EVEN MORE DEBILITATING...:

Obama Can Persuade, But Can He Decide?< (Eric Felten, 11.05.08, Forbes)

Richard Neustadt--the late professor of political science and adviser to Democratic presidents--famously observed that a president's prime asset is his power to persuade. He recognized that to get anything done, a president has to rely on aides, officials and bureaucrats, mechanisms as tangled and troublesome as the wiring in an old Jaguar.

The first order of business, Neustadt argued, is for a president to convince his subordinates "that what he wants of them is what their own appraisal of their own responsibilities requires them to do in their interest, not his." To do that effectively requires a much larger sales job--convincing the public (or at least convincing the part of the public that a given official cares about pleasing and impressing). At every level of government, from cabinet heads to worker bees, officials are gauging how the public views the president and "how their publics may view them if they do what he wants."

Neustadt not only emphasized the importance of making the sale in making policy, he suggested that focusing on bold decision-making is a strategy for a hobbled president, as every decision made and promulgated gobbles up the executive's limited stock of influence. Or, as Neustadt put it, "choices are the means by which he dissipates his power."

If Obama follows the Neustadt model of presidential power, it would no doubt be a comfortable fit with a personal style that has served him well for years. While head of the Harvard Law Review, Obama managed to navigate the treacherous politics of the organization by avoiding those power-dissipating choices.

"People had a way of hearing what they wanted in Obama's words," Jodi Kantor wrote in The New York Times of those Law Review days. His trick, in the midst of contentious disputes, was to get "students on each side of the debate [to think] he was endorsing their side." As one of Obama's professors, Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. put it, "Everyone was nodding, 'Oh, he agrees with me.' "

Come his days in the Illinois Senate, Obama maintained the veil by voting "present" when need be.

But the appeal of choice-avoidance may be just as debilitating as the lure of being the Decider-in-Chief.

...is that by not running on an agenda there are no issues he even proposes deciding on. He runs the risk of a profoundly directionless administration that will be led by the Hill, by other nations, by events, etc.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 5, 2008 4:40 PM