The Social Policies Presidents Make: Pre-Emptive Leadership under Nixon and Clinton
| Published date | 01 March 2006 |
| Date | 01 March 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2006.00566.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Social Policies Presidents Make:
Pre-Emptive Leadership Under Nixon
and Clinton
Daniel Béland Alex Waddan
University of Calgary University of Leicester
Grounded in Stephen Skowronek’s typology of presidential leadership, this paper furthers our
understanding of ‘pre-emptive leadership’ through a comparative analysis of the welfare and Social
Security reforms pursued by US presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Although not identical,
their experience in these areas provides valuable insight into the difficulty of wielding power in an
inhospitable political environment.The paper starts with a brief presentation of Skowronek’s typology
before discussing the electoral strategies employed by both presidents as they attempted to frame
political identities that would allow them to compete successfully in unfavourable ideological and polit-
ical circumstances. The paper then specifically focuses on the politics of welfare and Social Security
reform as the two presidents used these issues as part of their efforts to craft distinctive political images
and attract wider electoral support. This comparative analysis reinforces the concept of ‘pre-emption’
as a valuable tool in understanding presidential behaviour. However, it also underlines the limits of
pre-emptive leadership.Pre-emptive strategies can be effective at election time, but they are less likely
to succeed in the legislative arena.This reality complicates the presidential search for genuine policy
legacies.
The presidencies of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton both witnessed dramatic
constitutional confrontations arising from the personal failings of the two men.
In both instances, however, the unravelling of their presidencies reflected not
just individual frailties, but also that both were confronted with a vehement
hostility from many in the political class who simply never reconciled themselves
with the legitimacy of their presidencies. For their opponents, they were
presidents who had somehow usurped the established partisan and ideological
order. Put another way, they were elected on the back of short-term public dis-
approval of the previous regime that reversed the underlying ideological and
political currents. This is difficult to quantify, but an insightful approach is to
examine their efforts through the lens of the presidential typology developed by
Stephen Skowronek (Skowronek, 1993).His model places the presidential capac-
ity to act in a constraining institutional and ideological context rooted in spe-
cific historical legacies; and, for Nixon and Clinton, that context presented
complex challenges. Popular disaffection had helped them get elected, but it was
not clear how they were going to harness this mood and guide it in a more
positive direction. In Skowronek’s scheme this places Nixon and Clinton as
‘pre-emptive’ leaders needing to navigate a course in the face of adverse ideo-
logical currents.
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2006 VOL 54, 65–83
© 2006 The Authors
Journal compilation © 2006 Political Studies Association
66 DANIEL BÉLAND AND ALEX WADDAN
This paper provides an empirical investigation of this idea of ‘pre-emptive lead-
ership’ through a comparative analysis of the welfare and Social Security reforms
pursued by Nixon and Clinton.Although not identical, their experience in these
areas provides valuable insight into the difficulty of wielding power in an inhos-
pitable political atmosphere. It is not that electoral or legislative success simply
eludes pre-emptive leaders as both Nixon and Clinton won re-election and
signed substantive bills into law in one or another of the areas under discussion.
Their experiences do illustrate, however, the particular difficulties pre-emptive
leaders have in keeping control of the agenda, even on issues they themselves
have pushed to the forefront.
Presidential Leadership and Pre-emptive Politics
Adopting a historical institutionalist perspective, Skowronek reflects that while
all presidents arrive at the White House determined to pursue their own lead-
ership projects, their ‘political authority turns on [their] identity vis-à-vis the
established regime’ (Skowronek, 1993, p. 34). In the most basic terms they come
to office either in ‘opposition to the pre-established regime, or ... affiliated with
its basic commitments’ (Skowronek, 1993, p. 35).Whether opposition or affilia-
tion to the regime enhances or diminishes political authority depends on the
status of the existing arrangements. Is the regime in resilient working order or
are its ideology and political hegemony waning? From here Skowronek identi-
fies ‘four structures of presidential authority’ with the leadership potential of
White House incumbents fluctuating according to their place in this model.
Those presidents most often regarded as ‘heroic’, that is, those who most dra-
matically change the political landscape, are opposition leaders elected at a time
when the existing regime has run its course.They are presidents elected in times
of turmoil with a mandate to reform, allowing them to operate in a fashion
relatively unconstrained by the institutional inertia built into the US political
system. The obvious example of a modern era ‘reconstructive’ president is
Franklin Roosevelt; a more recent example is Ronald Reagan. The latter’s is a
more problematic case as the problems the USA faced at the end of the 1970s,
while manifest and significant, did not match the breakdown experienced during
the Great Depression. Moreover, while Reagan’s triumph over an incumbent
president was accompanied by the Republican capture of the Senate, the House
remained in the hands of the Democrats, leaving that party a critical leg islative
veto point.Yet, as Skowronek points out, Reagan emphatically cast himself in
the role of a reconstructive president (Skowronek, 1993, pp.409–29) and central
to his leadership project was a repudiation of the New Deal regime, or at least
its Great Society manifestation (Anderson, 1988).
If reconstructive presidents lie at one end of the spectrum, the presidents of ‘dis-
junction’ lie at the other.These are presidents affiliated with the existing regime,
© 2006 The Authors
Journal compilation © 2006 Political Studies Association
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