David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
David Brooks has a very thoughtful and provocative piece in the New York Times today on various styles of executive management in politics. There are only two things you need to know about the column: (1) His case studies are Chris Christie, Rahm Emanuel, and Barack Obama and (2) you’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t read it in its entirety.
It wasn’t Brooks’ primary line of argument that piqued my interest, however. Rather, it was this hypnotic passage, which reads like an afterthought in the context of his broader analysis:
In 1961, John F. Kennedy gave an Inaugural Address that did enormous damage to the country. It defined the modern president as an elevated, heroic leader who issues clarion calls in the manner of Henry V at Agincourt. Ever since that speech, presidents have felt compelled to live up to that grandiose image, and they have done enormous damage to themselves and the nation. That speech gave a generation an unrealistic, immature vision of the power of the presidency.
What say you, Ricochetoise? An accurate indictment of the imperial presidency or too much freight for one speech to carry?
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Mar '11
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
I tend to agree, the president is looked at almost as king, and although that probably started with FDR, JFK certainly did his part to grow that concept of the modern presidency.
Apr '11
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
Brooks wrote an insightful piece?
Blind squirrel finds acorn.
That said...
JFK was more conservative than GWB. That's not an endorsement, just an observation.
Jun '10
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
I'm no fan of JFK, but that seems like a slim reed of an argument to carry so much weight.
Feb '11
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
The view of President as King had much to do with the age of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. If the President had to be given authority to make a quick decision which would result in the killing of tens of millions of people, then it was psychologically difficult to object to *other* extensions of his authority.
Regarding Brooks' suggestion that Obama needs to become a manager: Peter Drucker suggested that it is unlikely that a person will ever become a good manager unless he has held significant management experience before the age of 30.
Feb '11
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
The power of the presidency is such that, with a single inaugural speech, the president can give an entire generation an unrealistic, immature vision of its power.
Apr '11
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
david foster: [snip]
Peter Drucker suggested that it is unlikely that a person will ever become a good manager unless he has held significant management experience before the age of 30. · Jun 28 at 8:21pm
Obama, like most Leftists, knows diktats too well to ever learn to manage.
Sep '10
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
It strikes me that Brooks would drag Godzilla and Godzilla's lack of a secure father figure in rather than allow Obama to become a victim of his own unbridled super-ego. Obama ( if you wish ) is the whiny entitled baby of today who exemplifies the Kennedy's need for daddy to "fix it." No more. Brooks is the less well-off cousin.
Mar '11
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
There's a point in there, but i think i remember that Lincoln's Second Inaugural was a little grandiose, too. I think the only change is the way modern media amplifies speeches because they make for easy soundbites, tv clips, and instant analysis.
Jul '10
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
Troy Senik
What say you, Ricochetoise? An accurate indictment of the imperial presidency or too much freight for one speech to carry? ·
I'll go with the latter. I think David steals a base or two going (in reverse) from here:
Ever since that speech, presidents have felt compelled to live up to that grandiose image, and they have done enormous damage to themselves and the nation
to here:
John F. Kennedy gave an Inaugural Address that did enormous damage to the country.
As I see it, just because JFK put on a good show, it doesn't mean that show was responsible for others' failures. Why?
Precisely because JFK wasn't an emperor ruling over benighted subjects.
Ironically, the only way his elevated (perhaps immature) rhetoric would account for successors' failings is if he was the only adult in the room. He wasn't.
I did generally like David's piece, btw.
Edited on June 29, 2011 at 5:39amApr '11
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
No offense Mr. Senik but I took the time to read Mr. Brooks' column because you said I would do myself a disservice if I didn't, and yet I wish I hadn't. I didn't think it was thoughtful or provocative. He essentially tries to put a sophisticated spin on a lazy president who enjoys playing president while others do his work. And when things get tricky he, or more appropriately underlings, basically fudge the procedures to make things happen. The paragraph you highlighted is the best part of his column and I would agree with its premise if taken on its own. However, in the light of history, in the shadow of FDR's presidency it, holds little meaning for me.
Edited on June 29, 2011 at 5:46amFeb '11
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
JFK ushered in the era when charisma trumped competence. No more Warren Harding campaigns quietly conducted from his front porch.
Speaking of Harding, his remark on the campaign trail reminds me a bit of Gov. Christie:
"America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality...."
WFB would likely lament Harding's "suicidal search for alliteration", but the tone appeals to me. Perhaps why Rep. Ryan and Gov. Christie are attractive (and Palin not so much) is that they seem cast out of this Harding/Coolidge mold: calmly confident and reassuringly...again, this is the word that fits best...competent.
Dec '10
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
I just read Washington's and Kennedy's inaugurals...what a difference. Washington was a very, very humble man. Reading Kennedy's speech I can see where Obama got his "we're the ones we've been waiting for" crap.
Oct '10
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
This would not be so much to the man speaking, but to the implied power and legacy of family inflence. Agreed that the style of delivery has carried on and the implications of Imperial privelage followed.
Jul '10
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
Forget the inaugural address; it was Kennedy's craven abandonment of brave Cuban patriots at the Bay of Pigs that destroyed the presidency - and turned me, at 11 years of age, into a conservative.
I didn't know much about politics when I was a kid, but I was the only one in my classroom, on November 22, 1963, who kept a dry eye.
Dec '10
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
Dear David Brooks,
You bought a lemon. It doesn't run properly, it stinks up your garage, you've paid more to repair it in the first 2 and a half years than you actually paid for it. There's no air conditioning, the springs in the seat cushions are exposed, the fabric has become detached from the roof and you've had to replace the alternator 3 times.
Just admit you bought a lemon, stop holding onto it and move on with your life.
--AmishDude
Aug '10
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
Too much weight for one speech. But JFK as the marker stone for the transition to an imperial Presidency is probably accurate.
Specifically, I would say the President became a fixture in popular culture once the media spent time exalting a youthful, attractive "Camelot" period. The rise of TV and the ability to attach visual imagery to a leader has much to do with this; through luck or fluke of history, JFK's image was ascendant exactly when TV was available to popularize it.
Since we're chatting with Ann Coulter about her book Demonic tomorrow, I'll point out she convincingly argues the Democrats use mob mentality to pursue political power. Providing understandable images to the masses, idolizing a Messianic leader, speaking in short slogans... all aspects of manipulating and leading a mob.
Maybe Brooks and Coulter should get together and do a joint thesis, arguing JFK was partially responsible for the modern wave of populist politics and the Presidencies which ride them.
Oct '10
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
Kenneth: Forget the inaugural address; it was Kennedy's craven abandonment of brave Cuban patriots at the Bay of Pigs that destroyed the presidency - and turned me, at 11 years of age, into a conservative.
I didn't know much about politics when I was a kid, but I was the only one in my classroom, on November 22, 1963, who kept a dry eye. · Jun 28 at 8:58pm
That makes two....
Jan '11
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
I'm not sure I'd give all that credit to JFK. I have seen a number of FDR speeches, as well as contemporaneous writing about them that would put that transition a couple of decades earlier.
Aug '10
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
The president is merely the head of one of the three branches of government. Silent Cal had the right idea. The executive shouldn't "lead" so much as get out of the goshdarn way!
Apr '11
Re: David Brooks: JFK Ruined the Presidency
I hope I'm not being to harsh, but why do we ascribe any blame of an imperial presidency on the person of FDR, JFK or BHO when it is within ourselves where the blame needs to be leveled. We make Elvis the King, Oprah the Queen, princes and princesses of any characters who pass before our eyes daily. The media is only the method,, as Neil Postman claimed in his book I believed named " Amusing ourselves to Death". We long for a king even as the children of Israel longed for a king to the own peril.