|
Now a prolific and diverse area of
research, presidency scholarship is the site of one major
dominant theme: the rhetoric of governance. Whether moral
and religious, civil rights or diplomatic, in the US
rhetoric has for the larger
part formed the defining object of enquiry of studies in the
field. And it is in all respects only fitting that political
oratory should take a front seat in presidential studies.
The aura of the presidential institution owes a great deal
to the persuasive capabilities of the head of state after
all. Exclusive emphasis on the value of charismatic
leadership, has, however, resulted in a considerable number
of stereotypical approaches premised on the persuasive
potential of presidential power, more illustrative of
communicative action than of how presidents effect social
change.
The author of
The Strategic
President (2012), political scientist George Edwards
III, shifts the focus of attention prevalent in established
literature from the inherent power of the presidential
institution to presidential governing strategies, with a
view to answering the question why the Obama presidency
proved less impactful and transformative than was originally
hoped. Here Edwards’s declared interest lies not in the
power vested in the president, but in the limitations of
presidential influence and in the awareness of these
limitations. Rather than the predominant characteristics of
Obama’s leadership profile, in his examination, Edwards thus
concentrates on Obama’s ability to assess these limitations
and take the best advantage of existing opportunities.
The central line of Edwards’s argument
is that by overestimating their political and persuasive
capital, administrations fail to seize what opportunity for
implementing change is conjecturally there, constantly
misdirecting their strategies toward creating new
opportunities.
Drawing on the theory of the
cost presidents pay for reaching too far and attempting too
much, Edwards offers an in-depth analysis of the fortes and
weaknesses of Obama’s leadership. He identifies the same,
symptomatic propensity to ’overreach’ in order to succeed in
mobilising the public and the Congress, in Obama’s
leadership style and sees it as one of his major flaws. In
this logic, despite his bold policies, Obama is yet to ’be
the change he wants to see’, due to risky behaviour deriving
from the wrong evaluation of his power to influence his
followers. In Edwards’s view, this explains why Obama has
not lived up to the infinite capacity for change with which
he was credited upon taking office.
Single-mindedly, the author applies
what is a very straightforward interpretive grid with the
utmost consistence, confidence and systematicity,
circumscribing his entire discussion to the concept of
Obama’s political overreach. Granted, owing to the ample
range of data and case studies, Edwards makes a convincing
case for the relevance of the concept in assessing
presidential effectiveness. It is interesting to note
however that, as part of the enquiry into the limits and
limitations of Obama’s presidency, Edwards chooses not to
address directly the discrediting effect on the perception
of Obama by a portion of the electorate as ’foreigner’.
Whereas a brief and tangential consideration of how the
questionining of his legitimacy, indeed of his right to run
for president will have affected the president’s take on
decision-making, may not necessarily have refined the
argument, it would perhpas have shed further light on
Obama’s ’war on the Second Ammendment’, his ’war on Oil and
Gas producers’,
and perhaps the many more
battles to come.
Although a lot of it dwells on probability and while it
lacks a grounding in comparative politics, Edwards’s study
provides an original and compelling account of the extent to
which Obama has managed to identify and exploit opportunity
in the pursuit of public and congressional support in the
first years of his administration. In the final analysis,
Edwards’s greatest merit, perhaps, is that of foregrounding
the figure of Barack Obama as revealing of both change and
resistence to change. And this articulates a particularly
significant equation against the background of current
debates on the global reach of American power.
|
