Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Michael A. Cole
Department of Public and International Affairs
George Mason University
“Ever since George Washington, the interaction between Congress and the president
has not only fascinated political observers but usually determined the course of
the presidency as it once did to Aaron Wildavsky’s “two presidencies” thesis. The thesis
fuelled extensive research and gave rise to its own body of literature characterizing the
president as the leader in foreign and defense affairs, with implications for Congressional
and policy studies. Decades of research saw the thesis’ central claim moderated by
changes in the balance of executive and Congressional power, the literature’s methods
failed to move beyond power measurements to a full explication of the presidency, and as
an analytical tool the thesis remains unequal to the task of explaining the dynamic
process of policy formation. However, the thesis’ basic claim remains valid if still
moderated, and like a good antique, it could take on new life when placed in a
contemporary setting. The growing school of new institutionalism exhibits qualities the
“two presidencies” thesis failed to develop, but lacks the thesis’ clarity and strengths in
of foreign and defense policy as a product of interaction between the President and
Congress, and retaining the “two presidencies” policy typologies, measurement tools, and
inclination toward executive power, further research could yield a more realistic
depart from the longstanding historical approach to the study of presidents, in which
presidents and their administrations are judged and ranked individually. Political science
required an analytical tool to identify patterns in executive branch behavior across time
“During the past thirty years, this thesis has been subject to numerous theoretical
and empirical arguments and interpretations. The literature has developed to such
Congressional relations in the post World War II era has been guided by
Prominent “two presidencies” researchers note the easy utility of the thesis’ two-part
policy-area typology (domestic and foreign)3; and Wildavsky himself notes the
“somewhat deceptive ease with which data can be collected and applied to the problem,”4
most often using Congressional Quarterly roll call vote-counts.5 Although critics have
uncovered serious flaws in the “two presidencies” thesis, and developments since the
1960s have changed the presidency as Wildavsky knew it, it remains a useful foundation
At its publication,* the “two presidencies” thesis rested on data from 1961
showing that in roll call votes on legislation addressing foreign and defense policy
between the 1930’s Neutrality Legislation and the Cuban Missile Crisis, presidential
preferences in only thirty per cent of relevant votes compared to sixty per cent of votes on
domestic legislation).7 Briefly, the thesis states: “The United States has one president,
but it has two presidencies; one presidency is for domestic affairs, and the other is
concerned with defense and foreign policy.” 8 In the context of the three-branch system,
support for the programs he prefers. In foreign affairs, in contrast, he can almost
always get support for policies that he believes will protect the nation – but his
The model posited by the “two presidencies” thesis has far-reaching implications for
understandings of the executive branch. This brief summary of the thesis suggests a
the office (shifting focus from domestic to foreign policy leadership as strength in the
tension or accord, each according to the office-holder’s response to the contours of the
position thus construed. It also points toward a distinctly empowered president, granted
institutional and intellectual tools to formulate policy from whole cloth and assert his
*
“The Two Presidencies” was originally printed in Trans-Action, 4 (December 1966): 7-
14, and is quoted here from The Two Presidencies: A Quarter Century Assessment
(1991) with accompanying commentary.
5
preferences within a system that both requires and facilitates outside political support. In
this model, all presidents are “foreign policy presidents.” Wildavsky argues, “Except for
occasional questions of domestic prosperity and for civil rights, foreign affairs have
consistently been a higher priority for presidents.”10 Interior Secretary Stewart Udall
The thesis has consequences for many areas of politics and policy. Using the
thesis, the content of foreign policy is more easily predicted by noting presidents’
Members of Congress cease seeking political and electoral advantage by explaining their
own foreign policy perspectives and adhere to strict spheres of policy influence,
times of crisis. Special interests seek advantage less by the force of their arguments than
For presidents’ purposes, foreign and defense policies are distinct from domestic
policies in urgency and consequence. Whereas world events once moved slowly, events
and their consequences now follow closely on top of one another; presidents increasingly
expect to face the consequences of their decisions or failures to act before their
beside foreign alliances, war and other functions of foreign affairs, the effects of which
are long-lived, and often costly. The “two presidencies” thesis emphasizes the increased
6
danger of the Cold War and the nuclear age, comparing it to preceding periods’ more
conventional exigency, and concludes that “the world has become a much more
dangerous place.”14
“The forces impelling presidents to be concerned with the widest range of foreign
and defense policies also affect the ways in which they calculate their power stakes.
As Kennedy used to say, ‘Domestic policy … can only defeat us; foreign policy
Foreign and defense policy are of greater consequence to Americans’ safety and
prosperity than at any time since the founding of the Republic, and their importance has
increased accordingly. This assertion of the two policy areas’ increased relevance
Central to the “two presidencies” thesis is the belief that the executive is uniquely,
institutionally suited to leadership in the foreign and defense policy arenas. “Presidents
possess both the formal power to act and the knowledge that elites and the general public
expect them to act.”16 To this end, presidents use the tools of the executive branch
bureaucracy to obtain information more quickly and in greater quantity than Congress,
and develop internal policy shops to devise strategy with higher efficiency and
institutional tools, the utility of which are magnified by the manifest weakness of its
competitors* for influence in the policy arena, and concludes that “potential opponents
are weak, divided, or believe that they should not control foreign policy.”18 The public
displays information and attention deficits, as well as inconstancy of opinion, and “it is
difficult to get operational policy directions from the general public.”19 Of Congress,
Wildavsky concludes,
“[Members] exercise power in foreign affairs. Yet they are ordinarily not serious
competitors with the president because they follow a self-denying ordinance. They
do not think it is their job to determine the nation’s defense policies … The few
congressmen who are expert in defense policy act, as Samuel P. Huntington says,
And like the public, Congress follows the president into conflict willingly and almost
policy alternatives (together with the Department of State or defense contracting firms),
and insisted upon their adoption, their force could be resisted by the president only with
difficulty.21 However, in 1966 as in 2005, only their coordination was less common than
their agreement.
The thesis’ claim that presidents are the most powerful actors affecting foreign
explanatory model. The literature must produce a provable, defensible model that more
*
“The Two Presidencies” reviews capabilities of the Public, Special Interest Groups,
Congress, the Military, the Military Industrial Complex, and the State Department.
8
accurately reflects the dynamic character of the executive and the inter-branch
relationship.
Success, support, concurrence, leadership, and influence all appear in the scholarly
“At one time, [Congressional Quarterly] measured success through its box score
indicator. C.Q. included in this measurement only the specific legislative requests
contained in the president’s public statements and whether or not Congress enacted
The model is unable to distinguish between important and trivial legislation, account for
bills processed across more than one calendar year, disaggregate the analysis to gauge
function of their popularity over time,24 or to reflect the political environment in which
votes are taken.25 The image presented is one of political stasis, as it cannot consider the
impact of partisanship and ideology in times of divided and united government,26 or the
measurement of roll call votes misses the committee stage, in which presidential intent
Concerned that “writers were quoting aggregate figures of presidential success without
quantitative factors that may influence the result,” C.Q. abandoned box scores after
1975.28
9
These problems have been addressed with varying success in the intervening
“The important point to note regarding the tendency to focus on a single interaction
relations in which both actors attempt to assert their respective preferences. Again,
research that takes such a one-dimensional focus fails to capture not only the
The “two presidencies” thesis succeeds spectacularly in eliciting discussion and research.
Its conclusion that presidents are powerful is valid, but it says very little. The particular
science.
The “two presidencies” literature reflects wide acceptance of the thesis’ central
quantitative claim which, however problematic and limiting, has been re-proven and
Placed in the context of the greater political science literature, specialized studies of
Congress, the Presidency, and foreign policy escape two limitations of the thesis: its
these constraints on the explanatory capacity of the “two presidencies” literature are also
strengths, lending clarity to its concepts and evidence to its limited conclusions.
However, clarity and evidence have not been sufficient to maintain “two presidencies”
capacities to assert power, the “two presidencies” has the potential to develop into a
“How powerful is the president? What are the sources, characteristics and limits of
pattern: from the late 1940s until the early 1960s, political scientists worried over
how to beef up an eighteenth century creation with the powers to face a twentieth
to the old worry about how to control the presidency. Discussing the nature of
Departures in the literature from the language of the “two presidencies” thesis, using the
New Institutionalism and the discipline’s traditional specializations, identify the means
dominance notwithstanding. This need not be a departure from the “two presidencies”
model because they are in agreement. The literature through periods of relative
The “two presidencies” thesis used data representing the 1930s to 1961; a later
study extending the research through the 1970s discovered Wildavsky’s findings
remained valid but indicated decline in presidential power. As early as 1967 (90th
change.*
*
From testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, 19__.
11
“‘The authority of Congress in foreign policy has been eroding steadily since 1940
… and the erosion has created a significant constitutional imbalance. Many, if not
most, of the major decisions of American foreign policy in the era have been
the President may be necessary but, he claimed, many times ‘the need of immediate
action has been exaggerated, resulting in mistakes which might have been avoided
by greater deliberation.’ Consultation, before or after the fact, briefings, and crisis-
participate fully in making policy; less consensus and more debate, even at the risk
of exposing basic conflicts over policy, is necessary to restore balance between the
Samuel Huntington’s 1961 model of Congress’s foreign policy work, placed beside
1976 research of Congress’s internal processes, illustrates change in a way that impacts
“Congress processes structural issues of defense policy, while the executive branch
character.”33
The analysis agrees with and applies specificity to the later “two presidencies” thesis, and
Congress was empowered by “decreased public perception of external threat” and public
reaction to the Vietnam War and other unpopular endeavors perceived to be executive-
led. In addition, Congress was rendered more effective in the defense policy arena by the
membership in the Senate Armed Services Committee; more substantial public debate on
national priorities; and the rise of a permanent anti-defense bloc among Members (in
“Many observers have made the mistake of establishing too high a criterion for
usual’ system. Among other things, this type of conclusion ignores the feedback
labor policy.”37
Importantly, the position that the “two presidencies” thesis would be debunked did not
gain currency.
13
Writing on the same topic before Laurance, Manley grants that events cause power-
“The growth of Presidential power in foreign affairs has been so great since WWII,
and the Presidency has so many advantages over Congress in this sphere, that it
The branches ascend and decline, but each retains unique capacities and characteristics
through historical periods. Adequate models of the presidency (and of Congress and
policy-formation) will weather change by emphasizing the constants and providing for
vacillation.
the basic claims of the “two presidencies,” but it is in great need of the clarity and
historical persons who created them, and without understanding the broader
cultural values that sustained the institutions and made it possible for them to
persist.”41
14
(Like Wildavsky’s reference to the Federalist, this neither accepts nor rejects images of
the Founders’ intent, but aims instead to account for the ideas and persons currently at
work; history is employed not to portray the past but for its facility in constructing
timelines and stories; and history is seen as the process by which institutions are engaged
legitimacy, loosely defined as the capacity of institutions to reflect values of the people
they affect. Institutions act (and change) to maintain legitimacy and to affect the
legitimacy of their competitors for power. Importantly, these machinations occur in the
In one example of the school’s work, discovery of “the peculiar role that politics
played in shaping nineteenth-century social policy” led Theda Skocpol to diverge from
“the state-centered focus of her earlier work. Instead, she shifted to an account that
mechanistic analyses of politics and policy were not up to the task of explaining
ideas and institutions develop in relation to each other in particular situations, because
neither ideas nor institutions exist in the absence of the other, and neither can be
understood without the other.”43 In the case of the presidency and foreign and defense
policy, the determination that presidents are dominant in policy creation does not
neither explains nor describes presidents’ domestic policy work and Congress’s
15
demonstrated capacity and desire to affect foreign and defense policy. New tools are
required.
Congressional studies. In the modest amount of scholarship in this area from the 1970s
to the 1990s, “scholars set their sights on Congress’s role in foreign and defense policy
… less concerned with theory building than with arguing about Congress’s constitutional
Congressional behavior. Normative questions that can and should be addressed are
also inevitably raised by such research … Both the substance of what Congress
does and the procedures and politics by which it arrives at those results cry out for
careful analysis.”45
As Wildavsky first set out to prove presidential dominance in foreign and defense policy
dominance. New institutionalism leads Lindsay to tie together process and policy to
explore the ways Congress incorporates its preferences into foreign and defense policy,
often structuring presidential behavior and establishing feedback loops by which it retains
legislating the substance of U.S. foreign policy, the results are often less than meets the
eye … Most scholars see the [increasingly fractious and public] debates more as show
16
than substance.”46 However, “From the vantage point of the new institutionalism …
“Congress controls the bureaucracy, and the Congress gives us the kind of
branch officials it may still structure the decision-making process so that its
Conditions built into the life of Congress prohibit the kind of clearly defined power
enjoyed in foreign and defense policy by presidents and discourage Members from
“homeland” security agency pursued by Congress before 2001 or Star Wars legislation
advanced by President Reagan). “Many members may judge the crafting of legislation to
“Procedural changes, then, constitute labor-saving devices. They can obviate the
offsetting the opportunity costs of administrative oversight, procedural changes are also a
17
powerful tool to make policy that forces executive department action into agreement with
legislative preferences. “Legislators know that ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound
of cure.’ Policy battles are most easily won if the disputed policy can be strangled in the
cradle.”50
door,” it reflects that they are tools of influence rather than control or dominance.
Presidents remain strongly positioned for policy leadership for many of the reasons the
“two presidencies” literature identifies, but Congress makes use of the tools available to
it, and these must be noted to form a realistic picture of the environment in which
influence foreign and defense policy: institution-making, the legislative veto, imposition
of consultative duties, new rules and procedures, and reporting requirements. Each of
nearly every piece of legislation that obtains a vote on the chambers’ floors, but
procedural innovations in foreign and defence policy carry particular weight due to the
high stakes of foreign policy (as in the “two presidencies”) and because Congress uses
them to assert its power contrary to executive preference in unconditioned power and
remediable weakness in the literature. If data were compiled on the use and utility of the
18
procedural innovations that follow, it would serve as a valuable resource for modelling
the presidency and the inter-branch relationship, and for understanding Congressional
“The first type of procedural change creates new institutions inside the executive
branch that will be more sympathetic to the preferences of Congress. Here Congress
proceeds from a simple assumption about bureaucratic life: policies that don’t have
champions in the bureaucracy are doomed.”51 Lindsay uses Congress’s 1983 institution
of an Office of the Director of Operation Test and Evaluation to assure stringent, realistic
testing requirements for developing Pentagon weapons systems and to provide accurate
information about the systems’ success. Congress used its control over appropriations to
ensure compliance with the requirement, and the Office has succeeded in moderately
improving test planning. 52 Recent years have seen the institution of massive
Homeland Security and reorganize the U.S. intelligence apparatus. Although President
Bush has spoken favourably of these reforms in public, his speeches follow executive
branch resistance traceable to the White House both before and after the 2001 terrorist
Lindsay places joint, simple, and concurrent resolutions under the heading
“legislative veto” because they enable Congress to retain discretion to permit or block
policies after they have been placed in the president’s hands. “All legislative vetoes
share the same basic quid pro quo: Congress delegates authority to the executive branch
to act but reserves the right to veto executive branch decisions.”53 The 1976 Arms Export
“the president the president must notify Congress of all major arms sales and
proposals and that Congress could block any sale by passing a concurrent
resolution within thirty days of the notification. The law further provided that the
president could waive the thirty-day notice, and thereby skirt Congress, by
invoking national security reasons. Presidents have invoked the waiver only twice
Again, Congressional power lies not in substantive results but in the forces that shape
“Ford and Carter modified several arms sales to blunt criticism on Capitol Hill …
Three times between 1983 and 1985 the Reagan administration proposed selling
arms to Jordan, and all three times it withdrew the proposal because it judged the
interests, Congress can introduce players that share its preferences into the decision-
making process, moulding policy and executive branch behavior from within. Instead of
duties into policy to impose its own preferences. “Members also legislate themselves
purposes.56
satellite program. When DoD presented its plan to obtain satellite capabilities, Congress
agreed with the assessment that the Department should have generous access to satellite
*
Source published in 1994.
20
communications, but it balked at the projected expense. Despite the executive branch
forced the Department to consult with the General Services Administration and Office of
Management and Budget. The result was a defense contracting initiative employed to
keep prices down. The Defense Information Satellite Agency manages commercially
owned satellites consistent with O.M.B. and G.S.A. recommendations, and the program’s
Congress often specifies the terms and procedures it believes will lead to policy
and executive branch behaviors it will favor. Conditional authorizations empower the
executive to “proceed as it sees fit so long as certain conditions are met.”57 Impositions
of rules often establish new terms and procedures for the bureaucracy to follow, as in
1988.58 By imposing rules, Congress can identify executive and agency practices
branch behavior and thereby give members of Congress the opportunity to mobilize
against policies they dislike.”59 The practice stands as a counterpoint to the executive’s
Reporting requirements are seen in three forms. Notification provisions require “the
executive branch to inform Congress of agency actions or decisions,” such as the War
by Pentagon officials on the Iraq War and Department of Homeland Security appointees
on that agency’s progress; one-time reports request studies of specific issues of concern
to Congress. In 1994, statutes contained “roughly 600 requirements for routine reports
on foreign policy … and in the 1980s Congress requested on average 500 reports each
year from DoD.”61 Reporting requirements have historically been valuable tools for
Congress’s work on foreign and defense policy, for which it has no independent means of
Amendment of 1974 and the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980 require presidents to
report on covert activities “in a timely manner,”62 and all but six covert operations have
been reported beforehand.63 “It is impossible to know how many covert operations die at
birth because of anticipated reactions,” but “in many respects Iran-contra suggests that
These examples cover a broad range of foreign and defense concerns in which
Congress has asserted its preferences by confining the executive branch’s policy options
power such as these are required for an accurate model of the presidency, but they can
neither be comprehended nor explained by the “two presidencies” literature’s former box
describing politics using lists of examples only at their own peril. Without bringing
together the contents of foreign and defense policy legislation to show patterns in
procedural innovations’ use, indicate their successes and failures, and identify the modes
22
and patterns of executive response, new institutionalism will describe a great deal but
explain little.
23
Notes:
1
Shull, Shaw 1 (Explaining Presidential-Congressional Relations)
2
ibidem 8
3
ibidem 32
4
Shull vii (The Two Presidencies: A Quarter Century Assessment)
5
Shull 81 (Presidential-Congressional Relations)
6
ibidem 18
7
Shull 18 (Presidential-Congressional Relations)
8
Shull 11 (The Two Presidencies: A Quarter Century Assessment)
9
ibidem 11
10
ibidem 13
11
ibidem 13
12
ibidem 25
13
ibidem 13
14
ibidem 12
15
ibidem 24
16
ibidem 14
17
ibidem 15
18
ibidem 15
19
ibidem 16
20
ibidem 17
21
ibidem 18 – Inclusion here of State and Military Industrial categories is the author’s speculation,
added to Wildavsky’s proposition.
22
Shull, Shaw 77
23
ibidem 77
24
ibidem 78
25
ibidem 133
26
Edwards, Barrett and Peake (18) and McCormick, Wittkopf (19)
27
Lindsay 281 (Congress, Foreign Policy and The New Institutionalism)
28
Shull, Shaw 78
29
ibidem 134
30
ibidem 80
31
Shull 26
32
Manley 67-68
33
Laurance 215
34
ibidem 245
35
ibidem 230
36
ibidem 247
37
ibidem 250
38
Manley 69
39
Kloppenberg 125
40
ibidem 127
41
ibidem 128
42
ibidem 127
24
43
ibidem 127
44
Lindsay, Ripley 418
45
ibidem 419
46
Lindsay 281
47
Lindsay 282
48
ibidem 282
49
Lindsay 284
50
Lindsay 284
51
Lindsay 286
52
Lindsay 289
53
Lindsay 286
54
Lindsay 290
55
Lindsay 290
56
Lindsay 286
57
Lindsay 286
58
Lindsay 287
59
Lindsay 287
60
Lindsay 287
61
Lindsay 287
62
Johnson 562
63
Lindsay 294
64
Lindsay 294