The Small Presidency: Let’s Give It Another Try
Photo Credit: National ReviewAction is something Americans of both parties demand of their presidents these days. This is natural for Democrats, whose heritage is all action, starting with Franklin Roosevelt and his Hundred Days. But Republicans like energy and a big executive as well. Over the course of the campaign this past year, any number of political stars, including Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana, argued that only an energetic candidate would be up to the job of managing the U.S. fiscal crisis. Mitt Romney worked hard to let voters know his party could beat the Democrats in the legislative arena. He swore up and down that, à la Roosevelt, he would get off to a running start, sending five bills to Congress and signing five executive orders on his first day in the Oval Office.
The Grand Old Party’s abiding affection for a “bigger and better” presidency isn’t entirely logical. After all, the Obama presidency commenced with an effort to reenact the Hundred Days. Yet President Obama’s first-term economic performance itself was not “big” but mediocre, tiny even. Perhaps Republicans should consider whether inaction on the part of the White House can be desirable. Perhaps, led by Republicans, the United States could benefit from trying out an unfashionable idea: the small presidency.
Evidence from a near-forgotten period, the early 1920s, instructs us. In those days the country was suffering economic turmoil similar to our own. Because of a crisis — World War I — the government had intruded in business and financial markets in unprecedented fashion, nationalizing the railroads, shutting down the stock market, and entering the debt market with war bonds.
Central bankers warned that the only reason the government’s large debt hadn’t set off a fiscal apocalypse was that interest rates had not yet commenced what they deemed an inevitable rise. Angry veterans, many of them disabled, were having trouble finding jobs, and many people assumed a new federal entitlement, veteran pensions, would be established within the year. A recent and active president, Theodore Roosevelt, had taught the nation that the Oval Office was a “bully pulpit.”
But this was not the view of the two candidates on the 1920 Republican ticket, Warren Harding of Ohio and Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts. The pair coolly campaigned on the humdrum, underwhelming motto of “normalcy,” meaning a reduction in uncertainty. The White House was no bully pulpit; the Republican elephant should not be an elephant in a china shop. After winning the presidency, Harding continued to endorse inaction. “No altered system will work a miracle,” Harding told the crowds at his March 1921 inauguration. “Any wild experiment will only add to the confusion. Our best assurance lies in efficient administration of the proven system.” Harding wanted to ensure that government did less so that commerce might enjoy free range. He pushed for and got tax cuts for businesses hindered by large levies, and he readied a plan to privatize naval oil reserves.
Read more from this story HERE.
Sarah Palin, who has a history of confronting corrupt party bosses, probably shocked the establishment again this weekend with her suggestion that “fighting for power” and “not doing the will of the people” may lead to the formation of a viable third party. She used the Republican Party’s replacement of the Whigs in the 19th century as such an example.
The libertarian Republican presidential candidate says he’s declined an opportunity to speak at the Republican National Convention in Tampa because Mitt Romney’s campaign imposed two conditions on any Paul speech — that it be reviewed by the nominee-to-be’s team and that it include an endorsement without hesitation or reservation.
“I know that Romney’s bad. But first we get Obama out. Then we’ll hold Romney’s feet to the fire.” That’s one of the most common things I hear from self-blinkered GOP partisans hacking for the artificially-engineered Romney nomination. They angrily pretend that rank and file conservatives have no choice but to obey the “eyes wide shut” command emanating from the GOP’s elitist faction party bosses.
As a former Navy enlisted man, West Point graduate, and former Army officer, I appreciate what Governor Mike Huckabee wrote to his supporters this past week. Military men never leave their wounded on the battlefield. And that is what has happened with the embattled Congressman Todd Akin, running for a Senate seat against Democrat Claire McCaskill in Missouri.
The Republican National Convention Rules Committee voted 63-38 to approve a new rule allowing granting the Republican National Committee — and Mitt Romney — sweeping new powers to amend the governing document of the GOP.
Mike Huckabee participated in a conference call Friday night with hundreds of Baptist pastors and Christian talk radio hosts in Missouri that was organized to coordinate a robust defense of Rep. Todd Akin as he faces pressure from Washington Republicans to drop his Senate bid against Democrat Claire McCaskill. Akin told reporters in St. Louis today that he would not quit the race.