: Presidential Support— Trump’s Last Hurrah. http://library.cqpress.com/cqweekly/weeklyreport 116-000005468046. CQ Magazine. (2020, February 24). 2019 Vote Studies: Presidential Support— House. http://library.cqpress.com/cqweekly/weeklyreport116-000005 842342. FiveThirtyEight. (2019b). Trumpscore: Tracking Congress in the Age of Trump. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/. Accessed March 14, 2019. Jones, J. M. (2019, June 21). New High in US Say Immigration is Most Important Problem. Gallup.com. https://news.gallup.com/poll/259103/ new-high-say-immigration-important-problem.aspx. Kerbel, M. R. (1991). Beyond Persuasion: Organizational Efficiency and Presidential Power. Albany: SUNY Press. Leerhsen, C. (2019, May 9). Trump, the Billion-Dollar Loser—I Was His Ghostwriter and Saw It Happen. Yahoo News. https://news.yahoo.com/ trump-the-billiondollar-loser-his-ghostwriter-recalls-the-king-midas-years-090 000640.html. Miroff, B. (1982). Monopolizing the Public Space: The President as a Problem for Democratic Politics. In T. E. Cronin (Ed.), Rethinking the Presidency (pp. 218–232). Boston: Little, Brown. Neustadt, R. E. (1960). Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York: Wiley. Neustadt, R. E. (1990). Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Free Press.

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Patterson, T. E. (2017, May 1). News Coverage of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days (HKS Working Paper No. RWP17-040). Available at SSRN: https:// ssrn.com/abstract=3040911 or http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3040911. Relman, E. (2019, December 20). Forget About Impeachment, Trump’s Conservative Legacy Has Been Cemented as He Quietly Reshapes the Federal Courts. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-is-reshap ing-the-courts-to-cement-his-conservative-legacy-2019-12. Skelley, G. (2019, March 28). Trump’s Approval Rating is Remarkably Stable. Is that Weird or the New Normal? Five Thirty Eight. https://fivethirtyeight. com/features/trumps-approval-rating-is-incredibly-steady-is-that-weird-orthe-new-normal/. Trump, D. J., & Leerhsen, C. (1990). Trump: Surviving at the Top. New York: Random House. Warren, J. (2017, May 18). Coverage of President Trump Dominates the Media; Most of It, Negative. Poynter. https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/ 2017/coverage-of-president-trump-dominates-the-media-and-most-of-its-neg ative/. White House. (2019, February 5). President Donald Trump Has Shown That Extraordinary Bipartisan Achievements Are Possible. www.whitehouse.gov/bri efings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-shown-extradordinary-bipartisanachievements-possible/. White, B. & Shepard, S. (2019, March 21). How Trump is on Track for a 2020 Landslide. Politico. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/21/ trump-economy-election-1230495. Accessed December 14, 2019. Wiemer, E. C., & Scacco, J. M. (2018). Disruptor-in-Chief?: The Networked Influence of President Trump in Building and Setting the Agenda. The Agenda Setting Journal, 2(2), 191–213.

CHAPTER 7

Trumping Neustadt?: An Altered Political Environment Helps No. 45

Abstract This chapter attempts to resolve the paradox that despite Trump’s apparent disregard for many of the power principles of Neustadt’s Presidential Power he has been relatively successful in some respects. It argues that his rules or suggestions were based on a view of 1950s Washington, which no longer exists today. Namely, changes in the political environment have also changed the landscape of presidential power and governance, and Trump reflects those. Three main relevant developments: Party Polarization; the Changed/New Media Landscape; and the Unilateral Presidency are used to explain his resilience. All three enable Trump to maintain a high level of support with his own party, dominate the public and governing agendas, achieve a number of his goals, and keep him a strong contender for the 2020 election. Keywords Trump, Donald · Party polarization · New media · Media usage · Unilateral presidency · Executive power

Introduction The initial chapters of this work showed that Richard Neustadt’s (1960, 1990) model of presidential power and influence—primarily through © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. M. Schaefer, Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4_7

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persuasion, based on a president’s elite and public support as currencies of power—appear to help explain a number of Trump’s difficulties in office through his first three years. Conversely, the previous chapter provided some contrary evidence that Donald Trump has in some notable ways been more successful or powerful than one would predict after applying Neustadt’s insights. In this chapter, I offer some reasons why he has done “better than expected” as well as provide ideas for other students of the office to ponder given the Trump experience so far. It is not immediately obvious what the causal explanations are for Trump’s buoyancy in the face of his incompetence, and even lack of political skills Neustadt saw as critical. I believe the answer can be found in the different circumstances and altered political environment of the contemporary presidency. As others have noted (e.g., Morris 2010, pp. 93–94), Neustadt’s thinking was time-bound, or at least honed from the experiences of the mid-twentieth century and the Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower administrations. Neustadt himself did perform a reflective role in each new edition of his book, with the addition of more presidencies. Additionally, other notable scholarly efforts attempted to alter or adapt his model to new developments. Among these are Kernell (1986), regarding the role of the public in presidential leadership, given the TV age, etc., and Rose (1991) on how globalization and the end of the Cold War changed presidential power relations, especially in foreign affairs. Along these lines, this chapter discusses three main features and trends impacting the presidential power context in the 2010s, which were not present in the 1950s: party polarization; the new media environment; and the rise of the “unilateral” or administrative presidency. In a nutshell, “Trumpworld” is not the “Land of Harry and Ike.”

Party Polarization First, is the reemergence of partisanship, namely ideological and identity polarization among partisans at both the elite and mass levels— otherwise known as the “party-in-the-government” and the “party-inthe-electorate,” respectively—in contemporary American politics. Trump exists and operates in an entirely different partisan political context than was the case five-plus decades ago. At the time of Neustadt’s original work, parties were an important if declining source of influence for different reasons. A “moderate middle”

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(in the electorate) and the “conservative coalition” (of some Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats in Congress) held sway, and bipartisanship and compromise was more the order of the day. In terms of voting behavior, the New Deal coalition was weakening, witnessed by Republican gains in elections in the 1950s; independents and ticketsplitting also increased. In terms of the party-in-the-government, both Truman and Eisenhower—the main subjects of Neustadt’s initial analyses—could count on being able to persuade or gain the support of at least some members of the opposition. As one set of parties scholars noted, “for most of the Twentieth Century, it was not inter-party divisions but intra-party divisions that required members of Congress to seek allies to pass legislation” (White and Kerbel 2018, p. 165). That is largely not the case today, and partisan identification for both officials and masses plays a key role in understanding today’s politics (see for example, Abramowitz 2010). Indeed, a check of the index of Neustadt’s Presidential Power yields only a few pages where the subject of political parties (outside discussions of specific presidential nominations) is mentioned. He did envision them—at least, via the leadership in Congress—as one possible vehicle for increased presidential persuasion, but rightly saw in the 1960s trends that made this doubtful. “Instead [of partisan majorities backing the President] the chances are that he[sic] will gain majorities, when and as he does so, by ad hoc coalition building, issue after issue… Our parties are unlikely to be revolutionized as instruments of government because they are unlikely to be altered fundamentally as voter coalitions differently aligned for different offices in different places” (Neustadt 1990, p. 157). The Democratic Party nomination reforms after 1968 also were a source of greater independence for presidential candidates, and thus, presidents in office. These changes untethered or at least weakened ties between presidents and their parties (e.g., Davis 2000, pp. 29–31; Rose 1991, pp. 120–121), as candidates, especially outsiders, did not owe their election to their party.1 Since the mid-1980s—ironically, when political science was debating their demise—American parties have made comeback, not just organizationally, but in terms of party unity in government. While there is some dispute about how much has really changed in the party-in-the-electorate in the literature (see for example, Dalton 2013), it is rather clear that within Congress, if not the states and even the judiciary, party unity or partisan behavior is at record levels. As one set of Congressional scholars

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note, “Party voting [i.e., when a majority of Democrats vote together on legislation against a majority of Republicans] is far more prevalent today than it was in the 1970s or early 1980s. Indeed, contemporary levels of party voting recall the militant parties of the late-nineteenth century” (Davidson et al. 2020, p. 272). For example, party voting in both chambers set a new record in 2017. This unity has also been accompanied by ideological realignment, with Democrats becoming more uniformly liberal, and Republicans, conservative. Studies have found that in the 1950s, ideological diversity within the party coalitions was far greater than it has been in recent years, whereas “in today’s Congress, members’ party affiliation and ideological views overlap almost perfectly” (Davidson et al. 2020, pp. 278–279). However, it is the relationship between elite and mass partisanship that is key to understanding the politics of the Trump presidency. On the surface, Trump’s “maverick” nature, unusual policy stances (for a Republican, as he really wasn’t one until recently) presumably could hurt him in his dealings with Congress and other elites. Even having unified government—as he did until 2019—is no guarantee of success, as the Carter presidency’s difficulties with Congress showed. Nevertheless, it is clear that Trump’s remarkable success with Congress overall in his first two years, as noted earlier in Chapter 6, cannot be explained without strong party ties.2 Second, and more importantly, at the mass level Trump has engineered a solidly loyal following and effectively made the Republican Party his own, changing its stances to fit his. While some elites may have been—and a few still are—“never Trumpers,” the reluctant Republicans in the electorate who held their nose and voted for him have largely been won over during his term into part of his “MAGA (Make-America-Great-Again)” base. To return to the point about presidential approval in Chapter 3, Trump has some of the strongest and consistent support among Republicans (in the upper 80s in percent approval) of any president, rivaling George W. Bush after 9/11, and surpassing him in the second term (Jones 2020). While this level of support isn’t unprecedented, it is nevertheless notable given Trump’s extreme outsider status, unorthodox political views, and lack of an economic or foreign crisis.3 The effect of this dynamic translates into his stable ratings over time, and accounts for his strong “floor” of support overall. Trump’s joke during the campaign that he could shoot someone on the street in New York City and his followers would stick by him is not too far from the truth.

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Trump’s popularity with the Republican grassroots, and potential involvement in primary fights within the GOP for other offices, have also had the effect of muting intraparty disputes and only token expressions of dismay when he goes off message or launches a Twitter rampage. For example, after Trump’s vicious, arguably racist tweet against “the Squad,” four fresh-women congressional Democrats of color (“go back where you came from”)—vulnerable Republicans from demographically diverse states and districts up for reelection in 2020 were torn between support for Trump and sensitivity to their voters. Trump in turn actually criticized several of them for not defending him publicly (Everett and Arkin 2019). He also uses his position as fundraiser- and tweeter-in-Chief, combined with his mass following, to enforce loyalty and reward and punish Republican elected officials (Bacon 2019). “If he does not enjoy the broad admiration Republicans afforded Ronald Reagan, he is more feared by his party’s lawmakers than any other Oval Office occupant since Lyndon Johnson” (Martin and Haberman 2019). Interestingly, in reverse fashion, one study found that members of Congress who praise Trump on their online and social media platforms see modest increases in fundraising after doing so, while those who criticize him see their funding significantly decrease, creating another incentive to support him (Fu and Howell 2020). The tepid responses from major officials such as Sen. Majority Leader McConnell, Sen. Mitt Romney and the like over Trump’s attacks on party deacon Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) even after his death—as detailed in Chapter 3—are telling. The even more extreme case of Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) going from Trump critic to Trump cheerleader (e.g., Leibovich, 2019) is another vivid example. It is this “rock star” quality coupled with his thin skin that explains Trump’s ability to get Republicans to go along, not just on policy or legislation, but rhetorically in day-to-day events and issues as well. This dynamic likely explains the phenomenon, mentioned in Chapter 6, of former Trump opponents for the 2016 nomination, and/or Republican Trump critics in Congress—such as Susan Collins (R-ME) and Ben Sasse (R-NE), who once penned a book critical of Trump, and even, Sens. John McCain, Jeff Flake, and Bob Corker—supporting him on votes at levels far above where they would be expected to, given the “redness” of their state or district. (Again, see Fig. 6.1 in the previous chapter.)

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Plus, Trump has managed to purge, directly or indirectly, some of his most independent or contrarian partisans: notably, House Speaker Paul Ryan, along with Corker and Flake, voluntarily retired; Reps. Barbara Comstock and Mia Love lost in 2018—ironically, partly if not mostly due to their linkage to Trump. (Notably, Flake has been replaced by Martha McSally, and Corker by Marsha Blackburn, both of whom have been even more loyal publicly and on votes.) In the executive branch, he either fired, or drove out, others who questioned him or tried to change his mind, like Chief of Staff John Kelly, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. Another prime example of Trump’s partisan elite support was seen in the impeachment and eventual trial over his blatant actions of threatening to withhold, and then delaying, Congressionally appropriated aid to Ukraine unless its new government investigated his rival presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son’s business dealings there. Unlike Nixon’s Watergate, or Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal, no members of the president’s party in the House were willing to vote to impeach him, and most went out of their way to fawningly defend him. When the trial began in the Senate, one former opponent of the president in 2016, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) claimed up to 45 of his partisan colleagues wanted to dismiss the charges outright. While that didn’t happen, nevertheless, the majority Republicans then blocked all motions calling for the addition of any new witnesses. In the end, only Mitt Romney (R-UT), notably the former presidential standard-bearer in 2012 from the strongest “never Trump” red state in the union, crossed party lines and joined the Democrats on one of two votes to convict him. All of the other 52 Senate Republicans held firm to acquit him. This group included those who believed he acted improperly, such as Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), likely fearing a backlash from his supporters if not social ostracism back home (see, for example, Beauchamp 2020). One can also see his influence over the Republican “base” in terms of persuasion: Trump has changed mass Republicans’ views toward his stances on issues such as trade, crime, relations with Russia, etc.—if not a majority, at least an increase in that direction (Burmila 2018). For example, during the 2019 shutdown, Trump’s speech appealing for the wall may not have moved public opinion overall (see the case study in Chapter 4), but polls found while Republicans did not support the tactic, greater percentages of them did support spending federal funds for the border wall than before the standoff (Nather 2019, citing Pew 2019).

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On the flip side, of course, this means he has also solidified the Democratic opposition both on Capitol Hill and in the electorate. This fact was likewise readily illustrated during the wall/shutdown fight, and the move to impeach him. Although this bimodal state of affairs was true at times for both Presidents Bush and Obama, Trump is more extreme; Gallup found his approval ratings are the most polarized in history (Gallup 2019). Trump thus may experience what Oppenheimer (1993) called the “Whipsaw of Party”: greater presidential success under unified government, and greater failure under divided government, given Trump faces a Democratic House after the midterm elections. Still, it also means that Trump has some leverage over red-state Democrats in the Senate. If that fails, his voters may do him the favor instead: some that opposed him, like Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), were ousted in November 2018. Lastly, his ability to keep his partisans firmly on his side create impressions of power that provide him with status in the DC community, building his power reputation. For example, as Entman (1989) has noted and found, the degree of support for a president by his own party—especially under difficult conditions—is a key indicator for journalists in evaluating a president, coloring their coverage. His strength during his impeachment, for example, sent messages to the media of his power and stature.

The Contemporary Media Milieu A transformed media landscape since the 1990s has likewise altered the equations of presidential power. While this subject could be a book in itself, and space limitations prevent doing it full justice, it is safe to say that the role of the media (mass, new, social) in explaining the Trump presidency cannot be underestimated. The contemporary media environment helped create Trump as a political force, and continues to sustain him.4 The media environment is perhaps the biggest area of change from the time Neustadt developed his model. Television was in its infancy in the 1950s, and while he recognized its increasing influence throughout the 1960s and beyond, it too plays a relatively minor role in his framework. He saw it more as a potential problem for presidents than a guaranteed boon, but believed that skill in using it would be part of one’s reputation (1990, pp. 260–265).

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It is true the media are more prominent as a factor in later scholarship on presidential persuasion, such as Tulis’s “rhetorical presidency” (1987) and especially Kernell’s “going public strategy” (1986). The connection between the media and public prestige in both building and using presidential power has been widely studied since the 1960s. But new emerging technologies in the last decade or two, along with changing outlets and audiences, has impacted the way the office and its occupant relates to the public and media professionals. Three interrelated forces are most relevant: the rise of partisan news; the advent of social media, especially Twitter; and self-selection and “news grazing” habits by the public (see Forgette 2019). The interactions between these have given Trump the ability to at least maintain a certain level of support and power positioning, if not always to influence policy. The explosion of media outlets since the 1990s that brought new choices, coupled with a reciprocal fragmentation of audiences, created a shift from nonpartisan patently “objective” media to outwardly partisan news outlets. These include not only cable TV channels like Fox and MSNBC, but blogs, websites, and other platforms from the left and right, like HuffPost and RedState. These now promote opinion, commentary, and discussion formats with a partisan slant over reporting of straight news. Most notable here are Fox News (cable) and Breitbart (web) which not only gave rise to the Trump candidacy, but have even helped and/or continue to supply Trump with advisers such as Steve Bannon. Indeed, there appears to be a revolving, Trump Tower door between the White House and the Fox Network, with people like FN executive Bill Shine, who became deputy chief of staff for communications, joining the administration, and people like Hope Hicks, former communications director, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former press secretary, taking jobs at Fox as either executives or commentators. President Trump also has a symbiotic relationship with these outlets as he consumes and responds to, as well as provides content, interviews, etc., for them. These outlets provide Trump with a loyal, friendly voice with which he can communicate and in turn, they amplify his message to their audience. They even attempt to influence him via their content and media figures, like the hosts of Fox and Friends or Sean Hannity, whom Trump is known to favor. What this means in practice, as many critics have noted, is that Trump is largely guaranteed a pseudo-propaganda arm that protects him from

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loss of support during controversies, scandals, and failures while at the same time promotes his policy aims, at least ideologically. For example, even before Trump, a “Fox News Effect” (Brock and Ravi-Havt 2012) was identified that separated its viewers from others, and was found to have opinion effects in a conservative direction. Such outlets5 likewise bolster his influence over his base voters and the elite establishment by extension. Fox had already become an outlet for conservative populist rhetoric and “community brand building” before Trump (see Smith 2019), but Trump embodied the network’s messaging better than it even could. “Trump not only tapped into his audience’s deep reservoirs of shame, contempt, and resentment that had come into their psyches via Obama’s scolding politically correct lectures… Trump’s candidacy gave birth to ‘Foxocracy,’ a fully aligned, twenty-four-hour, TV-to-pulpit united front of hatred toward liberals” (Smith 2019, p. 99). Furthermore, a recent news usage study by Pew found that Republicans placed more trust in one source: Fox (65%), and used it more than any other (60%), while also having less trust in, and correspondingly less use of other media sources (Pew Center 2020). Of course, as with partisanship, alternative media on the other side of the spectrum do the same for the Trump “resistance” in the elite and mass public (see the same Pew studies). This state of affairs likewise limits Trump’s ability to persuade the other side, to the degree he cares. But it also helps explain the degree of partisan polarization in the mass public and politics today. Trump has merely accelerated and capitalized on these trends. Second, social media outlets now allow politicians constant, direct access to the mass public through vehicles like Facebook and Twitter, making two-way communication possible, though more in theory than reality (see Gainous and Wagner 2013). Facebook essentially allows the transmission of controlled content (akin to TV ads) which are then “shared” by supporters, regardless of veracity. Trump’s campaign utilized this tactic effectively in 2016, and his reelection campaign has continued to spend heavily on the platform, though it is also branching out to other outlets like Google (Fisher and Swan 2020). But it is Twitter (2006–) that has done the most to build the Trump brand and presidency. Through the use of 124 (now 248) characters to compose his thoughts, sent from his phone to subscribers, Trump has access to roughly 80 million followers. While other politicians—notably Barack Obama as well as many Senators, etc.—also utilized this outlet,

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Trump has revolutionized its use as a messaging platform. His style of simplistic, pithy, and bombastic tweets (“Build the Wall,” “Lock Her Up,” etc.) enabled Trump to seize the discourse in 2016. More importantly, of course, is the “ripple effect” he gets in mainstream and other media outlets from the audacity and controversy of his Tweets. As one report puts it, in the campaign, the outlet was “a digital howitzer that he relished firing. In the years since, he has fully integrated Twitter into the very fabric of his administration, reshaping the nature of the presidency and presidential power” (Shear et al. 2019). Research on Trump’s Twitter use and its impacts is still in nascent stages, and undoubtedly more evidence and insights will come (e.g., Auxier and Golbeck 2017; Waterman and Ouyang 2019). The point here is merely that Twitter has provided Trump unprecedented ability to set the news and even political agenda (e.g., Wiemer and Scacco 2018), keep his opponents off balance, and potentially alter news cycles away from stories created or emerging from other sources. Granted this latter effect can be good or bad, depending on the topic, and here too Trump often gets in his own way by detracting from his desired message. But at the same time, it can help him “move on” quickly from a bad news cycle (see Kight 2017, 2019). One study of Google searches found that in his first year in office, “the visible spikes of increased Googling on a topic indicates that Trump-related news captures the public’s interest, but that attention quickly fizzles out or is captured by the next bombshell report or firing” (Kight 2017). The above media effects also fit into the audience or public opinion trends of his presidency, given the public’s reliance on media sources for information. Changes in technology have led to changes in information and political opinion processing. One is the revival of self-selection bias, used in the 1950s—the concept that people will only seek out information that appeals to them, or even agrees with their preconceived notions (see Stroud 2011). Given the audience decline of “straight news” outlets like the big three networks and national newspapers, and the availability of partisan ones, members of the public can—and do, if Pew surveys are any indication—simply choose the cable, social media, TV, internet outlet that fits their fancy, creating their own media bubbles.

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An additional advantage in the case of Trump is the current level of distrust among Republicans—and to a lesser extent, the general public— toward the news media, excepting some outlets. Trust in the press ironically has dropped since the 1970s, after their high public regard following the Watergate scandal. But recently, this trend took on a more partisan cast. Currently, an in-depth Pew Research Center Study found that partisanship was the leading factor in opinions about, and trust or confidence in, the news media, with Republicans far more negative and skeptical (Pew Center 2019). Plus, even within identifiers of both parties, Trump was a factor: “Republicans who strongly approve of the job Trump is doing are far more pessimistic in their evaluations of the news media than other Republicans. And Democrats who are most disapproving of Trump’s job performance are often far more supportive of the news media than Democrats who approve most strongly” (Pew Center 2019). Some members of the public thus appear to trust Trump more than journalists. All of these factors again mean that Trump is able to keep his followers devoted to his version of reality, with little chance they will see, much less believe if they do, alternative sources of information. Next, is the related phenomenon of “news grazing” (Forgette 2018)— the practice of a sizeable percentage of the public who jump around (on the TV dial, their smartphone, or their computer) and encounter or use news haphazardly as opposed to sitting down every evening to watch nightly TV news or read their daily newspaper. For these people, entertainment or at least interest is the key to following events, and therefore media attempt to cater to them through visually stunning and/or high shock-value issues. This format favors items such as breaking news, commentary, etc. Or, as Forgette (2018, p. 7) puts it: “media choice is altering how we collect news, resulting in an emerging class of news grazers… in response, news producers and makers have altered the news itself” toward commentary, breaking, and partisan news formats, which in turn affect “perceptions of conflict and polarization between the parties and within Congress,” resulting in greater distrust of the system. When we add this all up, what do we get? First, we have a public, and by extension, a media, that is easily distracted and plays into a “click-bait” and controversy peddler like Donald Trump. Trump learned the importance of media and public attention as a businessman in the 1980s–1990s, and unlike many other executives, intentionally sought the limelight, good or bad, believing that in the end it was good for his business and his influence. For “in Donald

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Trump’s world, there is no such thing as over-exposure” (Slater 2005, p. 226). If there is one thing Donald Trump knows how to do, it is to attract attention and an audience. For example, it is estimated he gained approximately $5 billion of “free” media coverage during his election (Francia 2018). In his first month of office—granted, more than he likely received after—one firm estimated he’d received the equivalent of $817 million in ads, a record (Rodriguez 2017). Love him or hate him, he is the focus of attention and sets the tone and topic for debate. Second, this milieu gives Trump an ability to have his messages delivered—if not generally amplified, often coupled with a favorable spin—to his followers as well as Republicans and independent “leaners” more broadly. As noted, this in turn keeps his partisan support solid and secure, which helps keep other political elites (especially, but not solely in the GOP) in line, or at least wary of him. These forces contribute to the creation of “uncertainty in the minds of president-watchers” and resulting deference, that Neustadt strongly believed was part of the toolkit of presidential influence (see for example, 1990, p. 48).

The Unilateral/Administrative Presidency Finally, another source of Trump’s impact—especially on the policy agenda—is found in the “unilateral” presidency, or direct administrative action (see Cooper 2002; Howell 2003, 2005). This concept includes such mechanisms as executive orders, executive agreements (with other nations), proclamations, memoranda, signing statements, and the like. As Waterman (2003, pp. 374–377), and others have noted, presidents have turned to these “new political resources” because of challenges to or declines in their power bases elsewhere, such as the increased frequency of divided government, where they face at least one house of Congress controlled by the other party. Granted, Neustadt did allude to the inherent powers of the office as one source of power, but in his time this source was not the major engine of presidential action. (Once again, a search of the index of the 1990 edition finds no listing for “executive order,” though “orders, selfexecuting” are found on five separate pages. Admittedly, this is not a definitive measure.) In his terms, these were a last resort, and unusual. He “concluded that the situations in which the president can issue ‘selfexecuting orders’ are rare. Even when circumstances present themselves,

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[such] orders are not costless” in terms of future power or prestige (Morris 2010, p. 92). Just as Trump was not the first president to use social media, he is far from the first to utilize these tools, which stretch back to Washington in some respects; two famous examples are Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and FDR’s internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II by executive order, among others. Presidents have increasingly turned to these devices as they have been frustrated by Congress or even their own cabinets in some respects (Howell 2005). As Howell (2017, p. 226) puts it, these actions “turn the central precepts of Neustadt’s argument upside down: unilateral action has little to do with persuasion. Instead, presidents simply act;… through unilateral directives, presidents set public policy and wait for Congress and the courts to counter,” essentially daring the other branches to defy them. Presidents can be checked, but by taking the initiative, they exploit the weaknesses of the other branches—their slow, procedural, and less unified structures. What is unusual with Trump is the degree to which he relies on and relishes the use of such instruments, especially given his party control of Congress (until 2019) and to a lesser degree the courts. He signs them in public much like a bill with great fanfare, clearly enjoying the symbolism. He almost seems to believe that his mere signature equals action—like the Pharaoh Ramses, that if it is written (or signed by him), it is done. Yes, like Bush and Obama he initially took many actions to “undo” orders by his predecessors that he opposed or disliked, or to reward interest group allies (e.g., concerning abortion). But Trump had already issued over 100 executive orders plus a number of other actions through March 2019 (see Fig. 7.1). While this is not nearly as many as Truman or Eisenhower, much less FDR, from Neustadt’s time, it is on a pace beyond the last four administrations. These also have been a large variety to achieve aims he claimed during the campaign, like the travel ban, immigration detention, suspending DACA, mandating free speech on college campuses, etc. Like Trump’s legislative initiatives, some of these are not well-crafted or reasoned out, and have been challenged in court, and thus end up being blocked or put on hold. Still, he has prevailed or achieved a number of his policy aims—for example, his initial travel ban, though challenged and refined, was eventually upheld after modification by the US Supreme

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Fig. 7.1 Cumulative proclamations, executive orders, and memoranda; Presidents following partisan change (Source: The American Presidency Project, “Trump in Action: Early Analyses: Comparing President Trump’s Record of Executive Orders and Actions to Other Recent Presidents.” April 29, 2017. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/analyses/trump-action-early-analyses)

Court, and in February 2020 he even extended it to six new countries (Oprysko et al. 2020). Perhaps Trump has simply been more flamboyant or controversial with many of these actions than other presidents, but it does seem as if he prefers to rely on these devices, which our government through precedent has intentionally or unintentionally ceded to the executive. As some academic observers of Trump’s actions in the first months of his term saw it: Trump has embraced the levers of presidential discretion and power inherent within the modern executive office. …Moreover, far from using administrative power to simply rollback his predecessor’s goals, the new president has sought to redeploy state resources in ways that will further entrench traditional commitments of the Republican Party, while simultaneously redefining them to mirror the president’s personal policy objectives. (Milkis and Jacobs 2017)

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A notable example is his actions regarding the (his?) wall on the Southern border. After Trump failed to receive funding from Congress in early 2019, following the government shutdown and his capitulation (see Chapter 4), he then declared a “national emergency on the border.” He quickly moved to divert funds from certain defense projects to cover it. Congress attempted to rescind the emergency via joint resolution in February, but Trump vetoed it in March 2019, and Congress failed to override. While the wall is far from finished, Trump demonstrated another of Howell’s (2005) points—although presidents cannot act by decree and still may be checked, when they do act, they have particular advantages. While not 100 percent effective, it is nevertheless clear that part of Trump’s success at altering the political landscape in the face of weaker “power dynamics” or skill in other areas is due simply to the options provided by the unilateral or administrative presidency itself. Notably, after the Democrats won control of the US House in the 2018 elections, Trump had already decided to largely “go it alone,” bypassing Congress (Swan 2019).

Conclusion The enigmatic and turbulent presidency of Donald J. Trump calls out for some kind of clarity. Richard Neustadt’s model of presidential power and persuasion helps explain much of Trump’s difficulties and ineffectiveness (see Chapters 2–4). Yet a paradox remains: how has someone like him— especially a political novice with arguably poor people skills and a roughand-tough manner, relatively unpopular with elites and masses—taken DC by storm, prevailed in some notable areas, and continued to be a strong contender for reelection? The answer, as we have seen, can be found in the context of American politics today, and changes in the political environment that make “Art of the Deal” style leadership more viable. Personal factors, then, interact with contextual ones, for as one scholar put it, “power is not exercised in a vacuum. External factors will have an impact upon the extent to which the president can utilize power resources, and how they will be received” (Kerbel 1991, p. 130). The interrelated factors of party polarization, the new media landscape, and the “unilateral” presidency of executive action that have developed in the half-century since Neustadt wrote mean that his “rules” no longer

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fully apply. Or, perhaps as Trump has shown, someone can flaunt them and yet still govern—albeit by the thinnest of margins. The resurgent strength of party affiliation at the elite and mass levels has sorted the political populace into almost tribal, warring camps and cultures (e.g., “Red and Blue America”), loosely based on ideological differences, though Trump has upended them somewhat. It has given Trump, along with his own skills, the ability to keep his party team with him. Similarly, the new media era has created information bubbles of partisan filters that allow him to maintain his brand loyalty and prevent competing messages from getting through, while at the same time rewarding his bombastic style via influence on the media agenda. And, if those were not enough, he has utilized the means of inherent executive authority which have grown since the 1930s, making him more politically potent. These tools not only “turn persuasion on its head” but also perform important symbolic and public relations functions for his tribe, as dramatic actions showing he is “keeping his promises” and fighting for them to “Make America Great Again.” Thus, the political world Trump inhabits is particularly suited to, or at least enables, his behavior. Neustadt, much less others, could not possibly imagine a Dwight Eisenhower, or even a John Kennedy, performing as President of the United States in this manner; they couldn’t get away with it, even if they had wanted to. The implications of this new politics of persuasion—for presidents as well as political science—are discussed in the final chapter.

Notes 1. In a twist of fate, these reforms—similarly affecting Republicans via state law changes—would also help pave the way for Trump to be nominated, and then elected. 2. As noted in Chapter 6, according to Congressional Quarterly, Trump’s success rate with Congress for both of his first two years in office was at record highs —98.7% in his first year (highest ever recorded), and 93.4% in his second year, the third highest recorded (CQ 2019). Needless to say, 2019 was not the same. Some scholars dispute this measure since it weights all votes (bills) equally, and doesn’t take into account other factors. It does, however, break out votes by party, and one main reason Trump did so well was not only Republican control of Congress but strong Republican support in Congress—for example, in 2017, he had a perfect 100% rate with House members of his party.

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3. As previously mentioned, this analysis was through Trump’s third year in office, and thus before the Covid-19 pandemic and crisis. Even so, at least initially Trump’s approval ratings among Republicans held firm. 4. Another noteworthy aspect of the Trump Presidency in this vein is the media relations of the administration, which likewise must unfortunately be given short shrift here. Suffice it to say that Trump and his staff relish attacking the media and collectively are the most hostile White House to a free press since Nixon. The difference is that, unlike the 1970s, media credibility is down to Congress levels, and Trump capitalizes on this sentiment, along with perceptions of media bias and lack of reporting standards, to attack any outlets or even stories he doesn’t like as “fake news.” As I note elsewhere, this sour and surly relationship is also part of Trump’s appeal to and control over his base. 5. Though lately, circa late 2019, Trump seemingly has soured a bit on Fox because of some of their polls and reporting (of news, oddly enough) that he finds not fawning enough. Instead, he has come to promote One America Network (OAN), a more far-right and unabashedly pro-Trump outlet. Still, he has not given up watching Fox or giving interviews to its leading figures like Sean Hannity.

References Abramowitz, A. (2010). The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press. Auxier, B., & Golbeck, J. (2017). The President on Twitter: A Characterization Study of @realDonaldTrump. In G. Ciampaglia, A. Mashhadi, & T. Yasseri (Eds.), Social Informatics: SocInfo 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 10539). Springer. Bacon, P., Jr. (2019, December 23). Trump Completed His Takeover of the GOP in 2019. FiveThirtyEight. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trumpcompleted-his-takeover-of-the-gop-in-2019/. Beauchamp, Z. (2020, January 31). Lamar Alexander and the Power of Right-Wing Political Correctness. Vox. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-pol itics/2020/1/31/21116689/trump-impeachment-lamar-alexander-witnessbolton. Brock, D., & Ravi-Havt, A. (2012). The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine. New York: Anchor. Burmila, E. (2018, July 24). How Trump Is Changing Republican Party Values. The Week. https://theweek.com/articles/785361/how-trump-changing-rep ublican-party-values. Cooper, P. J. (2002). By Order of the President: The Use and Abuse of Executive Direct Action. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

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CQ Magazine. (2019, February 25). CQ Vote Studies: Presidential Support— Trump’s Last Hurrah. http://library.cqpress.com.ezp.lib.cwu.edu/cqweekly/ document.php?id=weeklyreport116-000005468046&type=hitlist&num=1. Dalton, R. J. (2013). The Apartisan American: Dealignment and Changing Electoral Politics. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Davis, J. W. (2000). The Case against the Current Primary-Centered System. In R. E. DiClerico & J. W. Davis (Eds.), Choosing Our Choices: Debating the Presidential Nominating Process, Lanham, MD (pp. 27–50). Davidson, R., Oleszek, W., Lee, F., & Schickler, E. (2020). Congress and Its Members (17th ed.). Washington, DC: CQ Press. Entman, R. M. (1989). Democracy Without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Everett, B., & Arkin, J. (2019, July 19). Republicans’ Choice: Stand with Trump or Face his Wrath. Politico. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/16/ trump-republican-politics-1417595. Fisher, S., & Swan, J. (2020, February 16). Inside the Trump Campaign’s Big Hedge on Facebook. Axios. https://www.axios.com/trump-campaignfacebook-youtube-google-0dd99a0d-d375-4347-89f5-1c36a2fe3271.html. Forgette, R. (2018). News Grazers: Media, Politics, and Trust in an Information Age. Washington: CQ Press. Francia, P. L. (2018). Free Media and Twitter in the 2016 Presidential Election: The Unconventional Campaign of Donald Trump. Social Science Computer Review, 36(4), 440–455. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439317730302. Fu, S., & Howell, W. G. (2020). The Behavioral Consequences of Public Appeals: Evidence on Campaign Fundraising from the 2018 Congressional Elections. Presidential Studies Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1111/ psq.12645. Gainous, J., & Wagner, K. M. (2013). Tweeting to Power: The Social Media Revolution in American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Gallup. (2019, January 18). “Trump Approval Sets Record for Polarization”. https://news.gallup.com/poll/245996/trump-job-approval-sets-newrecord-polarization.aspx. Howell, W. G. (2003). Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Howell, W. G. (2005). Introduction: Unilateral Powers: A Brief Overview. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 35(3), 417–439. Howell, W. G. (2017). An American Presidency: Institutional Foundations of Executive Politics. New York: Pearson. Jones, J. M. (2020, January 21). Trump’s Third Year Sets New Standard for Party Polarization. Gallup. Accessed February 5, 2020. Kerbel, M. R. (1991). Beyond Persuasion: Organizational Efficiency and Presidential Power. Albany: SUNY Press.

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Kernell, S. (1986). Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership. Washington: CQ Press. Kight, S. W. (2017, September 22). The Insane News Cycle of Trump’s Presidency in One Chart. Axios. https://www.axios.com/the-insane-newscycle-of-trumps-presidency-in-1-chart-1513305658-b2393db8-4d82-41fc92c6-acda4f3dd8db.html. Kight, S. W. (2019, December 26). The Insane News Cycles of 2019. Axios. https://www.axios.com/insane-news-cycle-attention-2019-google-int erest-f89e7bc8-399d-4681-b479-00e8b6a4ccbc.html. Leibovich, M. (2019). How Lindsey Graham Went from Trump Skeptic to Trump Sidekick. New York Times Magazine, 25. https://www.nytimes.com/ 2019/02/25/magazine/lindsey-graham-what-happened-trump.html. Martin, J., & Haberman, M. (2019, December 21). Fear and Loyalty: How Donald Trump Took Over the Republican Party. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/21/us/politics/trump-impeac hment-republicans.html. Milkis, S. M., & Jacobs, N. (2017). ‘I Alone Can Fix It’ Donald Trump, the Administrative Presidency, and Hazards of Executive-Centered Partisanship. The Forum, 15(3). De Gruyter. https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ for.2017.15.issue-3/for-2017-0037/for-2017-0037.xml. Morris, I. L. (2010). The American Presidency: An Analytical Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. Nather, D. (2019, January 16). This Is Why the Shutdown Won’t End [Greater Share of Republicans Support Wall]. Axios. https://www.axios.com/borderwall-trump-government-shutdown-poll–c0cb0431-4590-438a-bf20-9c88d5 5f5847.html. Neustadt, R. (1960). Presidential Power. New York: Wiley. Neustadt, R. (1990). Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Free Press. Oppenheimer, B. I. (1993). Declining Presidential Success with Congress. In R. Waterman (Ed.), The Presidency Reconsidered (pp. 75–92). Itasca, IL: FE Peacock. Oprysko, C., Kumar A., & Toosi, N. (2020, January 31). Trump Administration Expands Travel Ban. Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/ 01/31/trump-administration-expands-travel-ban-110005. Pew Research Center. (2019, December 12). Trusting News Media in the Trump Era. Pew Research Center. https://www.journalism.org/2019/12/ 12/trusting-the-news-media-in-the-trump-era/. Pew Research Center. (2020, January 24). US Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation Divided. Pew Research Center. https://www.journalism. org/2020/01/24/u-s-media-polarization-and-the-2020-election-a-nationdivided/.

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Rodriguez, A. (2017, February 28). Donald Trump Is Getting the Kind of Free Media Coverage Everyone Else Can Only Dream Of. Quartz. https://qz. com/919887/donald-trump-is-getting-unprecedented-free-media-coverageincluding-a-record-800-million-in-earned-media-in-one-month/. Rose, R. (1991). The Postmodern President: George Bush Meets the World. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House. Shear, M. D., Haberman, M., Confessore, N., Yourish, K., Buchanan, L., & Collins, K. (2019, November 2). How Trump Reshaped the Presidency in Over 11,000 Tweets. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/intera ctive/2019/11/02/us/politics/trump-twitter-presidency.html. Slater, R. (2005). No Such Thing as Over-Exposure: The Life and Celebrity of Donald Trump. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Smith, T. (2019). Foxocracy: Inside the Network’s Playbook of Tribal Warfare. New York: Diversion Books. Stroud, N. J. (2011). Niche News: The Politics of News Choice. New York: Oxford U. Press. Swan, J. (2019, March 30). Trump Goes It Alone. Axios. https://www.axios. com/trump-goes-alone-0a5092a1-7e76-46c6-aa82-eea87453a50b.html. Tulis, J. (1987). The Rhetorical Presidency. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Waterman, R. (2003). The Changing American Presidency: New Perspectives on Presidential Power. Cincinatti, OH: Atomic Dog Publishing. Waterman, R., & Ouyang, Y. (2019). Tweeting from the Oval Office: Patterns and Content. Paper Presented at the Midwest Political Science Association. White, K. W., & Kerbel, M. R. (2018). Party On! Political Parties from Hamilton and Jefferson to Trump (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Wiemer, E. C., & Scacco, Joshua M. (2018). Disruptor-in-Chief? The Agenda Setting Journal, 2(2), 191–213.

CHAPTER 8

Conclusion: What Trump’s Presidency Teaches Us About Presidential Power (and Presidential Power)

Abstract This concluding chapter reflects on the lessons Neustadt and the Trump presidency teach, and what both mean for presidential studies. Models or ideas like Neustadt’s help us understand the presidency, but also need to be adaptable to changes in the real world. Perhaps the unprecedented presidency of Donald Trump will help us to see which analytic tools are useful and which are not, and how important a deviant individual is to both the presidency and political science. It concludes by arguing that we need presidents to persuade, for presidential governance without persuasion—as Trump’s tenure seems to embody—is problematic for the US political system. Keywords Trump, Donald · Neustadt, Richard · Persuasion · Presidential power · Political science

Seeing the Trump Presidency Through Neustadt’s Eyes The election and early administration of Donald J. Trump has sent shockwaves through the US political system. As President, Trump’s super-sized © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. M. Schaefer, Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4_8

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ego, flamboyant and bombastic style, combined with his complete lack of traditional political experience and his resulting disregard for established norms—with all the attention that goes with them—make him a complicated as well as imposing figure. Focusing on the drama, discord, and daily shifts of his fortunes may seem bewildering. But it is possible to understand this president’s triumphs and travails and put them into context, even for someone as singular as Trump. The purpose of this work was to analyze the trajectory and performance of the Trump presidency using the insights of Richard Neustadt’s (1960, 1990) work on presidential power. Power in this sense is both institutional and personal, and exercised primarily through persuasion and bargaining. To briefly recap, Neustadt sees the office not as powerful, but as a glorified clerkship, which requires an astute power politician to overcome its inherent if not informal limitations. He conceives of the presidential power game as one of bargaining, where the president can rarely give commands, and instead must persuade others—members of Congress, the executive branch, the media, K Street lobbyists, foreign governments, and even the public. To do so, presidents must be prospectively strategic, and guard their power resources of “reputation” (standing with Washington elites), and “prestige” (public support). As demonstrated in previous chapters, Neustadt’s work does appear to explain a number of the problems Donald Trump has had as president, and these are due, in large part, to Trump himself—his choices, his behavior, his decisions, etc. Notably, his thin skin, instability and shifting stances; alienation of, and attacks on, other political elites; and his untrustworthiness and flawed approaches to bargaining, have hampered his position and hurt his potential outcomes. In addition, he has relatively low levels of public support and approval, partly related to his personality and approach to the public relations side of the job. All of these together, as Neustadt might predict, limit his ability to “win friends and influence people.” Furthermore, despite his claimed prowess at negotiation, his lack of power resource-building and at times, inability to understand strategic political contexts, led to several high-profile failures or half-measures. These include three cases discussed in Chapter 4: the defeat of Obamacare repeal/health reform legislation in Congress in 2017; the government shutdown over funding for “his” border wall in 2018–2019; and his unsuccessful 2019 second summit with Kim Jong Un, along with generally inept foreign policy toward North Korea and its nuclear ambitions. Other less notable examples abound.

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Applying Neustadt’s lessons and model to Trump’s actions—or alternatively, Trump’s own flaunting of Neustadt’s prescriptions—can help explain the tumultuous and problematic first two to three years of his presidency. On the other hand, as discussed in later chapters, Trump has had some notable achievements and has been relatively successful in other respects in terms of both political power and policy-making, likely defying Neustadt’s expectations. The argument of this book is that this state of affairs is in large part due to changes in the DC political environment in which Trump exists, one that is unlike that of Truman and Eisenhower (and FDR before them), the primary subject of Neustadt’s Presidential Power in its first and subsequent editions. To reiterate, three main forces of the contemporary political scene have allowed Trump to persevere if not overcome his flaws: party polarization; the media environment; and the “unilateral presidency.” The extreme partisanship of the current US political scene has empowered Trump, especially in terms of getting his own partisans in Congress, as well as those in the country, to back him on policies, blunt criticism of some of his blunders or controversial pronouncements, and protect him from the political and legal damage from some of his actions. The media environment, itself polarized and limiting Trump’s influence in some ways, has also enabled him to harness it to build his image and “brand,” dominate news cycles, and maintain the loyal support of his electorate, which in turn impacts the DC establishment. Lastly, his utilization of the tools of direct executive action, built by his predecessors and political practice, have allowed him to achieve some of his policy aims where other forces might impede him. Trump also has made some opportunistic political and policy moves due to his outsider status and ambiguous ideological positions that aided him in winning support from both parties, like revamping the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, and criminal justice reform. With that said, it is necessary to ponder the significance of this analysis. In the end, what does Trump mean for the study of the presidency and presidential power—both Neustadt’s view of it and more generally— within political science, if not more broadly? These are the questions that close the work.

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Criticisms of Neustadt’s Perspective (and by Implication, This Work): Too Unscientific, Limited, and Interpretive As noted in Chapter 1, though Neustadt was a scholarly innovator in taking a power and prescriptive approach as opposed to the historical and legal ones before (see Gunnell 2000), his method and framework was eventually seen as less effective in comprehensively explaining presidential politics as a whole. Indeed, the field moved on to a more institutional, and to some extent, positivist approach to finding larger patterns in the office (see Edwards 2000; Ragsdale 2000; Morris 2010). Since this work essentially updates Neustadt for the Trump presidency, it is worthwhile to review some of these concerns. Neustadt has often been criticized for being too unscientific and interpretive, narrow and historical, as well as “president” focused. First, his model of power as bargaining, and its description of the ingredients for success at that game, were recognized as insightful but difficult to test, prove, or demonstrate. Arguably, though he attempted to generalize from observations he saw, he was not truly practicing social science. As one presidency scholar put it, “Neustadt’s orientation to studying the presidency specifies little about how to measure concepts, test propositions, or analyze data. It does not by itself enforce rigor in our analyses. Nor does it prevent us from focusing on tactical rather than strategic questions” (Edwards 2000, p. 11). Similarly, Ragsdale (2000) argues Neustadt gave an “insider” perspective that made it difficult to falsify or positively prove his assertions. His “argument is an intuitive message of practical politics that is based on how politicians view politics. It is not theoretical in offering testable hypotheses about how presidents behave under certain circumstances… [and] is a series of generalizations of two types: those that cannot be disputed, but also cannot be tested, and those that are testable, but not actually tested” (Ragsdale 2000, pp. 41–42). Morris (2010), in arguing for a truly scientific study of the presidency, also takes aim at Neustadt’s reliance on case studies, and in particular ones from only three presidencies (those of Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower). He points out that the issue is not necessarily that Neustadt is wrong, it’s just that his intuitive observations are thus limited to those presidencies in time and space. To some degree, this criticism or description is one that this work shares, since as noted the explanation offered in the latter half of the

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book is that Neustadt’s model was based on a presidential context in time that no longer exists—or at least, new developments have changed some of the power dynamics inherent in Neustadt’s bargaining model. Trump’s historical context or utility may be limited as well—though that doesn’t necessarily mean it is thus irrelevant for understanding current events. Furthermore, although Neustadt attempted to update his analyses and apply his model to subsequent presidencies, his emphasis on cases of presidential failure and the basic weakness rather than strength of the office meant his propositions were “theoretically and methodologically problematic. Consistent expectations of failure or inaction are hard to evaluate” (Morris 2010, p. 94). His “personal” or president-overpresidency focus, combined with the case approach, was likewise flawed. “Neustadt’s attention to the personal qualities of presidents and reliance on case studies makes it difficult to draw testable propositions about the office from its study of individual occupants. Ultimately, most presidential power may not be so fully personal” (Ragsdale 2000, p. 43). Others saw the focus on personal power, or even the use of power by individual presidents, as missing other important questions. Neustadt’s “emphasis on the personal in politics has led some scholars to overlook the importance of the context in which the president operates as well as his institutional setting.” In addition, it encouraged both academics and the public to view the office through a “great person” lens, forgetting that presidential leadership may not be the driving force of American politics, or even good for it (Edwards 2000, pp. 12–13). Indeed, some have questioned the very premise that persuasion is key to presidential power. In recent works, Edwards (2009, 2016) argues that presidents are rarely able to actually persuade anyone—be it the public, or elites—due to existing constraints and obstacles (preexisting biases, inattention, or counterforces, etc.). He further notes that empirical evidence of persuasion is scarce. Instead, he sees presidential influence really as taking advantage of favorable circumstances and potential. “Recognizing and exploiting opportunities for change – rather than creating opportunities through persuasion – are the essential presidential leadership skills” (Edwards 2020, p. 151). Still, Neustadt’s model, and some of his analytical prescriptions, are nevertheless valuable and continue to influence how political scientists view presidents and the presidency. Just because a focus on presidents, and their choices and failures, may be difficult to weave into an empirically tested theory does not mean they are unimportant to study. Thus, the

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counterargument is such a perspective is a useful explanatory framework, even for a case apparently as unusual as Donald Trump.

A Defense: Neutstadt’s Approach Is Still Relevant, Even and Especially for Trump One can’t argue with the perspective of Morris and others that finding larger patterns across presidencies or of the institution as a whole is a noble goal, and might lead to more accurate understandings of presidential politics. But given we only have one president at a time, we also need some tools to put the current presidency we are living with in real time in context. And it may be that the US political system—intentionally or unintentionally—does rely on the president as “the engine,” even as that is overly simplistic. Neustadt himself later noted that while institutionalism had its place, so did analyses of real presidential decisions: to build presidential institutional memory, provide needed wisdom, and “offer information relevant to precisely to those things a President most needs to know about his institutional surroundings” (2000, p. 466). Therefore, qualitative, interpretive research may be appropriate for an office that by design is rather personalistic. In addition to the criticisms of Neustadt’s approach as “unscientific,” there is a second, related one of relevance to the work here: the use of one presidency as an analytic subject. Again, Morris argues that focusing on a single case is dangerous, given that “individual elections (or presidencies) do not provide sufficient information to draw general conclusions about what is true for presidential elections (or presidencies); …people have a perverse but natural tendency to generalize from exceptional cases” (Morris 2010, p. 51). Admittedly, the risk with an oversized personality like Trump is to see or read too much into him, and miss larger forces. For example, clearly the current extreme party polarization and partisan unity in Congress meant any Republican who took office in 2017, with a Congress controlled by their fellow partisans, would have had high legislative success rates early on. Notably, Trump did about as well as would be expected under those circumstances, not better (see Bond 2019). Perhaps if a different Republican had won the 2016 nomination and election, they would have done better or had more large-scale victories.

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Individual cases nevertheless do serve a purpose, even for a science bent on generalization. George and Bennett (2005) note that “outliers” ( Gladwell 2008) or examples that “don’t fit the pattern” can be useful for theory-building, and for finding factors that may have been overlooked. “Similarly, studies of single ‘deviant’ cases and of single cases where a variable is at an extreme value can be very useful for heuristic purposes of identifying new theoretical variables or postulating new causal mechanisms” (2005, p. 81)—and most would agree Trump is a “deviant” case.1 Besides, though Trump might be the exception that proves the rule, he certainly has encouraged others from far outside the political world to try, if the 2020 Democratic presidential nominating contest was any indication. While nonpoliticians had made appearances in the past—e.g., ministers Jesse Jackson (in 1984 and 1988), Pat Robertson (in 1988), Al Sharpton (in 2004) and businessmen like Maury Taylor and Steve Forbes (in 1996)2 —they generally did not come close to winning a party nomination, much less the White House. But, possibly spurred on by Trump’s surprising victory, the Democratic side saw a number of such candidates: entrepreneur Andrew Yang; billionaire and “green” activist Tom Steyer; and author, spiritualist, and advisor to Oprah Winfrey, Marianne Williamson. Extreme outsiders, such as political novices, might be more likely to become president in the future. Therefore, the Trump experience might provide more lessons than at first glance.3 Even if Trump’s presidency turns out to be an aberration, and the country experiences, at least in presidential politics, a “return to normalcy,” with more traditional politicians, etc., putting his presidency in context—especially regarding presidential power—strengthens the field of presidential studies. In the end, the current presidency presents an interesting, if mixed or paradoxical test of the ideas enunciated in Presidential Power back in 1960. The Trump experience helps illustrate what has and hasn’t changed, thus requiring a “reappraising presidents, reappraising power” approach, as Neustadt himself did with this work over his career. For example, Edwards (2016, 2020) might note that some of Trump’s failures are not surprising, Neustadt or no, given presidents’ inability to persuade even under the best of circumstances. And it certainly does seem as if Trump has a “radioactive” or “reverse” effect on the public, and even some politicians, on a number of issues, like repealing Obamacare and his border wall. But such results do not mean that his power bases

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in terms of reputation and prestige, much less his own strategic choices— all parts of Neustadt’s framework—have no effect on outcomes. Besides, as mentioned in Chapter 7, it is hard not to recognize his “persuasive” power in changing Republicans’ views on trade, Russia, etc. (Burmila 2018), or with Republican officials, such as Senators Rubio, Cruz, and Graham, who now praise him, or even support policies or actions of his that they didn’t previously.

Conclusion: Presidential Power in the Age of Trump It is a testament to Neustadt’s insight that a model he developed while working for Truman still holds analytic power more than 50 years later, under a president that he undoubtedly could not have foreseen taking office (see also Dickinson 2020). Arguably, Trump could have been a much more successful president by taking Neustadt’s advice, though realistically it is unlikely he would have, partly because he doesn’t appear to take anyone’s, outside of possibly Fox News personalities or his family. Neustadt’s focus on the fundamental weakness of the office—or at least, its inherent limitations—reminds us that like good poker players, presidents must be adroit guardians and users of their power, irrespective of the strength of their hand. And for that matter, individual presidents and their choices can make a difference, even if in the end it is “at the margins” as Edwards (1989) phrased it about the impact of presidents’ skill and popular support on their success with Congress. Applying Neustadt to Donald Trump’s presidency at the very least reminds us that the person in the office does matter. Yes, the subfield of presidential studies within political science has moved beyond Neustadt, while continuing to acknowledge him. Trump’s unusual nature and approach to the job of being president clearly have had effects that would not have been seen had someone else been in the office (and not just Hillary Clinton). For example, though they might have confronted Democrats over funding differences, or even immigration, it is unlikely another Republican would have shut down the government over, much less try, building a “tall, beautiful” wall along the border with Mexico. However, it is almost as unlikely other Republican or even Democratic presidents in the past few years would have achieved the measure of criminal justice reform Trump did, either.

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Donald Trump may do political science, and Neustadt’s ideas, a favor by stimulating new theories and driving new research on the contemporary presidency. Trump’s professional reputation clearly has affected him in relations with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, and even Republican leaders with whom he must deal; his bipolar and lack of wide popular support has limited his ability to transform the American political landscape in his direction. But we also see where such concepts fall short. Given the changing public, partisan, media, and political climate of the current era, Trump still responds or adapts to his environment in ways we hadn’t considered or couldn’t have anticipated (for example, his use of Twitter as opposed to his predecessor Obama). Furthermore, he seems to go “beyond persuasion” as Kerbel (1991) put it in a different context, focusing on actions, orders, and even insults in blatant attempts to get his way, and he has shown how even bluster and disruption can have their political uses. Trump’s presidency may also perform a larger service for the nation, bringing it to recognize that, despite some constraints, we may really have come to put too much power in one person and one office. True, Neustadt, somewhat like Machiavelli, didn’t say much about the ethical use of power, as opposed to its effective use. Yet the need for presidential persuasion is important, not just as an analytical device, but for the polity as a whole. The American system was designed, as Neustadt himself recognized, to require cooperation as much as bargaining in order to work, with the president as a unifying figure. Presidents should have to persuade. If they can act unilaterally, and/or only have to persuade people already inclined to agree with them, the office, much less the nation, will be the worse off for it.

Notes 1. One question, of course is whether Trump truly is a “deviant” case— though his utter lack of formal political experience would seem to make him an outlier. Also, his marketing skills and reality TV experience were helpful, but not necessarily unique (e.g., Ronald Reagan was once an actor and pitchman), but his emphasis on branding, both himself and others, and his norm-breaking use of Twitter and other communications mechanisms, also seem to set him apart from almost all other politicians. 2. It is true that in 1992, billionaire Ross Perot notably did the best of any minor-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” campaign of

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1912, and this might have sent a message to Trump. After all, he did choose to run for a major party’s nomination instead of as an independent. 3. Partly, such a future trend depends on the success of Trump’s presidency, though one might also make the argument that Trump had a unique combination of outsider experience, skills, and traits that made him a more formidable candidate than most political novices.

References Bond, J. R. (2019). Contemporary Presidency: Which Presidents Are Uncommonly Successful in Congress? A Trump Update. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 49(4), 898–908. Burmila, E. (2018, July 24). How Trump Is Changing Republican Party Values. The Week. https://theweek.com/articles/785361/how-trump-changing-rep ublican-party-values. Dickinson, M. (2020). Presidential Power Is (Still) the Power to Persuade: Pro. In R. Ellis & M. Nelson (Eds.), Debating the Presidency: Conflicting Perspectives on the American Executive (pp. 134–142). Washington, DC: CQ Press. Edwards, G. C., III. (1989). At the Margins: Presidential Leadership of Congress. New Haven: Yale University Press. Edwards, G. C., III. (2000). Neustadt’s Power Approach to the Presidency. In R. Y. Shapiro, M. Joynt Kumar, & L. R. Jacobs (Eds.), Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century (pp. 9–15). New York: Columbia University Press. Edwards, G. C., III. (2009). The Strategic President: Persuasion and Opportunity in Presidential Leadership. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Edwards, G. C., III. (2016). Predicting the Presidency: The Potential of Persuasive Leadership Princeton. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Edwards, G. C., III. (2020). Presidential Power Is (Still) the Power to Persuade: Con. In R. Ellis & M. Nelson (Eds.), Debating the Presidency: Conflicting Perspectives on the American Executive (pp. 142–151). Washington, DC: CQ Press. George, A. L., & Bennett, A. (2005). Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: MIT Press. Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success (1st ed.). New York: Little, Brown. Gunnell, J. G. (2000). Richard Neustadt in the History of American Political Science. In R. Y. Shapiro, M. Joynt Kumar, & L. R. Jacobs (Eds.), Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century (pp. 16–27). New York: Columbia University Press.

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Kerbel, M. R. (1991). Beyond Persuasion: Organizational Efficiency and Presidential Power. Albany: State University of New York Press. Morris, I. L. (2010). The American Presidency: An Analytic Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. Neustadt, R. E. (1960). Presidential Power. New York: Wiley. Neustadt, R. E. (1990). Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: the Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Free Press. Neustadt, R. E. (2000). A Preachment from Retirement. In R. Y. Shapiro, M. Joynt Kumar, & L. R. Jacobs (Eds.), Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century (pp. 459–467). New York: Columbia University Press. Ragsdale, L. (2000). Personal Power and Presidents. In R. Y. Shapiro, M. Joynt Kumar, & L. R. Jacobs (Eds.), Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century (pp. 31–46). New York: Columbia University Press.

Postscript on Covid-19 Crisis

This book was largely finished when the coronavirus or Covid-19 pandemic hit the United States in the early months of 2020. As noted throughout, I based my analysis and conclusions on the course of roughly the first three years of the Trump presidency. The trajectory, impact, and combating of this public health crisis, which at this writing is far from over, rapidly changed the political landscape and governing context for Donald J. Trump. The massive infection of potentially millions, and death toll—reaching 70,000 by May (cdc.gov), and predicted to go well over 100,000 by summer, if not higher—impacted the lives and safety of all Americans. The lockdowns, isolation, and social distancing measures put in place mostly by state and local governments, likewise put the economy into a tailspin, with unemployment hitting over 15% in a month, economic growth slowing, and a stock-market plunge by April. Covid-19 appeared to be the crisis critics feared Trump would someday face. It immediately imperiled his reelection. If this weren’t bad enough for him, the Democratic primaries shook out almost at the same time, with Trump now facing the presumably more electable—and experienced—former Vice-President Joe Biden. Still, despite this dramatic turn of events, many of the analytical points and observations about Trump made in the previous pages remain pertinent. Below I list several elements mentioned in the book illustrated by the events surrounding the early Covid crisis. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. M. Schaefer, Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4

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Trump as Administrator-in-Chief The most glaring aspect of Trump’s presidency on display in the crisis was his administrative skill and leadership style, discussed in Chapter 5. Based on its findings, not surprisingly the Trump White House was completely ill-prepared and poorly suited for effectively dealing with such a challenge. The president’s own actions arguably made things worse. It is difficult to fully document the ways his operational and decision structures failed to meet this crisis, and by necessity, I cover only some relevant highlights (for a summary, if highly critical view, see Frum 2020). First, in keeping with his desire to “deconstruct the administrative state,” well before Covid-19 landed on US shores, Trump and his team essentially cut or removed much of the apparatus for dealing with pandemic response from the executive branch. Trump’s early budgets severely cut the Center for Disease Control, including about 80% of its funding for efforts to fight global outbreaks. He also replaced as head of the CDC an interim experienced public health official left over from the Obama Administration, with Brenda Fitzgerald, a conservative Republican with little experience. She later resigned over owning tobacco stocks, a conflict of interest since CDC oversees health warnings about such products. Then, after John Bolton was made National Security Advisor in February 2018, he fired the Homeland Security Adviser who had called for more preparation about pandemic attacks; Bolton also reorganized and mostly eliminated the pandemic preparedness unit within the National Security Council that had been established by Obama after the 2014 Ebola outbreak (Benbow 2020). Second, Trump also chose to initially greatly downplay the threat of the virus, apparently out of concern for its economic effects which would derail one of his main arguments for reelection. His demand for loyalty and especially “good news” from subordinates meant that Trump’s own rosy perceptions about the virus appeared to hold sway in the top levels of the administration. Even when Peter Navarro, his trusted trade advisor, penned a memo in late January warning of economic collapse and a possible half-million deaths, this message went unheeded (Romano 2020). Trump did take action to restrict travel from China and later Europe in early February. He would later crow about these efforts as decisive measures to stop the virus from coming in, but in fact his bans were late and had loopholes, meaning thousands had already entered (indeed,

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most of the East Coast explosion that would come weeks later, originated in Americans returning from Europe). Trump likewise wasted a month in crowing about low US numbers, and touting the virus would go away, etc., rather than preparing to limit businesses and public gatherings and attempting to secure needed medical supplies such as masks and ventilators in significant capacity, especially as the US stockpile had been diminished (Frum 2020). He also put son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of a number of important tasks, who was himself ill-equipped by experience or knowledge for the job. As one analyst of the response summarized his role: “In his first week on the job, in mid-March, Kushner coauthored the worst Oval Office speech in memory [mentioned below], interrupted the vital work of other officials, may have compromised security protocols, flirted with conflicts of interest and violations of federal law, and made promises that quickly turned to dust” (Packer 2020). Convinced by corporate leaders to refrain from having Trump invoke presidential wartime authority to get companies to manufacture ventilators, Kushner then failed to negotiate a deal with General Motors, and copped out by blaming a lack of supply on state governors. Trump also confusingly wavered between pursuing a national, versus a state and local, strategy toward containing the virus. In March, he embraced a seemingly old Republican tactic of turning more responsibility for Covid response over to the states, arguing they were better able to respond to differing local needs, with the federal government as a “backstop” (Cook and Diamond 2020). He may have been strategically also hoping to shirk responsibility for the course of the pandemic onto their shoulders as well. Yet he then undercut the authority of Governors by playing favorites over who might get federal assistance, and in making them compete for medical equipment in the private sector, driving up prices (Cook and Diamond 2020). Later, he claimed (without any legal justification) to be “fully in charge”—which put more public responsibility on him, and by claiming an authority he didn’t have subsequently made himself look foolish. A similar dysfunction can be seen in the effort to create an organized administrative response to the crisis to belatedly compensate for the dismantling of structures built by previous administrations. Trump’s team did put together a Coronavirus Task Force which included leading federal scientific and public health officials in early February, despite official claims that the virus was completely under control. However, in

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“contrast to the efficient and responsive crisis model Obama had set up, where Ron Klain [former policy advisor to Joe Biden] coordinated action among diverse agencies, Trump’s commission had confusing lines of authority, where at least three different people – HHS head Alex Azar, Vice-President Mike Pence, and task force coordinator Debbie Brix – can claim authority” (Benbow 2020). Behind the scenes, the task force however spent too much time on closing borders and not enough on getting needed supplies. In January, Klain prophetically warned that “The US government has the tools, talent and team to help fight coronavirus abroad and minimize its impact at home. But the combination of Trump’s paranoia toward experienced government officials, inattention to detail, opinionated rejection of science… and isolationist instincts may prove toxic when it comes to managing a global health security challenge” (Klain 2020). Furthermore, Trump repeatedly undermined the message of members of the Task Force, and representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services. Trump would make statements on the news or Twitter calling on states to open up, or citizens to defy stay-at-home orders, requests to wear masks, etc., that were in direct opposition to the recommendations of his own task force (Benbow 2020). Additionally, his fragile ego and desire for praise or public loyalty in not being contradicted made it difficult at times for task force members to either get him to listen to advice or inform the public accurately. As one commentator noted, “Trump’s campaign of payback against his perceived enemies [in the executive branch] in the impeachment battle sent a warning to public health officials: keep your mouth shut” (Frum 2020). Indeed, some tension developed particularly between him and Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of National Institutes of Health, over who seemed to “call the shots” which became amplified in pro-Trump media outlets. This trait was also manifested in how Trump came to be involved in the Task Force’s public events—and his desire for the limelight—the next key point.

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Trump as Persuader and “No Such Thing as Over-Exposure” The crisis also led to Trump indulging in his penchant for public relations over substance in trying to manage perceptions of the crisis. Though seemingly having the presidential bully pulpit would give him an advantage in message delivery and salience—key elements of persuasion—in such a situation, Trump’s efforts largely had a reverse impact. If anything they showcased his egoistic need for attention more than an ability at public leadership. An early botched effort was a major, primetime Oval Office address to the nation on March 11. After hyping the speech, Trump went on for only ten minutes, and it contained—whether through ad-libbing or simply bad, poorly vetted writing—several major factual errors (Rucker et al. 2020). The president claimed testing was improving and becoming more available, when it wasn’t (yet). He announced his travel ban from Europe would includetrade and goods, and didn’t mention American citizens were exempted; and that insurance companies would waive all copays for both testing and treatment. In fact, the ban only applied to Europeans coming into the United States, and insurers had only agreed to waive testing copays. Immediately, the White House had to embarrassingly walk back these claims, but some damage was already done. Markets tumbled the next day, and panicked Americans abroad desperately sought ways home from Europe, leading to airport chaos and possible further transmissions of the virus. One wonk sarcastically described the speech with the following analogy: it was as if during the Cuban Missile Crisis, John F. Kennedy had announced the United States was putting a naval blockade on Jamaica, not Cuba (Pierce 2020). Two days later, in contrast to his previous sunny claims of improvement, he would declare a national emergency. Later, possibly after seeing the “hit” that Governors such as New York’s Andrew Cuomo were making with their televised press conferences, Trump in March decided to insert himself into the weekly briefings of his Coronavirus Task Force. He also made them daily. At first, Trump’s briefings with the task force appeared to be a success, garnering high ratings and giving updated information on the state of the response. However, as they went on, they suffered from the same features as his rallies, only without the fawning audience and with battles with reporters. Even the Wall Street Journal, a conservative newspaper,

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opined that they became “less about defeating the virus and more about the many feuds of Donald J. Trump.” In particular, “they began as a good idea about how to educate the public about the dangers of the virus, how Americans should change their behavior and what the government is doing to combat it. [But recently] Mr. Trump has concluded they could be a showcase for him. … They last for 90 minutes or more, and Mr. Trump dominates the stage [while] his first-rate health experts have become supporting actors, and barely that” (Wall St. Journal, 2020). The last straw was an appearance on April 23, when Trump, apparently misunderstanding a briefing the team had received earlier in the day, promoted the idea of actually testing whether putting UV light in people’s lungs or injecting them with disinfectants would help. The makers of Lysol immediately came out with warnings against the latter, and he was widely mocked on social media. Trump again walked comments back, claiming he was “sarcastic” and attacked the media for taking him out of context (Egan 2020). Trump’s poll standings also had begun to slip at this point. Surprisingly, Trump finally listened to his advisers and stopped the briefings in late April, after doing over 30. In typical fashion, however, he blamed the media for not covering him accurately and for asking unfair questions. Nevertheless, these antics fit in with Trump’s flawed belief that “there’s no such thing as over-exposure” (e.g., Slater 2005), and that attacking the media would be a hit with the public.

Public Opinion and Media Context Trump’s attempt to dominate the public space, and thus compensate for his administration’s delayed and inadequate response, interacted with the polarized landscape in American public opinion and mass media, discussed especially in Chapter 7. As a result, the nation remained divided on perceptions of the threat itself and how to respond to it. Even relatively benign and thus presumably non-partisan policies like promoting or requiring mask-wearing in public became contentious. Even early on in the pandemic, polls showed a partisan divide. An Ipsos poll in mid-March found that Democrats were more than twice as likely than Republicans to see the coronavirus as an “imminent threat” and though absolute numbers were small, at that point—when only a handful of deaths had occurred—more Democrats were taking precautions like washing hands and changing their travel plans (Reuters 2020). A similar poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation later that month found

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increases in percentages of people taking precautions but large (20-point) gaps between partisans remained. Similarly, views about Trump’s handling of the pandemic were also polarized. An amalgamation of polls on Trump’s handling of the crisis found consistently 80 percent or more of Republicans approved from February to May; conversely, Democrats started out at the mid-30s and dropped to below 20 percent, peaking in late March at the time of Trump’s early press conferences (Bycoffe et al. 2020). Independents started in the 40s, went up to 50 in mid-March, before declining back into the low 40s. Still, the overall trend line was flat to declining. Second, in related fashion, unlike other national crises like the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis or 9/11, Trump received almost no “rally ‘round the flag” effect in the polls where the public patriotically gets behind the president. His general job approval rating did have a brief, roughly 4– 5 point spike, rising to near 50 percent in late March, but—likely due to declining confidence in his handling of the pandemic—it was back down to the low 40s by April (Shepard 2020). In comparison, most world leaders (such as those of Canada, France, Germany, even Italy, and the UK) saw large and lasting approval gains, as did most US governors (Lahut 2020). These trends were likewise driven by the polarized nature of partisan news coverage and fragmented, self-selecting preferences of their audiences (again, see Chapter 7). To some degree, it appears as if people were witnessing different diseases. A study of viewers of Fox, MSNBC, and CNN, the main cable networks, with the first two on different ends of the ideological spectrum, found those who watched MSNBC were far more likely to correctly know a vaccine was a year or more away and the virus was naturally caused than viewers of Fox, with CNN viewers in-between (Pew Research Center 2020a). Fox viewers were also the least likely to believe media had done a decent or good job in coverage (56 percent) than CNN (82) or MSNBC (92). Other polls likewise found Fox viewers were more likely to see the virus as less of a threat and to take it less seriously via precautions than those using other cable and mainstream news (Beauchamp and Anderson 2020). Indeed, another study found those who relied on the president’s task force briefings as their main source were far more likely to believe the crisis was overblown by the media than those relying on national news, local news, or public health officials (Pew Research Center 2020b). Clearly, Republicans and those most likely to take their cues from Trump responded differently. As one political scientist who studies partisanship put it, “Our hyper-polarization is so strong that we don’t even assess a

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potential health crisis in the same way. And so it impedes our ability to address it” (Jennifer McCoy, quoted in Heath 2020).

Elite Reputation and Congressional Relations Trump’s standing with the Washington, DC “establishment” also did not really improve, and may have even worsened. His shifting strategies, erratic public claims and attacks on opponents, etc., continued. Unlike other national crises, as with the public, there was little elite unity behind the president, probably because he hadn’t earned it in the past. One effect of the pandemic, however, did follow past practice: despite divided party control, Congress set aside partisan bickering and quickly passed stimulus and relief legislation: four bills within a month, totaling well over $3 trillion. These measures included direct payments to all taxpayers; additional unemployment benefits to laid-off workers; small business relief; and funding for hospitals and medical supplies. Trump was savvy enough not to oppose them, seeing they aided his electoral prospects, and duly signed them. But here, too, as with other Trump legislative successes, the driving force in policy came from Capitol Hill, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), not Trump’s administration. Such actions were further evidence the “DC pros” felt they had to act as the “adults in the room” because the president, who should be leading, was incapable. Finally, the crisis also exhibited his penchant for unilateral presidential actions, if not shirking accountability, Trump largely prevented congressional oversight of his spending of the stimulus and relief packages. For one, he fired or blocked the Inspectors General in different departments who were newly tasked with monitoring the money so he could appoint others (Wilke and Casias 2020), subverting Congressional legislation through a crafty administrative move.

Conclusion: The Art of Deal, Presidential Power, and a Pandemic In the end, while the crisis continues—and indeed, may not be truly over until a vaccine is found and administered—the effects on the American polity and Trump’s presidency are evident. The bulk of the public has lost faith if not patience with Trump’s actions and credibility regarding the pandemic. One review of polls on public trust during the first two months of the pandemic found that—despite a general decades-long trend

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in declining trust, which may itself partly explain Trump’s rise—most Americans generally had confidence in the government’s ability to handle the crisis and accurately share information about it (Rakich 2020). Yet, big differences emerged regarding who in the government the public trusted: the CDC received scores in the 80 percentile, while only an average of 43 percent trusted Trump, numbers which, like his overall approval rating, stayed flat or slightly declined from early March to mid-April. Granted, Trump’s ratings were no worse than that for Congress or the news media. Still, the point is that not only is Trump’s retrospective or current handling of the crisis poor, more importantly the public has shown little confidence in his ability to communicate or do anything about it. Such reactions are a direct consequence of Trump’s Art of the Deal leadership philosophy that showmanship, and focusing on himself and his messaging, can mold political and public reality. Conversely, Neustadt’s warnings about the limits of “prestige” and popular leadership in the place of policy substance seem ominously more relevant: Events determine audience attention for a President. They also make his [sic] actions more important than his words. When constituents grow conscious of his relevance to them they are already learning – from events. By then his telling will convey no lessons independent of the things he seems to do within the context of those events. (1990, pp. 87, 262)

The ultimate impact of Trump’s shortcomings—if not the real environment itself—may well mean his defeat at the polls in November. But as noted, the partisan nature of American elections, and the fact even a month can be an eternity in politics, mean Trump may yet survive—but to do so, he must show he is up to the task. More importantly, however, the United States has arguably suffered worse at the hands of the virus than its peer nations, further challenging Trump’s notions that America is “great again.” Trump’s handling of the response at the very least shares some of the blame for the poor relative US performance. If we ever needed proof that who the president is at any time makes a difference—and whether presidential persuasion and leadership matters—this case should provide it.

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References Abramowitz, A. (2010). The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press. Beauchamp, Z., & Anderson, C. (2020, March 27). New Poll Finds Fox News Viewers Think the Coronavirus Threat Is Exaggerated. Vox. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/27/21195940/cor onavirus-fox-news-poll-republicans-trump. Centers for Disease Control. (n.d.). Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/cov id19/index.htm. Cook, N., & Diamond, D. (2020, March 31). Trump’s Darwinian Approach to Federalism. Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/31/gov ernors-trump-coronavirus-156875. Dalton, R. J. (2013). The Apartisan American: Dealignment and Changing Electoral Politics. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Davis, J. W. (2000). The Case against the Current Primary-Centered System. In R. E. DiClerico & J. W. Davis (Eds.), Choosing Our Choices: Debating the Presidential Nominating Process, Lanham, MD (pp. 27–50). Egan, L. (2020, April 24). Lysol Manufacturer Warns Against Internal Use of Disinfectants After Trump Comments. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews. com/politics/donald-trump/lysol-manufacturer-warns-against-internal-useafter-trump-comments-n1191586. Frum, D. (2020, April 8). This Is Trump’s Fault. The Atlantic. https://www. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/americans-are-paying-the-price-fortrumps-failures/609532/. Gainous, J., & Wagner, K. M. (2013). Tweeting to Power: The Social Media Revolution in American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Gallup. (2019, January 18). “Trump Approval Sets Record for Polarization”. https://news.gallup.com/poll/245996/trump-job-approval-sets-newrecord-polarization.aspx. Heath, B. (2020, March 6). Americans Divided on Party Lines Over Risk from Coronavirus. Reuters/IPSOS Poll. https://www.reuters.com/article/ushealth-coronavirus-usa-polarization-idUSKBN20T2O3. Jones, J. M. (2019, June 21). New High in US Say Immigration is Most Important Problem. Gallup.com. https://news.gallup.com/poll/259103/ new-high-say-immigration-important-problem.aspx. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2020, March 17). KFF Coronavirus Poll: March 2020. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-cor onavirus-poll-march-2020/. Klain, R. (2020, January 30). Coronavirus Is Coming—And America Isn’t Ready. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/ now-trump-needs-deep-state-fight-coronavirus/605752/.

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Lahut, J. (2020, April 20). Trump Is Seeing the Shortest ‘Rally ‘Round the Flag’ Effect of Any US President While Other World Leaders Get a Coronavirus Bump. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-app roval-minimal-covid-coronavirus-rally-around-the-flag-bump-2020-4. Leibovich, M. (2019). How Lindsey Graham Went from Trump Skeptic to Trump Sidekick. New York Times Magazine, 25. https://www.nytimes.com/ 2019/02/25/magazine/lindsey-graham-what-happened-trump.html. Morris, I. L. (2010). The American Presidency: An Analytical Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. Neustadt, R. E. (1960). Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York: Wiley. Neustadt, R. E. (1990). Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Free Press. Packer, G. (2020, June). We Are Living in a Failed State. The Atlantic Monthly. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underl ying-conditions/610261/. Pew Research Center. (2020a, April 1). Cable TV and Covid-19: How Americans Perceive the Outbreak and View Media Coverage Differ by Main News Source. https://www.journalism.org/2020/04/01/cable-tv-and-covid-19-how-ame ricans-perceive-the-outbreak-and-view-media-coverage-differ-by-main-newssource/. Pew Research Center. (2020b, May 20). Americans Who Rely Most on the White House for Covid-19 News More Likely to Downplay the Pandemic. https://www.journalism.org/2020/05/20/americans-who-rely-most-onwhite-house-for-covid-19-news-more-likely-to-downplay-the-pandemic/. Pierce, C. (2020, March 12). Trump’s Coronavirus Speech Was a Cry for Help. Esquire. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a31432545/presid ent-trump-coronavirus-speech/. Rakich, N. (2020, April 16). Who Do Americans Most Trust on Covid19? FiveThirtyEight. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-trustthe-cdc-on-covid-19-trump-not-so-much/. Romano, A. (2020, April 12). New Investigation Reveals Trump Ignored Experts on Covid-19 for Months. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2020/4/12/ 21218305/trump-ignored-coronavirus-warnings. Rose, R. (1991). The Postmodern President: George Bush Meets the World. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House. Rucker, P., Parker, A., & Dawsey, J. (2020, March 11). Ten Minutes at the Teleprompter: Inside Trump’s Failed Attempt to Calm Coronavirus Fears. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-corona virus-teleprompter-speech/2020/03/12/81bc8a3a-647a-11ea-acca-80c22b bee96f_story.html. Skelley, G. (2019, March 28). Trump’s Approval Rating is Remarkably Stable. Is that Weird or the New Normal? Five Thirty Eight. https://fivethirtyeight.

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com/features/trumps-approval-rating-is-incredibly-steady-is-that-weird-orthe-new-normal/. Shepard, S. (2020, April 8). The Briefings Aren’t Working: Trump’s Approval Rating Takes a Dip. Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/08/ trump-approval-ratings-coronavirus-176105. Wall St. Journal (Editorial Board). (2020, April 8). Trump’s Wasted Briefings: Sessions Have Become a Boring Show of President v. the Press. Wall St. Journal (online). https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-wasted-briefings11586389028. White, B. & Shepard, S. (2019, March 21). How Trump is on Track for a 2020 Landslide. Politico. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/21/ trump-economy-election-1230495. Accessed December 14, 2019. Wilke, C., & Casias, A. (2020, April 7). Trump Removes Inspector General Overseeing $2 Trillion Coronavirus Relief Package Days After He Was Appointed. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/07/coronavirus-relief-trump-rem oves-inspector-general-overseeing-2-trillion-package.html.

Name Index

A Acosta, Alex, 71 Amash, Justin, 27 “Anonymous” (author), 26, 27 New York Times , 26 B Bannon, Steve, 65, 70, 96 Biden, Joe, 94, 121, 124 Bolton, John, 50, 65, 94, 122 and Hanoi Summit, 50 Bush, George H.W. legislative success of, 82 Bush, George W., 59, 72, 92 Iraq War and, 18 Bush, Jeb, 26 C Carson, Ben, 68, 71 Carter, Jimmy, 36, 61 Camp David Accords and, 50 legislative success of, 15

Clinton, Bill, 12 Lewinsky scandal and, 94 performance in office of, 26, 116 Clinton, Hillary, 16, 26, 59, 116 Collins, Susan, 45, 84, 93 health care vote and, 34 support for Trump, 85 Comstock, Barbara, 94 Corker, Bob, 27, 84, 93, 94 support for Trump, 84 Cruz, Ted, 26, 84, 116 support for Trump, 84

D DeVos, Betsy, 68 Dingell, Debbie, 35 Dingell, John, 35

E Eisenhower, Dwight D., 91, 101, 104

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. M. Schaefer, Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4

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NAME INDEX

F Flake, Jeff, 27, 84, 93, 94 support for Trump, 84 Forbes, Steve, 115

G Graham, Lindsey, 93 Grant, Ulysses S. ranking, by scholars, 13

Kushner, Jared, 65, 66, 123

L Lincoln, Abraham, 5 ranking, by scholars, 13 Love, Mia, 94

J Jackson, Dr. Ronny, 29, 71 Jackson, Jesse, 115 Jones, Doug, 36

M Manchin, Joe, 36 Mattis, Gen. James, 30, 62, 94 McCain, John, 28, 29, 45, 84, 93 health care and, 29, 46 health care vote and, 29 Trump and, 28, 29, 46, 84 Trump attacks on, 28 McCaskill, Claire, 95 McConnell, Mitch, 45, 93, 128 failure to repeal Obamacare, 45 as party leader, 45, 93 McSally, Martha, 85, 94 Mnuchin, Steve, 75 Murkowski, Lisa, 45 health care vote and, 34 relations with Trump and, 34, 45

K Kavanaugh, Brett, 29 Kelly, Gen. John, 65, 67, 70, 94 Kennedy, John F., 104, 125 legislative success of, 15 Kim Jong Un, 6, 42, 44, 48, 53, 110 and Hanoi Summit, 49, 52 negotiation style of, 52 nuclear program and, 17 relations with Trump and, 42, 48 as “Rocket Man,” (Trump taunt), 49 and Singapore Summit, 49 summit meetings with Trump and, 49

N Neustadt, Richard, 110–117 administrative presidency and, 62 bargaining model, 4, 113 case study approach of, 42 elite support and, 4 executive action and, 8 “no place for amateurs”, 58 personal focus on presidency of, 62 persuasion, 110, 117 persuasion, power of, and, 9 political parties, as source of presidential support, and, 91 political science and, 8, 111, 116, 117

H Harding, Warren ranking, by scholars, 13 Heitkamp, Heidi, 95 Hoover, Herbert ranking, by scholars, 13 Huckabee Sanders, Sarah, 31, 96 Hussein, Saddam, 12

NAME INDEX

135

popular support and, 4 presidential power and, 2, 4, 6, 8 presidential studies and, 2, 115, 116 staffing philosophy of, 58 Nielsen, Kirstjen, 66 Nixon, Richard, 15, 31, 32, 36, 60, 62, 68 “enemies list” and (cross ref w/Trump’s), 31 ranking, by scholars, 13 Watergate and, 31, 74, 94

support for Trump, 94 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 7, 58, 60, 86, 112 competitive model of staffing, 60 legislative success of, 16 model for Neustadt, 113 staffing philosophy of, 58, 60 Roosevelts (TR & FDR) ranking, by scholars, 13 Rubio, Marco, 26, 84, 116 Ryan, Paul, 27, 94

O Obama, Barack, 14, 97 health care, and/“Obamacare” and, 6, 12 Obamacare and, 12, 14, 28, 44, 51, 59, 68, 69, 110, 115 performance in office of, 15, 36

S Sandford, Mark, 27 Sasse, Ben, 27, 93 Schumer, Chuck, 29, 83 government shutdown (2018-19) and, 83 Shanahan, Patrick, 71 Sharpton, Al, 115 Spicer, Sean, 31, 70 Steyer, Tom, 115

P Paul, Rand, 84, 94 Pelosi, Nancy, 29, 47, 53, 82, 117, 128 government shutdown (2018-19) and, 82 relations with Trump and, 117 Perry, Rick, 68 Porter, Rob, 31 Price, Tom, 68 Priebus, Reince, 62, 64 Pruitt, Scott, 68, 71 Puzder, Andrew, 71

R Reagan, Ronald, 93, 117 legislative success of, 82 Robertson, Pat, 115 Romney, Mitt, 93, 94 impeachment vote, 94

T Taylor, Maury, 115 Tester, Jon, 28–30, 36 Trump and, 29 Veterans Affairs Dept. and, 29, 71 Tillerson, Rex, 30, 64, 66, 73 Truman, Harry S., 3, 12, 86 legislative success of, 16 relations with Congress, 12, 91 Trump, Donald J., 110–118 administrative presidency and, 100 and American Health Care Act, 45 The Art of the Deal , 8 as chief executive, 6 bargaining or negotiation, 42 border wall and, 17, 42, 46, 75 campaign promises of, 70 “coercive negotiation” style of, 8

136

NAME INDEX

decision making style, 69 denuclearization and, 51 elite support and, 84, 86 executive action and, 103 executive orders and, 73 Fox News Network and, 96 global opinion of, 17 Government shutdown (2019), 46, 58, 75 impeachment of, 27, 85 independents, political, and, 36 John McCain, and, 28, 45, 84 Jon Tester, and, 28, 29 legislative success of, 15, 101, 128 loyalty demands and, 66, 68 loyalty v. competence tradeoff, 58, 67 lying and, 33 management philosophy of, 66, 80 media relations and, 105 negotiation skill of, 8, 43, 49 new media environment and, 90 North Korea and, 42, 48–50, 52, 58, 80, 82 Obamacare and, 42, 44, 46 as outlier, 115, 117 partisanship and, 99, 111 performance in office of, 8, 11, 15, 18, 20, 24, 28, 34, 43, 49, 86, 90, 105, 116 persona, 6, 64, 68

personal favorability and, 33 presidential studies and, 2, 116 public opinion of, 33, 47 ranking, by scholars, 8, 18, 45, 104 relations with Mexico and, 116 relations with Russia and, 94 relation with bureaucracy, 64 Republican Party and, 7 Republican public and, 27, 33, 122 social media and, 82, 93, 96, 101, 126 summit with Kim, 6, 42, 44, 110 travel ban and, 70 treatment of subordinates, 122 turbulent term of, 2 Twitter use, 82, 98, 117 unilateral presidency and, 111 Trump, Ivanka, 66 W Washington, George ranking, by scholars, 31 Williamson, Marianne, 115 Y Yang, Andrew, 115 Z Zinke, Ryan, 45, 71

Place, Events and Subject Index

A American Health Care Act, 45 American Health Freedom Act, 45 Art of the Deal (Trump), 8, 20, 43, 48, 64, 79, 129

G Government shutdown, 6, 34, 44, 75, 103, 110 Government shutdown (2018–19), 46, 58

B Border wall, 6, 17, 42, 44, 46, 58, 75 Border wall emergency, 44, 110, 115 Border wall emergency declaration, 94

I Impeachment of Donald Trump, 27, 85 Iraq War, 18 and George W. Bush, 12

C Camp David Accords, 50 Criminal Justice reform (bill), 111, 116

E Election of 2018, 6 Election of 2020, 7 Emancipation Proclamation, 101

J Japanese-American internment during WWII, 101 M Mexico, 14, 17, 111, 116 N nominating contests

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. M. Schaefer, Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4

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1984, 115 1988, 115 1996, 115 2004, 115 2020, 115 North Korea, 17, 42, 44, 48–52, 73, 110 nuclear program, 17, 42, 52 US relations with, 48, 50 O Obamacare, 12, 14, 28, 42, 44, 46, 51, 59, 68, 69, 82, 110, 115

T Trade, 7, 8, 17, 20, 43, 81, 85, 94, 111, 116, 122, 125 with China, and N. America, 17, 20, 85 travel ban, 70, 101

V Veterans Affairs, Dept. of, 29, 71

W Watergate scandal, 59, 99

Subject Index

A Administrative presidency, 62, 90, 103

B Bargaining, 4–6, 8, 9, 110, 112, 113, 117 Bargaining model, 42 Bureaucracy, presidential control of budget cuts, and, 7, 72, 73 Trump and, 6

C case study approach outliers, as good for science, 115 Chief Executive Role, 58 “Chief Politician” role, 24 “coercive negotiation” (Trump), 8 Congressional Democrats, 93 Criminal Justice reform (bill), 18, 66, 83

D “Deconstructing the Administrative State” (Bannon), 72–74 Denuclearization (Korean Penninsula), 51 direct executive action, 111

E elite support, 86, 94 emergency declarations, 48 executive agreements, 100 executive orders, 70, 73, 100, 101

F Facebook, 97 Trump and, 97 Fox News Network, 96 “Foxocracy” (Tobin Smith), 97

G “Going Public” (Kernell), 96

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. M. Schaefer, Presidential Power Meets the Art of the Deal, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56029-4

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SUBJECT INDEX

Google, 97, 98 Greatness, Presidential, 12, 13, 19

H health care legislation, 12

L leadership, presidential, 113

M Mass Media trust in, 97 use, partisan divide, 126 view of, as function of Trump support, 71 most admired man (Gallup poll), 36

N Negotiation, 8, 9, 20, 42–44, 47, 49, 51–53, 110 New media environment, 90 “News Grazing” (Forgette), 96, 99

O “Obamacare repeal-and-replace”, 6 Objective or straight news, 96, 98 “outsider” politicians/presidential candidates, 111

P Partisanship elite, 92, 97 mass, 92 polarization, 90, 97 unity, in Congress, 114 party-in-the-electorate. See Partisanship, mass

party-in-the-government. See Partisanship, elite Performance, presidential, 12–14, 19, 110 persuasion, 3, 9, 110, 113 Persuasion, power of, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 19, 24, 25, 28, 48, 52, 61, 72, 90, 91, 94, 96, 101, 103, 104, 125, 129 Political parties, 91 Political science, 91, 104 Neustadt and, 8, 117 Trump and, 18, 117 power of persuasion, 5, 9 power, presidential, 3–5, 8, 9 presidential approval ratings, 33, 92 Presidential studies, 115 interpretive/historical approach, 112, 113 prestige. See public support Prestige (popular standing), 4 proclamations, 100 public support, 35, 43, 86, 90, 110 R Recess Appointments and acting heads, 69 Republican Party in Congress, 14, 27, 91, 93, 104 congressional leadership, 34, 35 Trump and, 26–28, 92 reputation. See elite support Reputation (elite standing), 4 “Rhetorical Presidency” (Tulis), 96 S Self-selection bias (media use), 98 “skinny repeal” of Obamacare, 44 Social media, 65, 82, 93, 96–98, 101, 126 “The Squad”, 93

SUBJECT INDEX

141

Staffing, Presidential and White House Chief of Staff and, 72 collegial model, 60, 61 competitive model, 65 FDR and, 65 hierarchical model, 60 Trump turnover, 27

U Unilateral presidency, 8, 111 Unpredictability (Trump and Kim), 53

T “Trumpscore” (fivethirtyeight.com), 84 Twitter, 27, 29, 33, 47, 48, 67, 73, 93, 96–98, 124

W “Whipsaw of Party” (Oppenheimer), 95 White House Chief of Staff, 61, 64, 67, 70. See also Kelly, Gen. John