The Resolute Group: Advancing the Atlantic Alliance

The most powerful man in the World, Leader of the Western World. These descriptions fit just one man; he who is elected President of the United States. In all, only forty‑two men can truly know quite how it feels to be granted the title, and of those, barely a hand full could comprehend the incredible pressures that today accompany the office. Every four years, the American people decide in whom to place supreme trust, for that is ultimately what is at stake. But what do the public want from their President ? What do they expect from their leaders? Furthermore, what do the Presidents themselves want or expect from their tenure? Upon what is our perception of the Presidency based? It is these three questions that I intend to address in this work. I intend to concentrate on the growth of the office, the portrayal of the Presidency in the media, and finally on the notion of perception and reality in today's political arena. I intend to demonstrate what the American public expect from their President. What makes for a successful Presidency and why so many appear to fail in the job? Further, I intend to divulge the feelings of those who have occupied the Oval Office and reveal the Presidents' own opinions on the office. This shall be achieved by drawing on Presidential Memoirs and biographies. With the importance of media manipulation in America, I will be looking at the way successful Presidents have used and been used by the various elements of the American media. From radio broadcasts in the l 930's to electronic town hall meetings of the 1990s, how successful have Presidents been at getting their message across to an increasingly hostile Press Corps ?

I shall also be looking extensively at the manner in which the Presidency is portrayed in American cinema. In particular l shall compare and contrast the representations of two Presidents, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, in the two films made by Oliver Stone. How accurate a portrait do they paint of the late Chief Executives? Having examined all of these criteria, I shall ask how they are impacting upon the Presidency of Bill Clinton. Does the media image of the Presidency create an image to be fulfilled, or is the opposite true ? What is the state of the office today? Finally have the sins of the past made the Presidency an impossible job for any aspiring politician of tomorrow?

John Kenneth Galbraith defined the American Economy by observing that “such are the aerodynamics and the wing‑loading of the bumblebee that, in practice, it cannot fly. It does, and the knowledge that it defies the authority of Isaac Newton and Orville Wright must keep the bee in constant fear of a crack up.”[i] Such a comparison is more than appropriate for the American political system, for it has been relatively stable for over two hundred years, despite the fact that American society and the economy have been unstable. In many ways American democracy is based upon contradictory notions; How is it possible to balance free thought and free choice with the requirements of public order? All of the contradictions in the American political system find their roots in that most venerable of sources; the American Constitution. Most governments owe their allegiance to a constitution of sorts, though rarely are they a matter of importance in the every day business of governing. This is not the case in the United States of America. The Constitution has not only remained virtually unaltered since 1789, but also continues to play an essential role in the formulation of policy in today's political arena. It is the Constitution to which support is pledged and cries of Un‑Constitutionality carry with them the stigma of treachery.

The system of government which continues to this day in the United States was established within the Constitution. The Founding Fathers deemed that the nation be ruled by a balanced system of government. In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison stated that it was intended to create a system of government which would "derive all of its powers directly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their office for a limited period."[ii]This would be a truly representative Republic, except that women and blacks and many ordinary citizens were denied the vote. The first organ of government to be discussed in the Constitution was the House of Representatives. This was to be the chamber of the people of the United States and would be responsible for the collection of taxes. Congressmen would be elected in relation to the population of the State and would serve for a period of two years. The chamber would also be the organ of impeachment for elected officials. The United States' Senate was deemed to be the chamber which would represent the interests of the individual States of the Union. Two Senators would be elected from each State and would serve for a period of six years. it would be the duty of the Senate to try all cases of impeachment, with a two‑thirds majority required for a conviction. It would be Congress that had the power to declare war, to raise armies, maintain a navy, create a post office and to coin money.

“The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”[iii] The President would be Commander‑In-Chief of the Army and Navy, would have the power to make treaties, appoint ambassadors and Supreme Court Judges. It should be noted that the Presidency was intended as a secondary position, with the United States' Congress exercising ultimate control over the Nation. With the past problems of a Monarchy gone out of control, the last thing the new Nation wanted was another icon in charge. That this was the intention is clear from the American Constitution; The Congress is dealt with in Article One, but the Presidency is relegated to Article Two. Clearly then, the emphasis lay with the new Congressional body that was to be established. Over the years power has ebbed and flowed between the two competing bodies of the Presidency and the Congress. Ultimately however, as President Nixon found to his cost, the greatest power lies in Congress.

America, as President Clinton boasted in his Inaugural Address, is “the world's oldest democracy.”[iv]But how democratic is the United States of America ? Democracy is based on the notion of dispersed political power. “Excessive concentration of power in the hands of one individual or group implies not democracy, but autocracy or oligarchy.”[v] In order therefore to address the question of "How democratic is the American regime?" we must firstly address the question of ‘Who governs in the United States of America?’ In ‘The Power Elite’, C. Wright Mills defined American political life as being dominated by a “triangle of power”[vi]created by “corporate leaders, top military officers and a handful of political leaders.”[vii]This establishment, so Mills' theory went, possesses great advantages in wealth, status and political power and thus manipulates the system of government. This notion of a powerful minority, with a coincidence of interest found its defining moment in January 1961 when President Eisenhower warned against it in his Farewell Address to the Nation. “We must guard against the unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, of the Military Industrial Complex. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or our democratic processes.”[viii]

Alternatively however, others have argued that political resources are so diverse and widely scattered in America that no single elite can hold a monopoly on them, and thus on power. That is not to suggest the non‑existence of elites, merely that rather than there being just one, there are perhaps a number of them. Alas this dispute may never be satisfactorily resolved, for power can often be asserted covertly, out of view of those who would make it their affair to seek the sources of national power. In the final analysis therefore it seems likely that a definitive response to the question of ‘Who really rules the United States of America’, is likely to remain eternally elusive.

The role of America's Chief Executive evolved over a number of years. In the beginning, the Founding Fathers were perhaps more aware of what they did not want than what they did want. One of the earliest defining moments in the evolution of the American Presidency came in The Federalist Papers. In Number 69 Alexander Hamilton revealed his opinion of how the Chief Executive should operate, how he should be removed from office and how the Presidency would differ from the English Monarchy. This final point is perhaps Hamilton's most revealing notion, for surely it demonstrates the true line of thought at that moment in history. Having gained independence from one all‑powerful monarchy, America did not wish merely to create another in its place. The Presidency would be a powerful office, but it would be kept in check. It would be answerable to the people through their representatives in Congress. Distinct measures were established to enable the removal of any President who contravened such rules as “treason, bribery or other such high crimes or misdemeanor.”[ix]

Every privilege and power granted to the President was to be held in check by Congressional Oversight and was contrasted with the supreme power of the King of Great Britain. That Hamilton does this reinforces the notion of creating a powerful office whilst installing a powerful system of checks and balances to prevent Executive excess. Even the President's role as Commander‑In‑Chief of the Armed Forces is deemed to be inferior to the King of England's comparable role. It would “amount to nothing more than the supreme command and the direction of the Military and Naval Forces, as First General and Admiral of the Confederacy; whilst the powers of the King extend to the declaration of war and to the raising of fleets, all which the Constitution would appertain to the legislature.”[x]

Hamilton concluded his paper with a summary of the President's powers vis-à-vis the powers of the British Monarch. “'The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people for four years; the King of Great Britain is a perpetual and hereditary Prince. The one would be amenable to personal punishment; the other is sacred and inviolable. The one would have a qualified negative effect upon the acts of the legislative body; the other has an absolute negative effect. The one would have the right to command military forces of the Nation: the other in addition possesses that of declaring war, and of raising armies by his own authority. The one has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the other is the supreme head of the national church.”[xi]The quality of the Presidents has varied tremendously. Some have been great men such as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Others however have been failures and disappointments and some have grown greatly whilst in office. The Presidency however has usually defied simple generalizations and easy explanations about why some succeed in its duties whilst others fail.

During the two centuries that the United States has functioned as a democracy, the institution of the Presidency has emerged as the central focus of the nation's political affairs. Throughout the crises that have confronted Americans over this period, from the Civil War to the Great Depression, the Presidents have become the personification of what the United States stands for and seeks to be. The forty‑two men who have sat in the Oval Office therefore represent an important source of continuity and confidence as the citizens of the United States contemplate their government and its affairs.As the Nation's Chief Diplomat, the President is responsible for the formulation of foreign policy. He appoints and supervises a large diplomatic corps, negotiates treaties with other Nations, administers foreign aid and officially receives World Leaders. He will attend many international meetings and peace conferences, making visits to foreign countries as a sign of goodwill ambassador of the United States. The President must also discharge the contradictory roles of serving as the bipartisan spokesman for the American people as a whole while also being the leader of a political party. He is also the Chief of State, who participates in a variety of ceremonial activities and embodies the values of the Nation when he speaks on its behalf. At times of foreign crisis, during two World Wars and the Cold War, the President has emerged as a leader of the World's democratic forces.

The Presidency and the young United States did not seem destined for world leadership when the office was created during the 1787 Constitutional Convention. At the time, the Nation was a small, rural, predominantly agricultural republic that consisted of thirteen states along the eastern seaboard of North America. The population stood at four million in a country that had virtually no weight in world affairs. Two centuries later the United States has been transformed into an urban, industrial Nation of fifty States. The number of Americans stands above two hundred and fifty million and the country has become a superpower in economic, political and military terms. This expansion of the Nation can hardly have been envisioned when George Washington took his oath of office at New York City Hall in 1789 The experiment in Democratic Government, based on the new American Constitution, depended upon Washington's willingness to accept the Office of President. The first President was an aristocrat, but he approached the Office without seeking exalted status. Washington however was held in such high esteem that proposals were made to refer to him as “His Highness, The President of the United States, Protector of Rights of the same.”[xii]Thankfully anti‑monarchists in Congress prevailed and the title was abbreviated to its modern day form. As the first to hold the office, everything Washington did created precedents. In the eight years that followed, he defined the institution that the American Constitution had only outlined in the broadest terms.

George Washington enabled the new republic to survive its early years. He withstood the instability of the fledgling economy and avoided difflculties with the more powerful nations of Europe. Washington asserted his authority in areas where the Constitution did not specify whether the Congress or the President was to act, and set the precedent of standing down after two terms in offlce. Most important of all, he laid the basis for a National Government. Washington supplied what the Articles of Confederation had lacked; a strong President not tied to the legislative branch, but still part of the national constitutional system.The following Chief Executives added their own contributions to the evolving institution of Presidency. John Adams' nomination of John Marshall to Supreme Court was a decisive step in the development of the judiciary as a force in national life. The Louisiana Purchase during Thomas Jefferson's administration, doubled the size of the United States and showed how the powers of the office could be stretched to take advantage of such historic opportunities. Work on that most symbolic aspect of Presidential status, The White House, began in 1792 after a competition to design the Presidential home had been won by James Hoban, an Irishman then living in Charleston, South Carolina. Construction was slow and for many years the entrances were reached by temporary wooden steps and the roof leaked. George Washington may have been the first President but he never lived in the White House.

The first occupant was President Jonn Adams who assumed residency in 1800, although Thomas Jefferson was the first President to spend a full term in yhe White House. On the night of August 23, 1814, the White House was torched by British soidiers, with only the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington surviving. The scene in the capital was desolate. “The appearance of our public buildings is enough to make one cut his throat.”[xiii]Since its conception, inhabilants have never been permitted to forget that it is the people's house, only on loan to the Presidents. From the beginning, the public has had a freedom of access such as allowed in no royal palace or executive mansion anywhere else.All Presidents have come to put a stamp on their temporary home. Monroe added the circular Southern Portico, Andrew Jackson added the Northern Portico. The famous Oval Office was added during construction of the West Wing in l902. The West Wing was built to replace extensive conservatories which had been erected in 1850. President Truman added a second floor balcony to the Southern Portico, and had the entire interior gutted and re‑buiit in l949. When President Kennedy moved into the White House in 1961, the mansion had fallen into a state of disrepair. Under the exquisite eye of the First Lady Jacqueiine Bouvier Kennedy, the mansion was redecorated and shown to the Nation in an historic television tour by the First Lady herself. “Ultimately however, tth four walls, measuring 165 feet from East to West and 85 feet from North to South have retained their original dimensions and placement against every intrusion and change in occupanis.”[xiv]

The Presidents from Andrew Jackson through to James Buchanan confronted the issues that population expallsion and social problems presented; The relationship of the Federal Government to the States and the balance of sectional power. These dilemmas expressed themselves in the turbulent politics of the Pre‑Civil War era. Added to this mix of concems was the divisive issue of slavery. Where did the power reside to deal with this subject? Were the States sovereign and able to determine what their society and life style should be? Did the power to regulate slavery or abolish human bondage lie with the National Government? The President became a focal point for the resolution of these problems as the North and South clashed over the South’s “peculiar institutution”[xv]during the 1840's and 1850's. As ten new States joined the Union, the Wcstern influence on the Presidency grew. Andrew Jackson was the first Westerner to occupy thc While House, and three other Chief Executives from the regiun followed him in the next fifteen years; William Henry Harrison, James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor. Thesc Presidents enhanced the drive West and then grappled with the consequences for the slavery issue. Texas was a problem for Preridents Van Buren and Tyler. President Polk came into office as an advocate of expansion, which he achieved through war and diplomacy, that pushed American boundaries to the Pacific coast. The aftermath of the Mexican War shaped the Presidencies of Zaehary Taylor and Miliard Fillmore. During the 1850's Presidents Pierce and Buehanan sought to find ways to end social turmoil. It was beeoming evident that the slavery issue was straining the ties that bound thc Nation together.

By the 1860s the people of the United States found it impossible to resolve the slavery problem without Civil War. Abraham Lincoln and the new Republican Party, wanted to put slavery on the road to eventual extinction. His election ensured that the Soulh would succeed from the Union. Lincoln dealt with this issue in his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861; “Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that their property and personal securily are to be endangered . There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension...I have no purpose...to interfere with slavery in the states where it exists..I hold that in contemplation of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual...no government proper ever had a provision for its own termination. Physically speaking we cannot separate. In your hands not mine is the momentous issue of Civil War. You can have no conflict without being yourself the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the solemn one to ‘preserve protect and defend it’ ”.[xvi]By quoting his oath of office, Lincoln justified the war that was to come in terrns of defending the Union itself from self‑destruction. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.”[xvii]Enemies the warring parties would become, but Lincoln’s Presidential leadership helped to preserve the Union and end slavery. After Lincoln’s assassination in 1856, the task of reconstruction fell to Andrew Johnson. His inability to understand the motives and attitudes of the Northern Republicans contributed to the bitter period that was to follow.

The institution of the Presidency grew with the Nation. The United States became a World Power by 1900, with a consequent growth of the role of President as a diplomatic leader and as Commander‑In‑Chief of the Nation's Armed Forces. The World Wars of this century provided the stimulants to the rise of what Arthur Schlesinger has called “the Imperial Presidency.”[xviii]This fundamental evolution of the modern Presidency began at the turn of the Twentieth Century when the Nation experienced a period of political reform and moral uplift, known as the Progressive Era. “In Wilson 's first term, Progressivism reached its zenith. The Progressive age set at the beginning of the Twentieth Century a framework within which American politics would still function near the end of the century.”[xix]Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson dealt with the issue to which the National Government should regulate an industrial society in order to relieve social injustice. “Wilson blended liberal political ideology and economic imperatives into a quest for international order.”[xx]Roosevelt and Wilson relied on the power of the Federal Government to deal with a wide range of social problems. All was not perfect within the Progressive movement however; “the age of efficiency brought in a society in which more of the decisions affecting people’s lives were made by faceless policy makers.” [xxi]

The emergence of the strong Presidency has taken place for a number of reasons; Faced with the chance to achieve goals that were in the National Interest, the Presidents have turned to powers that were implied but not expressly stated in the Constitution. As both Domestic and Foreign demands on the Government increased. the Cabinet Departments were enlarged or newly established to meet these expanding role requirements. Correspondingly, the size of the Presidential staff grew as special aides and assistants were added to support his work. During the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, as the economy became industrialized and the population urbanized, regulatory agencies in the Executive Branch proliferated to deal with the growing complexities and inequities of National life. Since 1900, the President's political, economic, military and diplomatic powers have expanded beyond what predecessors of a century ago could have imagined. The size of the Executive Branch has grown dramatically; In 1900 there were only “a few dozen people in the While House entourage, costing, less than a few hundred thousand dollars a year.” [xxii]The complexities of the office in an era of instant communications require hundreds of special advisers at the White House. The President has become a world figure whose health, opinions and movements can affect economic markets and political events. “The Dow Jones index on Wall Street fell over 21.16 points upon the news of President Kennedy's assassination, wiping out about $15 billion in paper values on the New York Stock Exchange.” [xxiii]Television and radio transmit his statements to the rest of the world in an instant.

All of this would have been impossible in the Nineteenth Century. At that time the National Government was relatively small and easy for the President to administer. Often the President would only have one secretary or aide to assist him. The Presidents drafted their own speeches in longhand. Military commissions, appointments to office and other documents had to be signed by the Presidents themselves. The only time that an incumbent President had any semblance of a staff was when he borrowed clerks or specialists from the various agencies and departments of Government. By the end of the First World War, the age of reform had passed and the Nation entered an era of what President Warren G. Harding called “normalcy. Not heroics but healing.”[xxiv]For the first in American history, over half the population lived in urban areas. The rise of a mass society and culture also marked the 1920's. It was not however a time of vigorous political change. The Republicans dominated the electoral landscape and Calvin Coolidge was President as the Stock Market boomed and the economy expanded. Beneath the facade of prosperity however, lay problems of unequal income and distribution along with a weakened banking system. All of this signaled the problems that were to befall the Nation. Republican President Herbert Hoover was held responsible for the Stock Market Crash of 1929 which began a sequence of events that led to the Great Depression that lasted until the American entrance to World War Two in December 1941.

Presidents William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson all made important contributions to the emergence of a powerful and purposeful Presidency between 1897 and 1921, but it was the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 that brought to Washington “a Hudson River aristocrat turned Democrat.”[xxv]Roosevelt was a political leader who reshaped the Office and the Country during the unprecedented twelve years of his Administration. Truly this was the dawn of the modern Presidency as we know it today. As the Presidency emerged as the focal point of American Democracy, Roosevelt demonstrated what a President could do to lift a Nation's spirits in a crisis. Not only did the President take on greater and more complex roles, but the popular expectations of the Presidency rose disproportionately to the President's ability to fulfill them. The American President became synonymous with American Government itself. President Roosevelt helped to create the foundations of a modern welfare state and made it impossible for any successor to remain impassive in the face of economic downturn. The size of the Presidency also expanded as Franklin Roosevelt reached out to academics and experts for advice and ideas. Presiding over numerous press conference, “Roosevelt was compared to a consummate performer, a brilliant and accomplished actor, who met the challenge of a critical audience and took pleasure a pride in his own performance.”[xxvi] (White, 14) Roosevelt sat by his fireside and declared, “My Friends, and went on, with lilting persuasiveness, about the hardiness and essential benevolence of the American character.” [xxvii]

Franklin Delano Roosevelt became a World Leader like no other President before him had ever done, by leading the War-Time Grand Alliance of the Western Powers. "Dr. New Deal and been replaced by Dr. Win The War.”[xxviii]By meeting the challenges of the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt began to establish what has become known as the National Security State. “The American victory encouraged the belief that military action was not simply a last resort, but the prime means of acheiving specific foreign policy goals.”[xxix] Following the successful prosecution of the Second World War, the United States looked to the United Nations and the doctrine of Collective Security to prevent another World War and to maintain the coalition that had produced victory. Despite these lofty ideals, the Cold War developed which would last for forty years. The great radio commentator Edward R. Murrow observed “seldom, if ever, has a war ended leaving the victors with such a sese of uncertainty and fear, with such a realisation that the future is obscure and that survival is not assured.”[xxx]

America was now a Nuclear Super Power as the Japanese discovered in 1945, and the Presidents, from Harry S. Truman to George Bush, who confronted the challenges of the Cold War found the range of their responsibilities and the size of their staffs continually expanding and becoming more complex. In this post-war age, the President of the United States was expected to maintain peace in a complex and interdependent world, while fostering domestic stability and prosperity. Foreign policy was the most pressing concern of all the Presidents in the four decades following 1945 and these concerns leed to the introduction of fundamental changes in the American government, and to a degree, to American society. The National Security State established by President Roosevelt had been a lose asortment of military advisers. With the Presidency of Harry S. Truman came the formation of the National SecurityCouncil in 1947, which in many ways has superseded the Cabinet as the chief decision making body within the Executive Branch of Government.Created by the National Security Act of 1947, the N.S.C “unified the control of the armed services in a new National Military Establishment and a Central Intelligence Agency.”[xxxi] The demands of the Cold War on resources and lives were formidable. 1947 also saw the introduction of the Truman Doctrine which dedicated America to the defence of free nations the world over.

President Truman also advanced the Marshall Plan of Secretary of State, George Marshall, to stimulate the economic recovery of war-torn Europe. In the folloing year President Truman initiated the Air Lift into Berlin and in 1949 he agreed to the North Atlantic Trewaty Organisation for the military protection of Western Europe. In 1950, Truman ordered troops to the Korean peninsula to thwart a Communist led invasion of South Korea. Thus it was that in foreign affairs, President Harry S. Truman provided such effective leadership. At home there wa anattempt to out-do the New Deal policies, with the introduction of President Truman’s Fair eal. “This was a twent one point plan for the expansion of Social Security, a full employment programe, a permenant Fair Practices Act, public housing and slum clearance.”[xxxii]

The Nineteen Fifties were a decade in which all Americans, including the President, lived in the dark shadow of nuclear destruction. “America’s leaders had had Pearl Harbour seared into their souls, and the population were well aware of the dangers of a surprise attack.”[xxxiii] In this volatile climate, America searched her shores for a hero to lead them in the post-war World; They found one in General Dwight D. Eisenhower. His genial manner and broad smile charmed millions of voters. “He presented himself as a war hero whose qualities were the perfect antidote for all the Nation’s ills.”[xxxiv]General Eisenhower had been the Supreme Head of the Allied Forces in Europe and had mastermindd Operation Overlord, the victorious D-Day Landings in Normandy. He was nearing the age of retirement but was not yet ready to abandon his country to others. "He knew he was smarter, more experienced and had better principles than his competitors, and thus was the right man to lead America.He wanted what was best for America, and in the end, he decided that he was the best and would have to serve.”[xxxv] Eisenhower embraced a conservative notion of government, but he did not agree with ultra-conservatives in their calls to dismantle the New Deal. “Eisenhower was elected because of his proved competence as a leader. He was the hero who could be trusted to lead the nation to peace and prosperity.”[xxxvi] President Truman was cutting in his assesment of the coming Eisenhower Administration; “He’ll sit here and he’ll say, “Do this!” and “Do that!” and nothing will happen. Poor Ike- it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.”[xxxvii]Eisenhower however found the Presidency to be “fascinating, absorbing, challenging and fulfilling.”[xxxviii]

Eisenhower was more than aware of the limits of his office. As he said, “this idea that all wisdom is in the President, that’s balony. I don’t belief this Government was set up to be operated by anyone acting alone; no one has a monopoly on the truth and the facts that affect this country.”[xxxix] President Truman anticipated not how Eisenhower would conduct his presidency, but how observers would evaluate it. Much of the early writing on President Eisenhower came to the conclusion taht he was out of his depth. Lacking in political experience and abhoring politics, he failed to grasp the complexities of National issues. Rather than grapple with matters that puzzled or bored him, he acted as any General would and delegated the task to a subordinate. John Foster Dulles thus handled Foreign Affairs and George Humphrey shaped economic policy. “While his assistants governed, Eisenhower reserved his energies for golf, bridge and fishing. The President presided over hios Administration, but he did not run it.”[xl] From his military career, Eisenhower derived a set of believes; “the importance of teamwork, the need for clear lines of authority, an abhorance of partisanship, that shaped his Presidency. Many mistook his delegation of authority for an abdication of it.”[xli]Eisenhower’s philosophy of governing recalled the ideas of Hubert Hoover who extolled the virtues of a corporate economy and promoting co-operation among private interests for the common good. “In short Eisenhower hoped for progress but his whole philosophy of Government tended to favour the status quo.”[xlii]

All notions of maintaining the status quo were swept aside with the election in 1960 of John F. Kennedy. As the oldest of Presidents handed power over to the youngest, “the torch was passed to a new generation of Americans.”[xliii]The New Frontier was upon America, though few could have imagined how short-lived it would be. The Presidency of John F. Kennedy was a seminal period in American life and is to be examined in detail in a following chapter. As Chief Executive, Kennedy played an important role in encouraging the nation’s development as a scientific and technological society. A prime example was the American Space Industry which heeded President Kennedy’s challenge of May 26 1961; “Now is the time to take longer strides. This nation should commit itself to the goal of landing a man on the Moon, and returning him safely to Earth. I believe we should go to the Moon.”[xliv]That neither John nor Robert Kennedy should live to see the Moon landing of 1969 was perhaps one of the most poignant and overlooked facts of this great acheivement.

The tragedy of November 22, 1963 saw the ascension to the Oval Office of Lyndon Johnson. “Something desperatly imoral had happened and many were less concerned about what Johnson would continue, than that he could continue.”[xlv]Americans preyed that he would uphld their own government’s legitimate succession. Following his landslide victory in the 1964 election, Johnson put his own stamp on the Presidency. Before this he had been the “custodian of the Kennedy dream.”[xlvi]; steering the Civil Rights Bill through a hostile Congress for example. Now he was President in his own right, he could introduce his own legislation. President Johnson declared his intentions at the University of Michigan; “We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society, but upward to the Great Society which rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice.It is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and enlarge his talents.”[xlvii] The Great Society was a war on poverty, a fight for Civil Rights Legislation, Medicare and Medicaid, and the protection of the environment The struggle for a just and equitable society has tested the leadership of every President who has followed him.

Despite his undisputed efforts to improve the lives of ordinary Americans by reviving the New Deal policies of his mentor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it was not to be the Great Society that would dominate the Johnson Presidency. It was a strip of land in South East Asia called Vietnam. Whilst President Kennedy had been against the large scale escalation of American involvement in Indo-China, Lyndon Johnson saw the situation somewhat differently. As Vice - President , Lyndon Johnson wrote in 1961, “The battle against Communism must be joined in South East Asia or America must surrender the Pacific and take up our defences on our shores.”[xlviii] President Kennedy’s plans for a withdrawal by Christmas 1965, outlined in National Security Action Memorandum 263, were soon rescinded. Johnson declared, “I’m not going to let Vietnam go the way China did.”[xlix] Thus it was that the seess of Johnson’s demise were sown in the first hours of his Presidency.

By 1968 there were half a million American troops in Vietnam and the casualties eventually mounted to over fifty-five thousand. , Operation “Rolling Thunder” saw American planes dropping “napalm, and herbicides throughout the Country.Fragmentation bombs left the victims riddled with millions of particles undetectable even by x-rays. The CIA launched the ‘Pheonix Operation’, an assassination program that claimed 20,000 victims by the end of the war.”[l]The absolute futility of this effort became evident in February 1968 with the Tet Offensive. Whilst there is no doubt that in terms of casualties, the Americans emerged victorious from this duel, the real victim was the occupant of the Oval Office, President Johnson. Public opinion suddenly swung away from the Administration, refusing to believe reports of “brilliant military results.”[li]

So it was that 1968 began ingloriously for the United States. It would deteriorate still further until the nation and many of its leaders faced themselves in the Abyss. Public opposition to the war made many of the political figures reassess their futures, none more so than President Johnson and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of the slain President. In March 1968, Kennedy announced that he intended to challenge Johnson for the Presidency. It was, Johnson admitted, “the thing I had feared from the first day of my Presidency. Robert Kennedy had openly announced his intention to reclaim the throne in the memory of his brother.”[lii]Johnson’s fear, of being the mistake between the Kennedy’s, appeared to be coming true, and so Johnson decided to take himself out of the race, withdrawing from the Presidential election on March 31, 1968.

As Senator Robert F. Kennedy began winning Democratic Primaries, and a second Kennedy - Nixon Presidential contest loomed, the unimaginable occured once more. If the assasination of President Kennedy was a blow to the head of America, then surely the death of his younger brother ripped at the very heart of the nation. It was in many ways, the final straw; Too much in a year already too long, too hard. So many casualties, and now the one man who could have made a difference, “the only leader of his era who might have united the people in a coalition for change”[liii] was destroyed.

So it was, that rather than a second Kennedy Innaugural, rolling and eloquent, January 20, 1969 heralded the second coming of Richard Nixon. The troubled Nixon Presidency will be discussed in a following chapter, enough here to highlight the fact that the Watergate incident heightened public apathy for the office of the President. That a leader could lie so profusely to the people, brought the veracity of all White House statements into question. Truth and deception became blurred until the line of distinction was lost to one and all. The American Presidency seemed to be in great trouble in the 1970s. President Nixon could claim great foreign policy success during his time in office, but the Watergate scandal drove him fro office in disgrace. Nixon’s replacement, Gerald Ford restored some confidence in the institution, but he was too much of a reminder of the previous administration to succeed. His pardon of Nixon sealed his fate with the American voters and overall Gerald Ford was not able to convince voters to keep him in the White House. Between 1974 and 1978 herefore, America had the dubious distinction of having three different Administrations; President Nixon’s, Ford’s and Carter’s.

Jimmy Carter’s Presidency has been referred to as “a tragedy.”[liv] Others however, saw the Administration as “a trustee of public welfare.”[lv]The problems Jimmy Carter faced on arriving in the White House were arguably more complex and intractable than those faced by his predecessors. Indeed, “anyone entering the White House in 1977 would have faced a Herculean task. The Vietnam War and the Watergate affair had compromised the power of the Presidency.”[lvi] As President, Jimmy Carter placed emphasis on values. Government had to measure up to the honesty, integrity and idealism of the American people. “As Chief Executive, Carter sought to awaken the National conscience, but he was not able to inspire public confidence.”[lvii] Some have attempted to draw a parallel between Presidents Carter and Woodrow Wilson. Both were progressive Southerners and devout Christians. However, “in contrast to Carter, Wilson had a clear sense of purpose. He also had a better understanding of the negotiable and the expendable.Unlike Wilson, Carter’s progressive mentality blinded him to the realities of American life.”[lviii]

Carter lacked National respect that would have enabled him to call on the public for support. “President Carter was considerate and self-possessed.”[lix] Despite these notable personal qualities it is hard to avoid the conclusion that he was a mediocre President and that much of the reason was his own doing. “He was long on good intentions, but short on know-how. A Chief Executive who was smart, caring, honest and well informed but who self-righteously believed that what he thought was right and should prevail.”[lx]

By the end of the Nineteen Eighties however, discussion of the weakness of the Presidency had faded, mainly due to the popularity of Ronald Reagan during his eight years in power. The President’s rhetorical skill, his personnal optimism and the expansion of the economy from 1982 to 1990 all contributed to a better National mood and the sense that the Presidency could be an instrument of purpose and efectiveness. However, this renewed optimism was accompanied by a rapidly expanding National Debt that more than doubled, and an intractable budget deficit. During his eight years in the White House, {Resident Reagan’s hold over millions of Americans was remarkaly strong. As the first President since Eisenhower to complete two terms, he brought a welcome stability to the Office. His almost flippant bravado when a would be assassin’s bullet almost killed him in March 1981 cemented his place in the public’s affections.

Ronald Reagan offered America a particularly conservative agenda. He advocated cutbacks in welfare programmes and in the Washington bureaucracy. As he declared in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 1980, “Our Federal Government is overgrown and overweight.”[lxi] Ironically, Ronald Reagan was a politician who felt that “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is thew problem.”[lxii] Economically, Preisent Reagan preached what would become known as Reaganomics; Lower taxes and regul;ation, so the theory went, would encourage capital investment and cionsumer spending, “producing an economic boom which would generate higher tax revenues even at lower levels.”[lxiii]

Internationally, President Reagan preached miliotant Anti-Communism. He summon America to a struggle against Communism and decisive action against revolutionary movements in Latin America. He requested and received from Congress, massive increases in military spending. However, not all Americans were impressed with the sudden military expansion. George Kennan felt it to be “childish and unworthy of people charged with responsiblity for conducting the affairs of this great power in an endangered world.”[lxiv]

The President praised the traditional values of religion, family, patriotism, hard work and individual effort. Reaganism was a matter of mood as much as specific programes. He insisted that America must “stand tall” once more, after years of humiliation. This oldest of Presidents evoked the era of America’s confident and expansive youth. The crowds at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angleles waving flags and endlessly chanting “We’re Number One” were the authentic voice of Reaganism. The Presidency of Ronald Reagan came to dominate and ultimately symbolise the Eighties; a decade when, as Sidney Blumenthal has observed, “Belief in a common good was seen by many conservatives as a pathology, a dangerous liberal attitude that needed to be destroyed.”[lxv]The dimensions of Reaganism would expression not only in politics, but also in the popular culture of the period. Three of the decade’s top television serials, ‘Dallas’, ‘Dynasty’ and ‘Falcon Crest’ all revolved around the lives of the super rich. The stereotypical American of the period was the Yuppie, the ‘young urban proffessinal.

President Reagan was in many ways a series of severe contradictions. “On television he seemed larger than life, yet the real Reagan proved remarkably elusive.”[lxvi] There seemed to be a vast chasm between the media figure and the old man behind the image, rather like the Wizard of Oz. It was perhaps Hugh Sidey, the veteran Time Magazine reporter, who summed up President Reagan most succinctly; “Reagan is not brilliant in any sense, but hs mind had to be persistant in a special way to bring him the distance.”[lxvii]

Many would come to compare the Fortieth President with his Republican predecessor, General Eisenhower. Like Eisenhower, Reagan appeared to be immune from the controversies that dominated his administration. Like Eisenhower, Reagan did not always seem to be knowledgeable about foreign policy details or eloquent at Press Conferences. Both administrations used delegation, but it has been written, “Eisenhopwer did the delegating. In Reagan’s case, tasks were delegated to him.”[lxviii] Critics of the Reagan years have comne to see “the final years as an ongoing struggle among advisers for the soul of a man who was virtually brain dead.”[lxix] The disclosure in 1995 that Roanld Reagan was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease came as less of a shock to some than to others. “The fact that things turned out no worse” his opponents quipped “is either a tribute to the institutional sturdiness of the Presidency or proof of the existence of God.”[lxx]

It was President Reagan’s ability to articulate what it meant to be an American that assured his place in the hearts of his fellow citizens. In embracing Reagan, millions of citizens were also embracing a vision of America, a vision which Reagan so well defined in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 11, 1989. “I’ve spoken of the Shining City on a Hill all my political life. It was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than the oceans, God blessed and teeming with peoples of all kinds living in harmony and peace- a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, an if there had to be city walls, the walls ha doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get there. That’s how I saw it, and still see it.”[lxxi] To give up on Reagan would have been to give up on that vision, and few were prepared to do that.

The Presidency of George Bush continued the traditional Reagan policies during its early days. His Administration would come to be defined by a number of factors. First was his Inaugural Address, in which he called for a “kinder, gentler America.”[lxxii] Second was his inability to prevent tax increases, despite his pledges to doso. “Read my lips, no new taxes”[lxxiii] he had promised. Taxes were raised, and Bush was blamed. Third was his decision to wage a war to free the people of Kuwait, or perhaps its oil, from the invading forces of Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein. “This aggression will not stand”[lxxiv] the President told reporters. Asked about tactics he replied, “Watch, wait, learn.”[lxxv]George Bush envisioned a “New World Order, where the strong respect the rights of the weak.”[lxxvi] His undoubted ability and success in foreign affairs however, could not outweigh an ambivalent approach to the domestic economy.

By the second year of the Bush Administration, the Nation was in “an horrendous fiscal mess.”[lxxvii] Unemployment was up, the inner-cities burned following the Rodney King verdict, and all the while President Bush appeared to be unconcerned. Only too late did he make a solid commitment to face domestic strife; in his second term. At a time when the American people were searching for strong leadership at home, George Bush failed to grasp “the Vision Thing”[lxxviii]and as a direct result, he was defeated in his bid for re-election in 1992 by William Jefferson Clinton, the Governor of Arkansas.

Bill Clinton’s victory was as much a rejection of Bush as it was an acceptance of the victor. Elected on 43% of the vote, Clinton’s figure was reduced due to the presence of third party candidate Ross Perot. The young new President brought a new urgency to the Oval Office, attempting to remind the public “what an effective Presidency would be like.”[lxxix] As candidate, Clinton won more primaries than any other Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. He campaigned on the notion of restoring American pride and self-esteem. “People are dying to believe again, they desperately want this Country to work again”[lxxx] he told supporters in South Carolina on September 5, 1992. As a young boy, Bill Clinton played touch football in his yard, pretending he was a Kennedy on the White House lawn. A few years later he was on that lawn, shaking hands with the Kennedy that lived there, vowing privately that it would be his house one day. His dream has become what Walt Whitman would have called the Forty Second Presidentiad. As the Century draws to a close, the new Chief Executive has turned to address the continuing problems and the new challenges of the coming Millennium.

To become President and be re-elected requires that the Chief Executive engage in a hectic and exhausting round of political campaigning. The Presidential campaign itself took some time to emerge. “From Gearoge Washington through to John Quincy Adams, there was no true campaigns in the modern sense.”[lxxxi] The Presidents did not have to be party leaders, and Congressional caucuses and State Legislators chose the Presidential candidates. The candidates directed their appeals to Congress and the Legislatures rather than to the masses.

A Chief Executive could make speaking tours of the Country during his term in office, although Presidential travell was far less frequent than in the Twentieth Century. A nominee for the Presidency would make a speach formally accepting the decision of his party and issue a letter of acceptacnce that would serve as a major campaign document. After the Civil War, the practivce of “Front Porch Campaigns”[lxxxii] emerged. James A. Garfield and Benjamin Harrison began this campaign style and iut reached its peak with the election of William McKinley in 1896. Morethan 750,000 people came to his home in the town of Canton, Ohio, between August and October 1896, to hear McKinley give addresses that were reprinted the following day in newspapers all accross the country. By way of a comparrison, McKinley’s opponent, William Jennings Bryan made a whistle stop train journey accross the nation. “Although he lost, the new technique eventually became a standarrd practice in the Century to come.”[lxxxiii]

By 1828, all of the satates except Delaware and South Carolina had turned rto the selection of electors by popular vate. Andrew Jackson in 1828 was the first Presidential candidate to be popularly elected in the modern sense. Further democratisations of the process occured in 1832 when both Democrats and their Whig opponents held their first National Conventions to nominate candidates. In 1840 the election of William Hnery Harrison began the practice of electioneering that scholars have called “spectacular politics.”[lxxxiv] The Whigs portrayed Harrison as a National hero who had lived in a log cabin. They used campaign songs and sought voter participation in torch light parades. Voter turnout in the elections increased as a result. Political parties from ten on began to pay more attention to the popular image that hteir monine could present on the campaign trasil.

By the end of the Nineteenthe Century, the appetite for the politics of the spectacular gave way to campaigns of educatiuon, that showered tha voters with lenghty speeched. The early part of the Twentieth Century saw the rise of merchandising techniques that were borrowedfrom business and the candidates were marketed through advertising. When a President ran for re-election, it was regarded as undignified for him to campaign personally “and no president until Woodrow Wilson broke the precedent in 1916.”[lxxxv] The role of the political parties has decreased in Presidential elections, while the degree of popular interest and involvement in elections has fallen from the high levels of the 1880s and the 1890s. In the late Twentieth Century, only about half of the eligable electorate voted in a Presodential contest, in contrast with a figure of seventy five percent a century ago.

Security for the President of the United States is the primary concern of the United States Secret Service, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department. Presidential security was particularly rudimentary during the Nineteenth Century. The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 brought some Secret Service protection for subsequent Presidents, but it was still relatively easy to see the President in the White House inthefirst three decades of the Twentieth Century. With the assassinations of Presidents James A. Garfield in 1881 and William McKinley in 1901, the inadequacies of Presidential protection became apparent. Calls were made for the introduction of institutionalised security proceedures. All the security in the World however, can be of little reward against a determined assassin. As President Kennedy stated before flying to Dallas, “If someone wanted to kill a President it would not be hard. Just put a man on a high building with a telescopic rifle, and there was nothing anyone could do.” (Schlesinger, 867)

The assassination of President Kennedy was not only the single most shocking incident in post war American history, it was also the low point in Secret Service history. That so many of its own regulations were breached in Dallas only served to strengthen conspiracy theories; Agents were out drinking untill the early hours on the previous night, no agents were placed on the President’s limousine and the President and theVice President should not have appeared together.

“Assassinations of World Leaders have such a shocking impact that it is easy to overlook the fact that four killings of American Presidents over a period of a century does not really represent a trend.”[lxxxvi] It certainly is not a figure to be proud of , but more Presidents die in office from natural causes than at the hands of an assassin. Also, it is only successful, or nearly successful assassinaion attempts that make the news, thereby exposing the weaknesses of the security apparatus. No mention is ever made of thwarting plans to kill the President, whose life is now threatened on a regular basis. The dangers of the modern Presidency can be found in the increasing number of deranged people locked up for threatening to kill the President. They are referred to as “White House Cases.”[lxxxvii] During the years of the Truman Administration there were only seventy-five cases, or fewer than ten a year. During Eisenhower’s years in Office, this figure rose to seventeen a year. “Thirty-five were reported every year under J.F.K. and two hundred a year under Lyndon Baines Johnson.”[lxxxviii]

Following the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, the number of Secret Service Agents jumped from 350 to 575. By August, 1993, there were over 2,000. Of those, 190 were women who have been trained as agents since 1970. Only in very recent years however, have female agents been promoted to the Presidential Protection Detail. In this age of electronic mail, even the internet has become the source of Presidential threats. A student from the University of Illinois was charged in 1994 with thretening President Clinton’s life on the Internet. In February 1994, Ronald Barber was charged with threatening the life of the President after he stalked the President’s jogging route.

One further change was implemented following President Kennedy’s murder. It became a felony to threaten the life of the President. With fanatics now crashing light aircraft into the White House and spraying the Executive Mansion with rifle fire, it seems apparent that the work load of the United States Secret Service will only increase. Some have speculated that political murders would increazse. Following the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy, political analysts felt that in the years to come, “the charismatic politician will be especially endangered.”[lxxxix] Those with a unique position in American life would be most at risk, they felt. It is of some consolation that nearly thirty years on from that dark night in Los Angeles, no American politician has fallen victim to assassination. There have been attempts of course; Most notable was the attempt on President Reagan in 1981, but also the attempts on the life of President Ford and President Bush by Iraqi death squads. “Presidential candidate George Wallace was a victim of an assassination attempt on May 15, 1972 and was paralysed from the waist down.”[xc]

It has been suggested that the desire to personalise the office of the Presidency and the ability of television to focus the attention of everyone, lunatic and normal citizen alike, on the President, adds to the dangers faced by the Chief Executive. The White House today is surrounded by a high, electronically sensitive fence which extends across West Executive Avenue to the ornate Old Executive Office Building, creating a two block Presidential compound. With the closure of Pennsylvania Avenue to traffic following the bombing of Oklahoma City, the siege mentality will only continue at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Richard Milhous Nixon left such an indelible mark on American life that even thirty years after Kennedy’s assassination and twenty years on from Nixon’s resignation, their lives are still the subject of debate and discussion. In this last decade of the Twentieth Century, Kennedy and Nixon have come to symbolise very different notions of American democracy. Kennedy is seen as a hero, lost in an act of madness. Nixon is portrayed as a vindictive figure who was not above lying to the American people. History has polarised their political stances, assassination and resignation taints our perceptions of their characters.

The two men’s lives were far more entwined than many realise. Both entered the United States' Congress as veterans of the Second World War in 1946, serving on the Education and Labour Committee together. By 1953 Kennedy was in the Senate and Nixon was Eisenhower's vice-president. Their offices in the Old Senate Building, now the Russell Building, were opposite each other. Both were sympathetic to the actions of Senator Jo McCarthy durring the Nineteen Fivties. By the time they emerged as their party’s choice for the Presidency in 1960, their positions were such that the eminent American historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. produced a publication entitled “Kennedy or Nixon : Does It Make Any Difference?” Schlesiunger concluded, as the world would discover, that there were indeed differences.

The contrasts in style and presentation became evident in the Presidential debates in the Autumn of 1960. For Nixon the debates were deadly. The vice president wqas usually in excellent health, but during the debates he was suffering from a knee injury. Kennedy, who was often ill, had never been in better health. John F. Kennedy emerged from the debates as Nixon’s equal in stature and his superior in style. Campaigning for the Presidency, Kennedy could attack Nixon by attacking his boss, President Eisenhower. On January 14, 1960, Kennedy outlined his views on the Presidency. Eisenhower, he felt, “had failed to override the objections from within the Congress, or even his Cabinet. Perhaps this limited and detached concept of the Presidency was appropriate in the ‘fifties, but now the Sixties are here. It would be necessary for the President to place himself in the thick of the fight, that he care passionately.”[xci]

As President, Kennedy would “be at the hub of the informal decision making process. He wanted all lines to lead to the White House, he wanted to be the single nerve centre” wrote Hugh Sidey..”[xcii] It is interesting to note that whilst President Kennedy proclaimed in his Inaugural Address that "the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans”[xciii] one major policy remained under the new leader; Eisenhower’s plans for Cuba. It has been written that Cuba exemplified all that was good and all that was bad about the Kennedy Administration. On the down-side was the Bay of Pigs invasion in March 1961. Detractors point to the incident as a sign of President Kennedy’s impetuousness and lack of experience. Intriguingly however, the plan was devised by the Central Intelligence Agency under Eisenhower and his vice-president Richard Nixon. On the positive side was President Kennedy’s conduct during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Evidence has emerged that one of the reasons for Soviet missiles being placed in Cuba was to prevent a full American invasion of Cuba, planned for late October 1962 under “Operation Mongoose”[xciv] This continuation of plans made when Nixon was Vice-president, thus brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

That Nixon became President at all must be due in part to the fact that both President Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy were assassinated. By the Summer of 1968 a second Kennedy-Nixon electiuon looked likely. That Nixon only narrlowly defeated the eventual Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, only serves to raise doubts of his ability to have dfeated the true heir of John F. Kennedy. On November 23, 1963, the former vice-president said “President Kennedy yesterday wrote the last and the greatest chapter of his Profiles in Courage. The greatest tribute we can pay to his memory is to do everything we can to reduce the forces of hatred which drives men to do such terrible deeds.”[xcv] The future for Nixon was suddenly much clearer. Innaugurated on January 20, 1953, Richard Nixon was the second youngest vice-president in the history of the Republic. He had been an unknown Congressman at thirty three, re-elected unopposed at thiry-five, United States Senator at thirty seven and Vice President at forty. “If one searches for historical parallels to Nixon’s meteoric progress, only William Pit the Younger, British Prime Minister at twenty four and John F. Kennedy, President of the United States at forty-three, could be said to have ascended faster.”[xcvi] By 1969 he was President of the United States in his own right.

The tragedy of the Nixon Administration has been told so many times that this occasion does not require it'’ repetition. Even before ?Watergate however, there were those who had their doubts about Nixon. “He was so anxious for so long to be all things to all men that he seemed to have no preferences whatsoever.”[xcvii] Worse was the quote by Gary Willis; “Heis the least ‘authentic’ person alivce.”[xcviii] His Administration would last longer than Kennedy’s, but it would end as ignobly as possible. All the foreign policy successes that Nixon had achieved; detante with the Soviets, ending the war that had raged in Vietnam and opening relations with China, all were rendered secondary to his crimes against the Constitution.

Kennedy and Nixon make perfect studies in the history of the Presidency. Two more opposite characters would be hard to find. One was wealthy, the other was not. One was blessed by fortune, the other struggled for everything he had achieved. One was a study in nonchalance, the other a study in deep personal insecurity. One placed a special emphasis on an esprit d’corps, the other was distant and cold. One challenged the status quo, the other accepted it as it stood. One challenged Americans to “go to the Moon”[xcix] the other revelled in the program’s eventual success. One Administration was deemed a success, the other was not. One died in the glorious service of his Country, the other was hounded from Office in disgrace. The conclusion is clear; Kennedy was great, and he was taken from us. Nixon achieved greatness and it was taken from him. The end of Kennedy’s Administration was a disgrace to the Nation. By the end of Nixon’s time in office, he was a disgrace to the Nation.

No one is more acutely aware of the powers and limitations of the Presidency as an institution than the President of the United States himself. An important development in tracing the perks and ressures of the Presidency has been the emergence in recent years of the Presidential Memoirs, written by former Presidents in the years following their final term inOffice. Such manuscripts havebeen produced by Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagn. A similar publication is expected shortly from former President George Bush. In addition to the Presidential memoir, we havew access to a natable range of Presidential biograpghies. Such publications are clearly important in the case of President Kennedy who did not live to publish hiosplanned memoirs. In this case the works of Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorensen are invsaluable,. In addition to later works by Nigel Hamilton and Richard Reeves. Millions of words have been written about the Presidency. In the final analysis however, no one can state more accurately quite how it feels, could describe the job more fittingly, than he who has served in the Oval Office.

Few men have been as prepared for the Presidency as Dwight D. Eisenhower. As Supreme Allied Commander in Europe he had been involved in the politics of war for years. He had no great illusions about his new position as President however; “This idea that all wisdom is in the President, that’s balony. I don’t believe this government was set up to be operated by anyone acting alone; no one has a monopoly on the truth and the facts that affect this country.”[c] Eisenhower came to power at a dangeroustime in World affairs; The Second World War had been won, but it seemed that the peacxe had been lost; The Cold War was underway and American troops were dying in Korea. As a former military leader, Eisenhower undoubtedly had a soldier’s way of doing things. President Truman laughed at the thought of an Eisenhower Presidency; “He’ll sit here and he’ll say “Do this!” and “Do that!” and nothing will happen. Poor Ike, it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.”[ci] He certainly did not find the job boring. Rather “Eisenhower found the Presidency to be fascinating, absorbing, challenging and fulfilling.”[cii] Eisenhower believed that the President should lead the nation “down the middle of the road between the unfettered power of concentrated wealth and the unbridled power of statism or partisan interests.”[ciii] Politically he believed that “leadership in the political sphere consists largely of making progress through compromise.”[civ] Eisenhower provided a conservative philosophy of governing similar to that of PresidentHoover. “Eisenhower hoped for progress, but his philosophy of government tended to favour the status quo.”[cv]

When John F. Kennedy launched his campaign for the White House, he outlined his plans for a future administration. Eisenhower's “detached, limited concept of the Presidency”[cvi] was outdated for the 1960's. It would be necessary for the President to “place himself in the thick of the fight.”[cvii] To quote directly, Kennedy felt that the President “must above all be the Chief Executive in every sense of the word and be prepared to exercise the fullest powers of his Office- all that are specified and some that are not. He must reopen channels of communication betwen the world of thought and the Seat of Power.”[cviii] (Bernstein, 5) President Kennedy himself was in no doubt as to the limitations of the Office. As he stated in December 1962, “The President is rightly described as a man of extraordinary powers. Yet it is also true that he must wield those powers under extraordinary limitations.”[cix]

More than any candidate in thirty years, Kennedy was under pressure to define his views on the separation of Church and State. As a Catholic, to whom would he owe allegiance, to the Constitution or to the Pope? As he replied in Houston, “I believe in an Ameireca were the separration of Church and State is absolute.”[cx] Above all, President Kennedy saw himself as being at the centre, at the very heart of the American political system. The Presidency as he saw it was “the centre of the action, and in a free society, the chief responsibility of the President is to set before the American people the unfinished business of our country.”[cxi] There would be no delegatioon of ultimate authority under President Kennedy, for “Kennedy himself would be the hub of the informal decision making process. “He wanted al lines to lead to the White House, he wanted to be the single nerve centre,” wrote Hugh Sidey.”[cxii] As Present, John F. Kennedy saw himself as part of a large picture, encompassing the Nation and the World. He understood the need for the Presidency to take the lead in the affairs of the World, to provide true leadership. For as he said many times, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”[cxiii]

In 1960, Candidate Kennedy described what he felt the Framers had sought; “We need what the Constitution envisaged; a Chief Executive who is the vital centre of action in our whole scheme of Government. It is the President alone who must make the major decisions of our foreign policy. Domestically, the President must initiate policies and devise laws to meet the needs of the nation.”[cxiv] He was never allowed to see his dreams come to fruition, but his approach to the Office sounds as fresh today as it did in 1960; “Sure it’s a big job, but I don’t know anyone who can do it better than I can. I’m going to be in it for four years. It isn’t going to be so bad. You’ve got time to think. You don’t have all those people bothering you that you had in the Senate - besides the pay is pretty good.”[cxv]

President Nixon faced the dilemma of assuming the Office during an increasingly unpopular war. He understood the great National need for reassurance and wanted to meet that need by conveying an impression of calm, un-ideological leadership. Not for Nixon the glamour of Camelot, instead his Presidential calls for peace and quiet echoed those of President Warren G. Harding for “normalcy.”[cxvi] His first speech as President Elect was a call to bring the country together, in victory he would be magnanimous. He declared, “this will be an open Administration.”[cxvii] It was just one of a number of statements which Nixon would make which would come to haunt his Administration. Nixon’s time in Office was the pinnacle of what Arthur Schlesinger has called “The Imperial Presidency,”[cxviii] when Executive power was at an all time high. After Watergate, all of that would change. As the world would learn from the Nixon’s notorious tapes, “this was not a Presidency of grace, wit or generosity.”[cxix]

President Ronald Reagan was a conservativve who advocated cuts in the Washington bureaucracy. He was a Chief Executive who believed that “government is not the solution to our problem. Governmetn is the problem.”[cxx] As President, Reagan felt that his objective “in working for peace is to ensure that the safety of our people cannot successfully be threatened by a hostile foreign power. As President that will be my number one priority.”[cxxi] His views on the Presidency and on America were based on the historic principle laid down by John Winthrop; that of America as a great and glorious “shining city upon a hill.”[cxxii]

The Office of President of the United States may be the most powerful on Earth, but even he has a boss. For the ability to hire and fire, that most ultimate of powers, lies with a collective body of people, known as The People of the United States. It is to them and to God, that the Presidential Oath of Office is sworn. It is the people, through their Representatives in Congress who may remove a sitting President through the procedure of impeachment. The people have long had this abiliy; “The executive authority..is to be vested in a single magistrate. That magistrate is to be elected every four years and is to be re-elected as often as the people of the United States shall think him worthy of their confidsence.”[cxxiii]

The American people look to their President for many reasons. First is the need for reassurance. Studies of the reactions to the deaths of Presidents, gfrom Lincoln through to Kennedy, reveal that most people wish to believe the President to be a good man and that in the midst of trouble, he is a core of serenity. President Harding achieved this with his ambition for normalcy, reassuring an “emotionally exhausted citizenry.”[cxxiv] The American People want to be taken care of and they place ultimate responsibility for that on the President of the United States.

Beyond reassurance, people want a sense of progress and action. The President is supposed to be a take-charge man, a producer of progress. The people want a sense of legitimacy in the Presidency. He needs to be a master politician who is above politics. The President is expected to personify American greatness in an inspiring way, to express in what he does an American morality. Examples can demonstrate how various Presidents have exemplified these themes both positively and negitively. Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Truman, Kennedy and Reagan all personify htese themes positively and were seen to have succedded in the Office. Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Carter and Bush can all be seen to have failed to respond to these themes and thus were deemed to have failed to some degree in Office.

Franklin Roosevelt was a master reassurer. With his simplicity of expression and use of the media, who calmed a nation. His Administration was an example of progress and action, even if its policies did not always go as planed. Roosevelt could not have been more legitimate as President ; patrician, confident and supreme. For many people he is the quintessential President. Harry Truman never expected to replace Roosevelt as President in the minds of Americans. After twelve years, Roosevelt had become ‘The President’ and as such Truman had to work twice as hard just to keep up. His legacy however is one of hard work and determination, of success against the odds. “Strength in the face of adversity”[cxxv] was a fitting description and the people admired him for it. “He seemed to know where he was going and how to get there without a lot of delicate hesitation.”[cxxvi]

President Eisenhower was nothing if not sincere. He believed in a role as “President - King - Archbishop of an American brand.”[cxxvii] His past as Supreme Head of the Allied War Effort provided the people with reasurance. For a nation emerging from the rigours of war, Eisenhower’s inactive style heightened a feeling of contentment and ease. Eisenhower’s personal style, his past experience and his whole persona lent legitimacy to the Office and “reminds us what the President should be’ he should be a damn good man.”[cxxviii]

Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan both succeeded in the Oval Office for similar reasons, although their styles were soemwhat different. Both Presidents provided reasurance to the American People that the Country was safe in their hands. Bot provided a sense of progress after periods of malaise and inaction; Kennedy after the Eisenhower terms and Reagan after the Carter years. They differed in both their substance and style, yet both succeeded. Kennedy, with his urbane humour and Reagan with his folksy style, lent credence to the Office and governed with legitimacy. At times of National crisis both were sought out by the American People for total reassurance that all would be successfully resolved. In the “hour of maximum danger”[cxxix] it is to the President that the people turn, not to the Congress or the Supreme Court. The President becomes the focus point of the American People’s hopes and dreams. Their future is in his hands and they look to him to act accordingly. Such was the case during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when the world faced a nuclear war and after the Challenger explosion in 1986 when the American Spoace Program faced its gravest moments in a generatuion.

Not all have fared so well in the public’s eyes. Presidents Johnson and Nixon were both seen to have reduced the legitimacy of the Office by lfailing to be honest with the American People over the situatiuon in Vietnam and the Watergate break-in. President Carter proved incapable of providing strong leadership, partly due to Congressional resistance and thus was unable to demonstrate quite where he was going and how he hoped to get there. President Bush on the other hand knew exactly where he wanted to be. He wanted to be abroad, away from the back bitting and small time job of running American Domestic Policy. The World was George Bush’s oyster, and he would ultimately spend too much time resolving the World’s ills, to the detriment of the United States. Bush spent too much time being President of the World, forgetting that his only voting constituency was in North America.

Reassurance, action and legitimacy. These are the qualities the American People search for in their President. Americans want and need to believe that the ordinary men they elevate to the Presidency are “Loncolnesque,” that they aree bearers of the torch, and above all, benevolent leaders. He ought to get the country moving and inspire Americans by example. The President is now considered almost synonomous with the American Governemnt itself. “The President’s values, skills, his definition of his own role, and the way he performs it - these are fundamental determinants of the working of the American Government and of American politics.”[cxxx] The American People search for a hero every four years. Sometimes they find one. “A good deal is riding on the question whether they will find a demogogue or a democrat as they search out a way to link their passions to their government.”[cxxxi]

Regardless of party, regsardless of policy, it now appears that there will always be at least one group eagerly awaiting a Presidential error : The Media. The White House Press Corps demands to be kept aware of all Presidential movements and actions and as a result the duties of the President never stop during his term in Office. Even if thePresident becomes ill, the Press expect to be kept informed of his condition. The reasonfor this they claim, is the National Interest. They activities of the First Lady and the members of the Presidential familly receive almost as much attention. Prime exampoles include Prsident Carter’s inept brother Billy, John F. Kennedy J. and his girlfriends, Nancy Reagan’s astrology, the ppearance of Chelsea Clinton, and Hillary Clinton’s work ethics. To state that the President is the constant object of National attention understates the degree to which he is in the spotlight of media coverage and public concern.

The role of the media has changed beyond recognition over the years. From a role of reporting the news, journalists have become it seems, interpreters of those events which make the news. If politicians are guilty of “spin”, the manipulation of events, then so too perhaps are the journalists of today. This was not always the case. Compared with the White House of Theodore Roosevelt, today’s occupant may well feel under seige from the Press. It was the Theodore Roosevelt who became the first President to comprehend the tremendous power of public relations, referring to the Presidency as a “bully pulpit”[cxxxii] for preaching to the Nation. It was however, Theodore Roosevelt’s fifth cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt who would prove to be such a skilled manipulator of the Press. Roosevelt was able to communicate directly to the Americvan People via the medium, “lilting persuasiveness about the hardiness and the essential benevolence of the American charachter."[cxxxiii] It was on the radio that President Roosevelt really managed to reach the American people. His famed Fireside Chats during the 1930’s allowed Roosevelt to “vividly evoke the miseries of the ‘little people’ and to offer hope amidst the economic holocaust of the Depression.”[cxxxiv] Roosevelt had a gift for simplification, for explaining compassionately the complex problems that engulfed the Nation. As he told Orson Welles, “There are two great actors in America - you are the other one.”[cxxxv]

The Press have not always been fair or accurate in their reporting to the American People. Perhaps the most renowned miscalculation on behalf of the American Press was the headline of the Chicago Daily Tribune on Thursday November 4, 1948, which screamed incorrectly, ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’. As the undefeated President Truman declared as he held aloft the publication, “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”[cxxxvi] The decision of President Johnson not to seek re-election in 1968 stemmed in part from the media’s reaction to his repeated statements that the situation in Vietnam was improving.

Revealing evidence that Jophnson had not been honest with the American People caused the downfall of the Chief Executive. In recent years, the Printed Press has played a reduced role in the reporting of news events in America. For its intimacy and scope, nothing could compete with the new medium of television. The traditional journalists did not fade away completely however, for television is not always able to cover a story as deeply as a newspaper. So it was that the printed media would come to have its showdown with the White House in the early Nineteen Seventies. It was a confrontation from which neither side would ever recover and from which repercusions continue to this day. The incident was the break-in at the Watergate.

Douglas Carter referred to the American Press as “the fourth branch of Government.”[cxxxvii] With Watergate, the newspapers can be seen to have exercised a check on the Executive Branch of Government. In the years that led up to the Watergate incident, the National media coverage of Vietnam had slipped from objectivity to opposition. Many reporters, such as David Halberstam, became self proclaimed opponents not only of the War, but also of the political system that had created it. Reporters became authors, publishing such best sellers as “The Bright Shining Lie,” Halberstsam’s “The Best and the Brightest” and Michael Herr’s “Dispatches”. The Washington Post was virulent in its attacks on the War and the Administration. “From the mid 1960s onwardds we becamea far more anti-establishment paper than we had been,” recalled its editor Ben Bradlee. “As far as the Presidency was concerned there was an awe for the Office under my predecessor. I guess I changed all that. By the time Nixon got in we were already anti- White House and we sure stayed that way.”[cxxxviii]

President Nixon’s Chief of Staff, Bob Haldeman has stated that “without Vietnam there would have been no Watergate.”[cxxxix] Vietnam created a siege mentality at the White House; The Press no longer blindly accepted the word of the President and the White House no longer trusted the Press, convinced that numerous journalists were seeking to undermine the current Administration. ““The Press is the enemy” was a phrase Nixon used to his aides on numerous occasions.”[cxl] When two young reporters from the Washington Post began to examine all of the details surrounding a “third-rate burglary”[cxli] at the Watergate, they stumbled upon a story that would bring down a President and change, possibly forever, the relationship that existed between the Press and the President.

In recent years, the Press has tendsed to divide along party lines, with some ublicationscoming out for, and others against the President. In 1989, the Indianapolis Star said of Presidnet Reagan, “His roots go as deep in the Middle Western life as those of Theodore Dreisser and Willa Cather. Reagan is no elitist. He is a man of the people.”[cxlii] At the same time however, the St. Louis Post Dispatch referred to Reagan’s time in Office as a “Presidency of nostalgia.”[cxliii] It added that for all of his considerable communication skills, Reagan never tried to “rally people to noble causes or to remind tem of their obligations to others.”[cxliv] None could have been quite as damning as the left of centre publication New Republic, which declared that the Administration was “in its final years, an ongoing struggle among advisers for the soul of a man who was vitually brain dead.”[cxlv]

“No wonder your President has to be an actor, he has to look good on television”[cxlvi]says Christopher Lloyd, referring to Ronald Reagan in the movie “Back to the Future.” Whilst this line was clearly written for laughs,there is more than an ounce of truth in it. For years, the way in which the Presidency is portrayed in the media has been of particular importance to the White House. If Franklin Roosevelt was the champion of the airwaves, then the warly champion of television was John F. Kennedy. Universally regarded as the first President of the Television Age, Kennedy was more than aware of the impaxct hispressence had on the millions of new screens across America. As he remarked once, “We could not survive without television.”[cxlvii]

With his Hollywood background it was perhaps of little surprise that President Reagan would become known as “The Great Communicator.”[cxlviii] Yet Reagan was such a paradox. On television he seemed larger than life, yet beneath the rehearsed speeches, thereal Reagan proved remarkably elusive. Many were shocked at the chasm between the carefully cultivated media figure and the elderly gentleman behind the image. “Like the Wizard of Oz, this man who so dominated his era seemed, up close, diminished, inconsequential, even pathetic.”[cxlix] In a Nation where image is everything, the bigger the image, the better it must be. There is of course, no bigger image than the cinema screen. With millions of voters annually watching films, it is in the interests of the current Administration to foster warm relations with those in Hollywood in order thatthey may reflect a sympathetic image of the President or his policies on the big screen. The representation of the Presidency in movies is therefore the next area to be explored.

The medium which would come to be the most popular of the century had its origins a century ago when the Lumiere Brothers held the first public performance of their Cinematographe machine in Paris. The event was more than a little inauspicious. The ttwo brothers could only sell thirty three of the one hundred tickets, to see a short film of workers leaving their fatherr’s factory, followed by a short sequence of a gardener dousing himself woith a hose. The Lumiere brothers’ demonstration, with the audience all being able to see the film at once, instead of individually in the case of Edison’s Kinetoscope, transformed the history of the moving image. The preserve of a few eccentric inventors and the peep show could now become a new and exciting form of art and entertainment. Within six months, London and Paris were overrun with Cinematographs. Even so, few could have foretold the extent to which the Silver Screen would enthral the Twentieth Century. Having no need for a literate audience, cinema could truly lay claim to be the first global medium. Diretors and dictators soon came to realise the power of the screen. In 1922 Lenin said, “Of all the arts, cinema is the most important to us.” Later, Hitler and Stalin, made the simultaneous use of filmmakers such as Eisenstein and Riefenstahl for propoganda purposes, and both secretly watched Hollywood movies in their spare time.

As the centre of the American movie industry, Hollywood can be seen as being the depository of the ‘American Dream’. Notions of personal liberty, triumph over all adversity, the reward for honesty, the pursuit of happiness, all quintessential aspects of the ‘American Dream’ which seems to be somewhat out of touch with modern reality, all find a home in the movies. Hollywood has long been seen as the last remaining guardian of liberal theology, clinging on to the rudementary aspects of Ameerfican life laid down so well by the likes of Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Many if not all of the leading players in Tinseltown lea to the left politically and this tendency is more often than not reflected in the movies that are produced. From Richard Gere to Michael Douglas, some of the biggest names in Hollywood openly endorse the Democratic Party. Presidential candidates are always eager to rally support from America’s leading lights in the entertainment industry. When Bill Clinton was seeking election in 1992 he received vocal suppory from Barbara Streisand, Chuck Berry and Michael Jackson. Leading figures from Hollywood such as Robin Williams, Glen Close and Richard Gere all flocked to the mantle of “The New Camelot.”[cl] Not all of those in Hollywood share this liberal tradition of course. Major players such as Charlton Heston, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bob Hope all support the Republican Party. Generally however, most of the celebrities of distinction in Hollywood continue the liberal notion of the past, producing films with a distinct liberal theme to them. To detail all such examples would be to produce a work of truly encyclopaedic stature. Enough I hope, to present a number of examples.

“Mr. Smith Goes To Washington”, the great Frank Capra movie of 1939, detailed the career of a first term Senator played by Jimmy Stewart. Beneath the surface however, the movie was a blatant endorsement of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal Administration. Jimmy Stewart is a personification of Franklin Roosevelt and as the living embodiment of President Lincoln, whose Memorial Stewart visits during the film, and from which he draws the strength to continue his fight in the Senate Chamber. The suggestion that the modern day Republican Party has abandoned the principles of Lincoln cannot be avoided. It is up to Jimmy Stewart to ensure that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.”[cli]

“All The President’s Men” from 1976 is a classic example of Hollywood openly pursuing a Republican Administration. Based on the book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, anddirectred by Alan Paluka, the film stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. It details the efforts of the two Washington Post reporters to discover the truth pertaining to the Watergate affair. The pair are portrayed as heroic, law abiding citizens who are attempting to uncover the truth at great personal risk. Their contact, known as Deepthroat, is seen only in the shadows, and can be seen to represent the notion of a secret un-elected government, unanswerable to the general public. In fact, President Nixon is not portrayed in the movie. Instead, one is aware of the pressense of power that threatens every move Woodwood and Bernstein make. The underlying theme is once again clear; Republicans in power cannot be trusted. Interestingly, whilst a movie has been made of the media’s role in the downfall of President Nixon, no such comparable film has been made concerning the downfall of Lyndon Johnson.

“The Parallax View” of 1975 is an interesting look at the numerous assassinations which occured during the 1960s. Starring Warren Beatty and made fifteen years before Oliver Ston’s JFK, the movie opens with the death of a political candidate in a manner which eerily mirrors the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968. From then on however, the plot mirrors the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s death, with witnesses being murdered and disappearing from the face of the planet. Whislt this film is not an attack on a Republican Administration, it does point the fingure at the idea of an ‘Invisible Government’ dominated by powerful vested interests and personified bycharacters such as Deepthroat from “All the President’s Men.” In an interesting twist, Warren Besatty’s character, who has been investingating the assassination, is himself implicated by the Parallax Organisation for the final murder in the film. In a move which ominously reflected reality in November 1963, Beatty’s character is himself killed before any investigation can be conducted. Posthumously, he is declared guilty by the organisation which is responsible for his own death.

“In The Line Of Fire,” made in 1993, is the tale of a Secret Service bodyguard played by Clint Eastwood who failed to save President Kennedy in Dallas. Thirty years later he has the chance to redeem himself when an assassin challenges him to save the sitting President. The film is bassed in part on the true storey of Clint Hill, the only Secret Service Agent to react that day in Dallas. A stark contrast is drawn between the modern day President and the late President Kennedy; “It was different, he was different .. I’d have taken that bullet, that would have been all right by me”[clii] (Peterson, 1993) Eastwood explains.

Sometimes Hollywood makes mistakes. Following the Gulf War, Hollywood was resigned to a second term for Republican President, George Bush. As a result, Warner Brothers made decision to film the ultimate ‘George Bush as President movie’; Ivan Reitman’s “Dave,” starring Kevin Klein. Due to the time involved in the production, the movie was not released until well after the election, by which time George Bush was back at home in either Texas or Connecticut, and Bill Clinton was beginning to feel at home in the White House. In “Dave”, the Preisent is quite literally an empty suit. The White House routinely hires doubles to fill in for him at State occasions so that the real President can have an affair with his secretary in covert hotel rooms. With a President as Hollow as this, no one notices. It is not until Dave the stand-in assumes the Presidency following the real President’s incapacitation, that the Administration begins to act in favour of the average American. The stand in calls on his friendly accountant to help him balance the Federal Budget in an afternoon!

Whilst credibility is stretched to the limit, the message rings through load and clear: “We need to take Washington back from the politicians and give it back to the people who sent them there.” Ironically, theonly person who sees the deception that is underway is Oliver Stone, who had recently released his movie JKF. Oliver Stone lampoons his earlier work by demonstrating that photographic evidence proves that a stand in is really the President. No one believes him of course; as in life, so in art. Even famed CNN chat show host, Larry King asks him if he is not perhaps onthe verge of paranoaia.

In Philip Noyce’s adaptation of the Tom Clancy best-seller, “Clear and Present Danger”, the President of the United Statesattempts to remind the public of his war on drugs by declaring the drug cartels to be a “clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.”[cliii] Whilst sanctioning covert action, the undeclared aim of the Prtesident is to avoid colateral dammage, and to able to prove plausible deniability. “Clear and Present Danger” deals with the use and abuse of power- political power, military power and personal ambition. It also addresses the hidden often sinister dangers of a faceless government bureaucracy in which no one can be held accountable to anyone. Althought it is manifestly about political corruption, incompetance and abuse, it is also a positive film, for the values of a free society ultimatley triumph. The morality of Jack Ryan, played by Harrison Ford, is essential in restoring the balance to the national state of affairs. The President is portrayed as being a middle manager, similar in many ways to President Bush. He is easily led by his advisers and specifically attempts to distance himself from the covert action he initiates. ”How can he be clear about the issue when it is clarity he specifically wants to avoid?”[cliv] one aide asks.

When the novel “Clear and Present Danger” was written in 1988, two issues were dominating the media in America. One was the ongoing problem of drug abuse and the attendant crime, which was reaching epidemic proportions with the introduction of a new formof cocaine to urban areas; Crack Cocaine. The second was a brewing storm within the Reagan Administration that would become known as the Iran/Contra scandal. The similarities between fact and fiction are particularly revealing; both Presidents attempted to claim ignorance of covert missions, preferring instead to blame their loyal servants who are unable later to prove Executive complicity. The major distinction between fact and fiction of course is the lack of a Jack Ryan character in the Iran/Contra affair to defy the President and testify willingly before the Senate Oversight Committee. The film was advertised with the line, “Some say the greatest threat to America comes from other nations. Others say the greatest threat to America comes from within.”[clv](Noyce, 1994) As in all great American literature, it is the unseen, unexpected enemy from within that ultimately proves to be so very dangerous.

As a group, these films constitute an alternative history of the Presidency. Sometimes they follow reality, sometimes reality seems to imitate ficion. In 1962, “The Manchurian Candidate” was released starring Frank Sinatra. It is the tale of a political assassination plotted by a complex conspiracy of Communists and right wing extremists. A year later President Kennedy was assassinated and ever since many have tried to fit the plot of ”The Manchurian Candidate” to the events that transpired in Dallas. No one in Hollywood has been as brazen about this as Oliver Stone. As perhaps the most gifted and articulate American director working today, his body of work represents a fascinating examination of America in the post - war years. Covering events such as the Vietnam War, Watergate, American foreign policy in Latin America and of course the assassination of President Kennedy. It is to his body of work that I now turn.

Of all the Presidents in American history, none receive quite the same level of attention as John F. Kennedy. His familly, style and the manner of his passing, are all reasons for the continued fascination with the thirty fifth President. Few, if any motion pictures have been as controversial as Oliver Stone’s disection of the Warren report, “J.F.K.” As the introduction to Stone’s movie reminds us, “To sin by silence when others doth protest makes cowards of men.”[clvi] Silence ans cowardece are two sins that certainly cannot be levelled at the film’s controversila director. Few film makers in recent history have proven to be as contentious as Oliver Stone, with his withering appraisla of America’s post war history. Since 1986 Oliver Stone has saved what he perceives as the crimes of the American eestablishment; its support of right wing death squads in “Savador,” it’s callous prosecution of the Vietnam War in “Platoon,” its dereliction of duty towards veterans in “Born On The Forth Of July,” and its acceptance of the “Greed is Good” philosophy in Wall Street. Then in 1991 he released his most ambitios picture to date, “JFK”.

An unrelenting attack on the Military Industrial Complex which Stone now feels to be running America, the film portrays John F. Kennedy as a White Knight. He was a Gallahad, cut down by the American system for being too good to live. Had he survuved, the worls would have been a far better place and the Vietnam War would not have escalated as it did. To calll the movie contentios is an unprecidented understatement of vast proportions. It was attacked before the cameras had even begun rolling. Scripts were stolen and quoted in leading American newspapers. The film shoot was dogged by reporters and photographers, particularly the critical reconstruction of the ambush, staged at the precise spot where the President was killed in 1963. Headlines began to scream out such headlines as “The Shooting of JFK,”[clvii] “Dallas in Wonderland”[clviii] and “JFK - Truth and Fiction.”[clix] As Oliver Stone himself concluded, “The doberman pinschers of the establishment are intent on destroying this film.” It was the media that Stone would blame for a lack of interest in the case, declaring that “the Press have been asleep for twenty eight years.”[clx]

The controversy centred on Stone’s claim that the official inquest into the assassination of the President was deeply flawed and that as such, a conspiracy had existed to end the life of John F. Kennedy. Much of the film’s content had been known to assassination researchers for years, and in this context the film was not particularly ground breaking. What was important however was that this $40 million film took the subject outof the cloistered environment of assassination buffs and placed it in the heart of the local line,ma chains from California to Coney Island. At the heart of the movie is the 8mm film of the assassination taken by Abraham Zapruder. Previously the footage had been seen by only a small percentage of the population. Now Oliver Stone was running it again and again in a major motion picture starring Kevin Costner. For the first time perhaps, millions of Americans would see the original footage which appears to offer conclusive evidence of a frontal head shot to the President. This, together with the amalgamation of evidence collected over the years which contradiccted the official verdict, made many people very nervous and an attempt was made to kill the film before it was ever releassed. The New York Times in particular made a serioes of concentrated attacks on the movie whilst it was still in pre-production. It published nearly thirty articles, letters, editorials and columns, all savagely attacking the new film. Oliver Stone saw an historical parallel with an earlier film. “I should not be surprised by a newspaper trying to kill a movie. That hashappened in Hollywood ever since the Hearst papers attacked Citizen Kane.”[clxi]

The film however could not be stopped, so it had to be disparaged. The Oscar winning director could not be discredited as a film maker, so he had to be mocked as an historian. As Stone points out, “the fifteen million Americans who flocked to see the film were not at all convinced.”[clxii] Oliver Stone sees the assassination as a turning point, a seminal event in the lives of millions of Americans. The murder “changed the course of history. It was a heavy blow to our Country and to the World. It put an abrupt end to a period of innocence and idealism.”[clxiii] The assassination remains the most shocking single event since the end of the Second Waorld War.

The movie is based on a number of sources. For its basic outline it follows Jim Garrison’s book, “On the trail of athe Assassins”, which detailed Garrison’s search for Kennedy’s killers. For additional background information, Jim Marr’s encycliopedic “Crossfrire” and John Newman’s “JFK and Vietnam” were esential in establishing the theory that the President may have been killedto prevent a planned withdrawal from Vietnam in 1965. The film is an amalgamation of thirty years worth of research, compiled into three hours of film making history. Never before has a film come out and charged the Director of the FBI, and a Vice President of trhe United States if being “accomplices after the fact”[clxiv] in the murder of an American President.

The movie does not purport to solve the murder. What it does is to remind people how much America and the world lost when President Kennedy died. It addresses anew the question of what might have happened and asks why? As the character of X states clearly, “That’s the real question - “Why ?” - “Why was Kennedy killed?” - “”Who benefited?” - “Who has the power to cover it up?”[clxv] Rather than name names, the film attempts to demonstrate how the President was essentially killed by the American system itself. Shadowy characters are seen plotting against Kennedy. “Like Caesar he is surrounded by enemies. Something is underway, but it has no face.”[clxvi] Military leaders, so eager for intervention oin Cuba and Vietnam, conspire against their own Commander InChief, using the rules of covert warfare at home. Stone makes the assertion that America’s own “Executive Action” program for covertly removing foreign leaders may have been implemented at home.

The movie makesthe bold claim that “President Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy, planned at the highest levels of the United States Government. It was a publiuc execution, covered up by the FBI, the Secret Service and theWhite House, all the way up to, and including J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson.”[clxvii] Stone’s protagonist is New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who is portrayed by Kevin Costner as a Jimmy Stewart character in an old Frank Capra film. “He undertakes to investigate something that has been covered up. He makes mistakes.He has many frustrations. He has few successes. He is reviled, ridiculed and the case he brings to court crashes.”[clxviii] As played by Kevin Costner, a golden aura of honesty and patriotism surround Garrison and he adopts the persona of the dead President himself. John F. Kennedy is actually seen very rarely in the film. His term in Office is outlined over the introductory credits, creating a gallant image of John F. Kennedy. From then on he is seen only in the black and white photographs of Jacques Lowe to outline his isolation and danger and through Abraham Zapruder’s lens. His spirit permeates the celluloid however. Garrison’s character is clearly meant to be the living embodiment of the late President, in his crusade for justice and truth. Garrison never misses an opportunity to praise Kennedy, even telling his children, “the truth can be a scary thing. It scared President Kennedy, but he was a brave man.”[clxix] Stone has rejected claims that he is attempting to profit from Kennedy’s death, declaring that “I am not making this film for oney. I want to pay homageto JFK, the Godfather of my gneration.”[clxx]

Stone contends that the asassination turned America upside down. Before the killing, all had been possible. “If Kennedy had been in Office, Vietnam would never have happened.”[clxxi] This is the movies’s main contention; that Kennedy was killed due to his attempts to end the Cold War. “He had made a deal with Khruschev to end the Missile Crisis. He signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. He installed the Hot Line.At the American University he described the Soviets for the first time in American history as mortals, like us, who care for their children.”[clxxii] It was however, President Kennedy’s policy towards Vietnam which Stone believes to have been so fatal.

President Kennedy refused to invade Cuba and rejected calls for combat troops to be deployed in Laos and vietnam. He did send 16,000 advisers in response to mounting pressure from the military, but he had decided by October 1963 that if he won a second term, he would pull out all together in 1965. He knew that he could not do so beforehand due to the threat from Barry Goldwater and the Republican Right in the upcoming Presidential Election in 1964. The President did state publicly however, that if the American public would not support an invasion of Cuba, only 90 miles away, they would certainly not back an invasion of Vietnam, some 9,000 miles away. “If he had lived the Cold War would have ended in the 1960’s and theera of Reagan and Gorbechev would have been nrought forward by over twenty years.” Oliver Stone portrays Kennedy as a President who grew tremendously during his time inOffice and who was not prepared to compromise with those in military power. Kennedy chalenged theMilitary Industrial Complex, and the film suggests he paid for it with his life.

Oliver Stone has referred to the Vietnam War as being “the Bloody Shirt of American politics, replacing theslavery issue.”[clxxiii] Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Agrees that there was a sharp and sudden change in policy after the assassination, but he feels that this was due to Johnson adhering to more hawkish advisers.[clxxiv] So much has been written about the assassination, but perhaps James Reston summed it up in the most appropriate manner when he wrote; “What was killed was not only the President, but the promise, the death of youth and the hope of youth.”[clxxv] Oliver Stone’s film picks up on this theme of loss. A loss which was compounded by the murders of Senator Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. That all three were apparently gunned down by single lone nuts, all of them under highly suspicious forensic circumstances, surely brings the veracity of the official verdicts into question.

Oliver Stone portrays John F. Kennedy as a Christ - like figure who personified American innocence and was crucified. “The fabric of American Government was violently slashed in the most stunning individual tragedy of the Twentieth Century.”[clxxvi] The question of who killed Kennedy is one that refuses to disappear. Jim Garrison has said that “we can no more escape it than Hamlet can escape his father’s ghost.”[clxxvii] The film deals with history and myth, with truth and fiction. As the late American historian Theodore White wrote, “So many things will be said about Kennedy in the future, that the man himself will be lost in the myth.”[clxxviii] Only by learning from the past can we hope to avoid such tragedies in the future. To quote Thomas Jefferson, “Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty.”[clxxix] To ignore the past is to be condemned to relive it.

On April 22, 1994, one of the most chronicled and controversial figures of the Twentieth Century, Richard Milhous Nixon, died. As the Thirty - Seventh President of the United States, Nixon managed to “scale life’s greatest heights and plunge it’s deepest valleys.”[clxxx] However, despite numerous biographies and his Presidential Memoirs, Nixon remains something of an enigma. Oliver Stone’s movie Nixon is an attempt to understand the man behind the tarnished Presidential Seal. The film depicts Richard Nixon as a man who “knew everything about power, ewxcept its price.”[clxxxi] The quote from Matthew 16:26 “what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world but lose his soul.”[clxxxii] highlights the tale to be told.

President Nixon is portrayed as a desolate and lonely figure in the Lincoln Room of the White House, named for one of America’s beacons of Presidential integrity. The image of Lincoln as well as Kennedy, appears throughout the film as a reminder of Nixon’s failed aspirations. The film is centred around one long night of soul searching as President Nixon sits alone, listening tohis tapes of his own self undoing. Nixon reviews his life and his doomed Presidency through a series of flashbacks. For Oliver Stone, “Nixon” is the pinnacle of his alternative history of modern America, and a twin film to “J.F.K.” which suggested that Kennedy was murdered by the American System itself. If “J.F.K.” can be seen as Stone’s film concerning crimes committed against a President, then “Nixon” is his film outlining crimes committed by a President: Nixon’s complicity in the Watergate affair. Stone sees JFK and Nixon as being complementary to each other, as they intersect in so many ways. There are nocontradictions between them, they refer to the same peiod intime, but from very different viewpoints.

Stone presents a film of visual and thematic bolness, formed like a Chinese puzzle box, with flash backs, black and white, colour and even sepia film stocks used. The film depicts Nixon’s lifelong quest for public acceptance that constantly eluded him, even when he held the highest office in the nation. Nixon’s life unspools with the inevitability of a classic tragedy, as his political career finally crumbles beneath the weight of his past, his ambitions and evenhis blindness to events occuring beyond his reach. We see Nixon’s incredible political life; Congressman at 33, Senator at 37 and Vice President at 39. He lost the Presidential Electiojn of 1060 and the Claifornain Gubernatorial raceof 1962, before making a comeback six years later to win two terms as President. The panorama of modern American history is used as a backdrop for this fascinating character study. This allows Stone the unique opportunity to reexamine events seen in hois previous films, including Born on the Forth of July and JFK, but from a completley different perspective. Having spent years examining those on the outside of power in America, Stone now ventures into the very heart of American ggovrnment.

Oliver Stone sees the Californian Gubernatorial race as Nixon’s most public humiliation; “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore. Because Gentlemen, this is my last Press Conference.”[clxxxiii] It serves as the end of the first part of the movie. At that point the film flashes back and recaps his life, so in effect there is a documentary in the middle of the film. Mixing old time news reel montage footage with flash back recreations, Nixon’s lifew is brought tot the screeen in a bold and dramatic manner. Nothing is unrelated, everything is relative and all is revealing as the stoy of a lifetime is recreated.

The first half of the film is about Nixon’s loss of power. The second half starts with the 1968 Republican National Convention when Nixon is nominated for the Presidency. The second half of the film then is about Nixon in power, but power leads again to loss. This is a repetative cycle in Nixon throughout his life; Self-destruction, loss and then victory. The film bases Nixon’s rise and fall on a number of key elements. One of these is lying, established as a character flaw when Nixon’s mother catches him being dishonest. She warns him of the price to pay for dishonesty; “Thou may fool the world, but never me”[clxxxiv] she warns. Catching Algar Hiss in a lie is what catapults Nixon to national prominence and ultimately to the Vice - Presidency. Being caught in a lie over Watergate destroys his Presidency. In an early scene thunder rolls over Washington and lightening flashes towards the White House, causing the Stars and Stripes to rip wildly in the dark night sky. The meaning is clear; Nixon’s actions have threatened thefuture of theAmerican system of government, shaking it to its very core.

The film attempts to draw a torn and embittered figure in Shakespearean style. The temptations of power result in a figure as grand as King Lear meting the villainy of Richard III. The script portrays Nixon as demonic but tragic, a vulnerable leader obsessed with his past, a paranoid meglomaniac with deep moral convictions, with a strong sense of right and wrong and love of country. Nixon’s tragic flaw of hubris is clearly evident, and Anthony Hopkins plays him as a stern and vengeful man who must assign blame for every misfortune. He is a man who remembers every slight, real or imagined.

The film contains a damning look at the workings of Governmet and the making of a leader. When Nixon runs for POResident in 1968, a black man questions him about his past live on television. Rather than address the accusations, the director cut to a girl holding a sign that reads Bring our Country Together, knowing there is nothing that Nixon can say in his defence. It is a strong attack on the propoganda tactics employed by Nixon’s media team. Not all aprove of the movie of course. New York Times columnist, and former Nixon speech writer, William Safie said the film was a violation of the truth,a nd that Oliver Stone merely wasnted to spread distrust about the Government., However,this Is an Oliver Stione film, and as such, secret deals and conspiracies abound, central as they are to the plot. In Stone’s view, Nixons was a man who conspired against others and saw conspiracies against him and betrayal everywhere. The foilm jumps to alll points of Nixon’s life, to deals he makes as President after Watergate to deals with Hoover, to dealings with shaddy businessmen.

Throughout the film there is Nixon’s ongoing competition with John F. Kennedy, his most bitter foe in life and death. The Nixon - Kennedy relationship was a complex one; “We came to Congress together. We were like brothers,”[clxxxv] Nixon declares. He always feels secondary to the fallen hero of Camelot. “People look at you and see what they want to be. People look at me and see what they are.”[clxxxvi]Nixon decalres to a portrait of Kennedy ten years after Dallas. Class resentment abounds, “The American Constitution is hanging by a thread because he went to Whittier and not to Yale”[clxxxvii] Nixon’s Chief of Staff declares.

The film puts the Kennedys forward as being a major element in Nixon’s rise and fall. It demonstrates that Nixon’s success was built on the deaths of two sets of brothers; his own and the Kennedy’s. The deaths of his own two brothers from tuberculosis enabled Nixon to go to Law School. Nixon was in Dallas the day President Kennedy was killed. Senator Robert Kennedy was favourite to challenge Nixon in the 1968 election before himself being shot following the California Primary. Their deaths smoothed Nixon’s way to the White House. In this respect therefore, Nixon’s path to power is paved with the dead bodies of two pairs of brothers; his own and the Kennedy’s. Nixon asks, “Who’s helping us ? Is it God ? Or is it Death ?”[clxxxviii] The film makes a comparison between Nixon’s older brother Harold and John F. Kennedy. Both have similar haircuts, flash brilliant smiles and have what Richard Nixon lacks, good looks, social ease and a care free manner.

Unwilling to abandon conspiracy theories, Stone comes up with a connection between Nixon and President Kennedy’s assassins. The film hints darkly that a combination of rich Texans, anti- Castro Cubans and J. Edgar Hoover, all representing the vested interests of a Military Industriak Complex, may have been responsible for the assassination. The man linking Nixon to the events of November 22, 1962 is a rich Texan Oil man played by Larry Hagman. “Suppose Kennedy didn't run in ‘64 ? These are dangerous times. Anything can happen”[clxxxix] Nixon is asked shortly before Kennedy is assassinated. There is however a darker character in Nixon, but not one that is found in the history books. It is The Beast, a metaphor for the darkest forces in American Cold War politics; The Defence Industry, the Intelligence Community, organised crime and big business. Nixon of course knew about The Beast, President Eisenhower warned about it in his Farewell Address in 1961.But it took him years to learn of its true existance. He did not know about it when he ran for Congress. Oliver Stone is sure that The Beast killed President Kennedy. It wanted a war in Vietnam and Kennedy would not provide one, so The Beast did what it had to do. Even Nixon seems to agree; “Whoever killed Kennedy came from this Beast we created.”[cxc] Neither Stone nor Nixon can escape from JFK, the man, the President or thae movie. After the assassination Nixon states “If I’d been President they never would have killed me.”[cxci]

Nixon thought he could control The Beast, but he was wrong. He too was a prisoner, an everyman who enters the Arena like his hero Theodore Roosevelt and meetsThe Beast, and realises it is more powerful than he is.Nixon’s realisation that real power does not lie in the Oval Office but with the anonomous paarmilitary, para-governma=ental and corporate interests is a turninf=g point in the film. Yet he too was a prisoner of The Beast. Nixon’s realisation that real power does not lie with his Office but with the anonymous corporate interests is the climax of the film.

The movie is notan unassailable assault on the late President, but rather it attempts to portray Nixon as a human being with all the failings and greatness inherent in a man of his stature. Nixon is portrayed as neither demonic nor angelic. Rather Stone’s portrait of America’s most controversial Presient is a bleak one of a man who had a harsh and unpleasant childhoiod. He turned that experience into a life of power and pain only to be destroyed by thepowers he unleashed. Nixon emerges from the movie in the role of victim; Victim of The Beast, of the past, of his own personal grief. He is tormented by the deaths of his beloved brothers. The film mixes personal and National history so that a close aide can say, “people are dying because he didn’t make the college varsity team.”[cxcii] Nixon is an historical drama about the construction and recording of history. Nixon breaks Constitutional promises, lies, cheats, shuts out his familly and sacrifices his collegues to hold onto power. Every flash- back is a measure of his fall from grace.

Just as Oliver Stone rushed to get J.F.K , on the screens in time for the 1992 Presidential Election, so the filming of Nixon was carefully plotted to be in time for the 1996 campaign. Republicans can only wince at the thought of the Nixon Presidency coming back in an election year. Leading Republican candidate, Senator Robert Dole, was a chief defender of President Nixon and cried at his funeral in 1994. Dole turned Hollywood into a political battleground when he attacked Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers.” Stone has not said he is taking revenge with Nixon, but he hardly needs to bother. The giant posters and billboards simply declare “Nixon in ‘96”.

In 1995, Director Robert Reiner released his movie The American President to rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. Essentially a love story concerning a man who merely happens to be President of the United States, the movie has an interesting history. Its genesis lay in the defeat of Michael Dukakis in 1988. As liberals mourned their third Presidential defeat in a row, Robert Redford suggested an idea for a film which wouldbe a political comedy about a widowed President who falls in love. Redford envisioned an updated 1930’s screewball comedy. Robert Reiner was brought in as director and with him came Aaron Sorkin, playwright of A Few Good Men. Both agreed that the project needed a strong political backbone upon which to base rthe romance.

So it was that the initial outline was born: Is it possible to be the leader of the world’s most powerful democracy and a single adult man at the same time? Will the electorarte allow him such a luxury? These are the questions posed in The american Presidsent, althought the real dilema is ‘How does the widowed leader of the world balance his many obligations to his country with the ordinary demands and rites of courtship?’ The question arises when the President unexpectedly falls in love with a controversial environmental lobbyist. Complicating his desire for personal privacy and efforts to maintain a relationship are issues that the President must confront, like approval ratings, and an aggressive political opponent. All this in an election year!

Ever since the 1930s hollywood has sought to affirm the basic hrealth of American democracy by subjecting the political system to intelligent, humorous and essentially optimistic scrutiny. The American President is no exception. As played by Michael Douglas, President Andrew Shepherd is a devoted liberal. A firm believer in gun control, he is no less commited to fuel emmision rediuctions. He is also very popular, with an approval rating of 63% . He is an idealist, he broods over the fate of a janitor in the Lybian Inteligence HQ he has order to be destroyed. Shepherd is a baby boomer with an eye for the ladies. He has never served in the military and has raised a teenage daughter in the White House. He lives by theopinion polls and dismays fellow liberals by being ready to deal and compromise.

If this sounds as though it was written by the Clinton White House, tere is very good reason. After a number of movies that hailed conservative values, such as ‘Forrest Gump’ and ‘Apollo 13’, ‘The American President’ can be seen as a return to traditional Hollywood liberalism. President Shepherd is Bill Clinton as liberal Democrats would like him to be. He is Clinton without Hillary, a lip bittingliberal whofeels your pain, bans assault rifles, supports pollution reduction and is tough on crime. The President’s opponent is a shallow thinking, mean spirited, foul mouthed hypocritical Republican senator from Kansas, played by a loyal Clinton fan Richard Dreyfuss. In real life, the Republican Senator from Kansas is Robert Dole, front runner to challenge Clinton for the Presidency in 1996.

Most films place an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances. In this case there are no ordinary circumstances the President can be in. Rather, the President is placed in everyday situations like going out on a date, ordering flowers and driving a car. How does a man go courting in the White House? He wants to send flowers, but what florist will believe a man who gives his credit card details as The President? His time is totally organised,so how does he arrange time for adate? He cannot take a woman to a restaraunt without it becoming front page news. Whilst the embatled couple are at the centre of things, hovering around them in various stages of panic are the Presiudennt’s advisers and aides. There is Chief of Staff A.J McInerney, played by Martin Sheen. He has been thePresident’s best friend since childhood and keeps the President well informed. He advises him and tries to protect him from pitfalls or blins alleys, politically, personally and emotionally. He is the clearly based on Mack McClarty. Then there is Michale J. Fox who plays Lewis Rithschild, an impossibly young, short and slim Presidential aide, clearly moddleled on Clinton aoide Georeg Stephanopolos.

Not many movies can claim to have had the world’s most poweful man as an adviser, but The American President did. President Clinton gave the film makers the freedom of the White House, throwing open evry door, in the knowledge that the film could only aid his cause. Former Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers and former Chief of Staff Mack McLarty also served as technical directors. Writer Aaron Sorkin and director Rob Reiner both spent time with Bill Clinton observing how he got through the day. Michael Douglas and Annette Benning separately enjoyed private tours of the White House as part of their preparation. Michael J. Fox spent days with Presidential adviser George Stephanopolos preparing for his role as a Domestic Policy Adviser. The Presidency is used as a backdrop to the story, and as a result the action moves from one historic room in the White House to the next with confident ease. No effort is made to dwell on the physical attributes of the Presidency, such as the Oval Office, for it is merely where the man works.

For the Clinton years, Reiner has presented a parable on the difference between the politics of perception and those of character. The film has had a great impact on Bill Clinton’s standing in the opinion polls. It may well be fiction, but it is clearly a liberal interpretation of the Clinton administration. President Shepherd is a first term democrat, a Man of the People who likes hamburgers and did not fight in Vietnam.

'The American President’ raises the issue of the politics of perception. It is ironic that the real life President, who is the inspiration for President Andrew Shepherd, openly embraces the stars of Hollywood. The Clinton White House thrills to Hollywood, stars are always welcome there. Tom Hanks spent the night after the screening of ‘Apollo 13’ and any Presidential trip to California always includes an evening reserved for Hollywood.. ‘The American President’ is a fictional account of a President, Bill Clinton is a real President who openly courts Hollywood. Where reality and fiction meet can often become blurred until the line of distinction is lost to one and all.

The political manoeuvrings that occur in Washington have been described as a game, with politicians viewing themselves as “players; To be a player is to have influence on some issue. Not to be a player is to be without any influence.” (Smith, xiiv) No one figure personifies American political power more than the President of the United States. The American President strongly influences public policy. Specific Administrations have an impact on everyday American life. Millions of American’s way of life is significantly influenced by policies such as Medicare and Medicaid that had their roots in the Administrations of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

The American Presidency today remains the most fascinating of all political offices. Since 1992, power has ebbed and flowed in quite a dramatic fashion from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to another. In 1992 the White House had the initiative, then following the 1994 mid-term elections, the Republican Congress regained it. Now in 1996 there seems little doubt that the initiative lies once more within the confines of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton has been one of the most fascinating and intriguing in many a year. Embodying many traits of his predecessors, he appears as an amalgamation of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. He has Kennedy’s wit, his rhetoric and looks. He has Lyndon Johnson’s Southern mannerisms and his ability to gather consensus for passage of legislation. Alas he also has Nixon’s reputation for always seeming to be one step ahead of disaster.

There can be no doubt where Clinton’s political fire was lit. It was on the White House lawn in the famed meeting with President Kennedy. As candidate he declared “John Kennedy was elected President not by telling people what they wanted to hear but by challenging the American people to do better”. (Bentley, 45) Clinton has united blacks, Hispanics and working class whites, destroying the coalition that elected Reagan and Bush three times. Clinton’s politics were inspired by Kennedy but he got his real political education in the Reagan years. This means Clinton thinks like a sixties liberal but he campaigns like an eighties conservative. His sense of timing was at its peak when he declared on 20th February 1992, “New Hampshire tonight, has made Bill Clinton the Come Back Kid.” (Bentley, 40)

Bill Clinton sought the Presidency following five terms as Governor of Arkansas, finally winning with a figure of just 43 %, a figure smaller than any member of Congress. Clinton was elected on a platform of change. Not just change for change’s sake, but sweeping generational change. Much has occurred throughout the world in the thirty years that separate the Kennedy and the Clinton Administrations. The Cold War has been won, making the World “more free but less stable.” (Pomper, 221) President Clinton believes that his election was not just a victory, but the start of a new era. Nothing less than an end of a dark and cynical time that began after the Kennedy assassination and reached full flower during the twelve years of the Reagan and Bush Administrations. The Clinton Campaign was guided by those hoping that their time had finally come, that it was time to reclaim the idealism of the Kennedy years.

Once in Office, President Clinton has aspired to be the Franklin D. Roosevelt of the late Twentieth Century. He wants to be a pivotal President; someone who used Government to better the lives of millions of Americans. Roosevelt was the only President to be quoted in Clinton’s Inaugural Address, as the new President outlined his dream of making government once more the place for “bold, persistent experimentation” (Pomper, 221) Like Roosevelt, Clinton is a pioneer in the use of the mass media. The ambition of both was to generate a groundswell of public support to prevent opposition to Presidential programs. With popular support, the President proceeds to enact programs that solidify his political base. Clinton promised to focus on the economy as President but foreign policy is far more seductive. It is the blessing and the bane of Residents. It provides more freedom of action than domestic affairs. Alas the price it demands is constant attention. Presidents Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson all came to Office with urgent domestic agendas and ended up being consumed by major foreign crisis’s. President Clinton is a well educated man, but like them he is an innocent abroad. Bill Clinton has become a foreign policy President for one simple reason; all Presidents have to be.

Europe has tended to regard Clinton as a smart, but provincial Southern politician. It could be argued, however, that rather than mock the White House as dithering, Europe might applaud Clinton for not falling into a test of virility in Bosnia in an attempt to prove his manhood after not serving in Vietnam. The Cold War may be over, but the New World Order President Bush hoped to create has not taken shape. It is a World which America can neither dominate nor withdraw from.

As President, Bill Clinton has attempted to define his Nation’s new role in the new World. He accused Bush of giving too little support to Russia’s Boris Yeltsin and too much to China’s tyrants. “I believe our Nation has a higher purpose than to coddle dictators and stand aside from the global movement to democracy”, (Levin, 331) he said. Clinton has discovered that with America’s own budgetary restrictions, providing millions of dollars of aid to Russia becomes problematic. Clinton has realised that American foreign trade depends too much on China, and so Human Rights’ violations go by relatively un-protested. For all his expertise in foreign affairs President Bush left his successor with a world of unfinished business. Clinton’s success in foreign affairs has been one of the most surprising elements to his term in Office; His handling of the Haitian military junta, the Middle East Peace deals, the successful visit to Ireland, his historic speech to the English Parliament and his speech to a unified Berlin in 1994.

Modern Presidents have far more scope to make decisions on their own initiative, but the potential for opposition to the use of such power can weaken Executive leadership. Modern Presidents are the most visible actors in the American political system. This creates a giant amount of political leverage. However that this can be countermanded by the possibility of becoming the scapegoat for National concerns. This was very much the case in the Watergate Affair, an incident which had profound effects upon the Office of the Presidency. Senator Edward Kennedy prophetically feared that whilst Watergate might ruin Nixon, it would cripple the Office of the Presidency far more, and for Administrations to come. “These are tough times, very tough times. And we’re all going to pay for them. This will end, but it will never really end.” (Burke, 44)

The Presidency has evolved in the twenty years that have elapsed since Watergate. Problems still abound, but they are not insurmountable. The sins of the past have made the job harder, as Carter discovered. Indeed, Carter may have been Nixon's ultimate victim. The eight years of the Reagan Administration did much to revive the office in the eyes of the American public. The job still carries the shackles imposed in the post- Watergate era, but Bill Clinton is demonstrating that despite such impositions, and a hostile Congress, progress is possible. This has been a Presidency of great highs and great lows. The triumphant passage of NAFTA and the Brady Bill have been compounded by the Whitewater Affair. Overall, America is stronger now than it was four years ago, something Bill Clinton can rightly take credit for. This author predicts therefore that President Clinton will be re-elected this November , becoming the first Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 to commence a second term in his own right, for Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson only served one term of their own, having served out the remainder of their predecessors’ term He will also be only the second President since Eisenhower to be re-elected at all. Four more years beckon for President William Jefferson Clinton.

As this work draws to a close, I hope that the reader will come away with a far greater understanding of the Presidency; its historical background and its evolution into the Office of today; How the Office is perceived and portrayed by the American Media and Public. The Office is in constant evolution. It is not the same as it was thirty years ago, and it will not be the same thirty years from now. The struggle to gain the upper hand is what makes the political scene in Washington so fascinating.

The reasons for both successful and failed Presidencies can be found in the contradictory role requirements of the Presidency itself. The characteristics of Article Two of the Constitution allow the President to take the initiative in National Affairs, but also exposes him to punishment by Congress for illegitimate use of his powers. The delicate balance between success and failure owes much to a political system that still remains true to its founders intentions in its capacity to restrain the Chief Executive. In this context it could be argued that the Founders have been a little too successful. Recent Congressional hostility towards the Executive has made the inequities of the Office all the more apparent.

The American people focus obsessively on the Presidency. His is the one Office which is easy to portray on television; “The Supreme Court is an aloof and anonymous body, Congress is a confusing gaggle of 535 people.” (Smith, 12) As a result the American people have to live with being bombarded with the Presidency. The President has become a television personality in his own right. It is also the only nationally elected office in the land. In addition there is a strong urge for simplicity in the American psyche, “a compulsion to reduce the intricacy of a hundred power plays to the simple question of whether the President is up or down.” (Smith, 13)

The President's appearance is vitally important. There has emerged in recent years, the politics of perception. In many ways it no longer matters what one does, what counts is what the public think one is doing. I have discussed what the public want from their President; leadership, reassurance, legitimacy and action. The Presidents themselves would be quite happy to be left alone to be historic leaders. What the media wish to see is harder to define. Since the 1970’s, media hostility towards the White House has been constant. One of the most intriguing questions of our time, with regard to the Presidency is this; Does the popular image of the Presidency create a standard to be matched, or does the Presidency itself create a media image which it can manipulate to its own end ?

I believe that this work has demonstrated how difficult it is to answer this question accurately. The lines of distinction are blurred and the more one examines the dilemma, the more one sees how the media image and the Presidential image have become entwined. It is hard to imagine that this situation will improve, and one can only see it worsening. Surely it is notion which future Presidents will have to dedicate much of their time. Perhaps it is the latest in a long line of evolutionary steps in the history of the American Presidency.

It has been written that “the great Presidents were the strong Presidents. They were masters of events, the influenced history, shaped the nation’s destiny and brought in talented Administrations and advisers.” (Bernstein, 4) As America prepares for its final Presidential Election of the century, what the Nation needs is stability. Congressional assertiveness against the Presidency has meant that power, instead of residing with the President, often floats away from him. Ronald Reagan is the only President since Eisenhower to successfully serve two terms. Since Eisenhower, one President has been assassinated, one has resigned and four have been evicted from Office after a single term. I believe that what America needs now is another two term President to provide National stability. Therefore I anticipate a second term for President Clinton to begin at midday on January 20, 1997.

[i]John K. Galbraith,American Capitalism, 1956, page 1.

[ii]Madison et al, The Federalist Papers, 1988, page 35.

[iii]David McKay, American Politics And Society, 1993, page 311.

[iv]G. Pomper, The Election of 1992, 1993, page 219.

[v]P Nivola and D Roosenblomm, Classic Readings In American Politics, 1986, page 123.

[vi]Ibid, 123.

[vii]Ibid, 123

[viii]Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower, 1990, page536.

[ix]Madison et al, The Federalist Paers, page 52.

[x]Ibid, page 53.

[xi]Ibid, page 56.

[xii]D. Freeman, Washington, 385.

[xiii]Hedrick Smith, the Power Game, page 3.

[xiv]Caroli, The White House, page 16.

[xv]Hugh Brogan, The History of America, page 259.

[xvi]W. Degregario, The Complete Book of US Presidents, page 236.

[xvii]Abraham Lincoln, Great Speeches, page 56.

[xviii]W Leuchtenburg, In The Shadow of FDR, page 203.

[xix]Tindall & Shi, America : A Narative History, page 974.

[xx]Horowitz, Carroll & Lee, On The Edge, 90.

[xxi]Tindall and Shi, page 974.

[xxii]Cronin, 114.

[xxiii]JimMarrs, Crossfire, p274.

[xxiv]Parrish, p9

[xxv]White, vii

[xxvi]Ibid, 14.

[xxvii]A. Cooke, p45.

[xxviii]On The Edge, p299.

[xxix]Ibid, p.272

[xxx]Ibid, p.350

[xxxi]Ranelagh, p38.

[xxxii]Freidel, The Presidents of America, 71.

[xxxiii]Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower, p.389

[xxxiv]Pach and Richardson, The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. p.27

[xxxv]Ambrose, p267.

[xxxvi]Ibid, 287

[xxxvii]Ibid, 300

[xxxviii]Ibid 288

[xxxix]Ibid, 288

[xl]Pach and Richardson, xi

[xli]Ibid,32

[xlii]Ibid, 32

[xliii]William Manchester, One Brief Shining Moment, p129

[xliv]Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy, p174.

[xlv]William Chaffe, The Unfinnished Journey, p188.

[xlvi]Dorris Karns, Lyndon Johnson and The American Dream, p200.

[xlvii]Ibid, p210

[xlviii]Degregario, p579

[xlix]Karnow, Vietnam, p342

[l]On The Edge, 451.

[li]Bob MacNamara, InRetrospect, p264

[lii]Kearns, p343

[liii]On the Edge, p.459.

[liv]Kaufman, p.1.

[lv]Ibid., p.1.

[lvi]Ibid., p.1.

[lvii]Ibid., p.51.

[lviii]Ibid., p.35.

[lix]Ibid., p.3.

[lx]Ibid., p.210

[lxi]Boyer, p.14.

[lxii]Ibid., p.30.

[lxiii]Ibid., p.14.

[lxiv]Chaffe, p.474.

[lxv]Boyer, p.16.

[lxvi]Ibid., p.29.

[lxvii]Ibid., 29.

[lxviii]Ibid., p.275.

[lxix]Ibid., p.275.

[lxx]Ibid., p.275.

[lxxi]Reagan, p.417.

[lxxii]Tindall & Shi, p.1464.

[lxxiii]Ibid., p.1462.

[lxxiv]Ibid., p.1476.

[lxxv]Ibid., p.1476.

[lxxvi]Ibid., p.1476.

[lxxvii]Ibid., p. 1466.

[lxxviii]Pomper, p.13.

[lxxix]Bentley, p.47.

[lxxx]Ibid., p.80.

[lxxxi] Tindall & Shi, p.391.

[lxxxii] Ibid. p.894.

[lxxxiii] Ibid. p.894.

[lxxxiv] Ibid. p. 397.

[lxxxv] Freidel, p.61.

[lxxxvi] Chester, Hodgeson & Page, p.368.

[lxxxvii] Ibid. p368.

[lxxxviii] Ibid. p.368.

[lxxxix] Ibid. p.368.

[xc] Tindall & Shi, p.1403.

[xci] Bernstein, p.5.

[xcii] Chafe, p.188.

[xciii] Schlesinger, p.275.

[xciv] Thompson, p.163.

[xcv] Canton, p.134.

[xcvi] Aitkin, p.223.

[xcvii] Cooke, p.23.

[xcviii] Chafe, p.383.

[xcix] Sorrensen, p.178.

[c] Ambrose, p.288.

[ci] Ibid, p.300.

[cii] Ibid. p.300.

[ciii] Pach & Richardsson, p.31.

[civ] Ibid. p.32.

[cv] Ibid. p.32.

[cvi] Bernstein, p.5.

[cvii] Ibid. p.5.

[cviii] Ibid. p.5.

[cix] Smith. P.3.

[cx] Sorensen, p.216.

[cxi] White, p.21.

[cxii] Chafe, p.188.

[cxiii] Canton, p.142.

[cxiv] Bernstein, p.5.

[cxv] Sidey, p.11.

[cxvi] Freidel, p.62.

[cxvii] Chafe, p.376.

[cxviii] Leuchtenberg, p.203.

[cxix] Chafe, p.383.

[cxx] Boyer, p.30.

[cxxi] Ibid. p.29.

[cxxii] Reagan, p.417.

[cxxiii] Hamilton, p.52.

[cxxiv] Barber, p.392.

[cxxv] Ibid. p.392.

[cxxvi] Ibid. p.393.

[cxxvii] Ibid. p.393.

[cxxviii] Ibid. p.393.

[cxxix] Sorensen, p.275.

[cxxx] Cronin, p.30.

[cxxxi] Barber, p.397.

[cxxxii] Smith, p.545.

[cxxxiii] Cooke, p.45.

[cxxxiv] Smith, p.546.

[cxxxv] Ibid. p.546.

[cxxxvi] McCullough, p.718.

[cxxxvii] Carter, p. 195.

[cxxxviii] Aitkin, p.369.

[cxxxix] Emery, p.8.

[cxl] Aitkin, p.376.

[cxli] Emery, p. xii.

[cxlii] Boyer, p.267.

[cxliii] Ibid. p.270.

[cxliv] Ibid. p.270.

[cxlv] Ibid. p.275.

[cxlvi] Zemeckis, 1995.

[cxlvii] Sorensen, p.361.

[cxlviii] Degregorio, p.633.

[cxlix] Smith, p.450.

[cl] Bently, p.45.

[cli] Lincoln, p.104.

[clii] Paterson, 1993.

[cliii] Noyce, 1994.

[cliv] Ibid.

[clv] Ibid.

[clvi] Stone, p.1.

[clvii] Stone, p.208.

[clviii] Ibid. p.191.

[clix] Ibid. p.393.

[clx] Ibid. p.222.

[clxi] Ibid. p.200.

[clxii] Ibid. p.189.

[clxiii] Ibid. p.199.

[clxiv] Ibid. p.178.

[clxv] Ibid. p.110.

[clxvi] Ibid. p.181.

[clxvii] Ibid. p.178.

[clxviii] Ibid. p.214.

[clxix] Ibid. p.141.

[clxx] Ibid. p.207.

[clxxi] Ibid. p.212.

[clxxii] Ibid. p.252.

[clxxiii] Ibid. p.406.

[clxxiv] Ibid. p.380.

[clxxv] Chafe, p.220.

[clxxvi] H. Smith, p.172.

[clxxvii] Stone, p.437.

[clxxviii] White, p.29.

[clxxix] Stone, p.199.

[clxxx] Nixon, p.564.

[clxxxi] Aitkin, p.763.

[clxxxii] Rivele, Wilkinson, Stone, p.3.

[clxxxiii] Ibid. p.49.

[clxxxiv] Ibid. p.40.

[clxxxv] Ibid. p.34.

[clxxxvi] Ibid. p.99.

[clxxxvii] Ibid. p.166.

[clxxxviii] Ibid. p.93.

[clxxxix] Ibid,p.70.

[cxc] Ibid. p.193.

[cxci] Ibid. p.75.

[cxcii] Ibid. p.166.