Stumbling at the ‘Bully Pulpit’ : Bush Has Not Used His License to Command Center Stage

When asked once, in an interview, which presidency of the past he would like his own Administration to resemble, George Bush said that he would style himself after Theodore Roosevelt. How odd it is, then, that the chief executive who proclaimed the White House a “bully pulpit” and a place of vigorous moral leadership and innovation should serve as the model for a President whose idiom is so faltering and inarticulate.

Part of Bush’s problem is his sheer infelicity of expression--a failure to rise above banter and platitude and an aversion to anything thematic or eloquent. Banality is certainly not an impeachable offense for a President, but failure to use effectively the charismatics of office can be a serious handicap for a chief executive who aspires to more than a caretaker role.

It should be recalled that the presidential powers contained in the Constitution are set forth in almost breathtaking brevity. The spareness of definition can be viewed as license either to do little or achieve much, insofar as the language of the presidential section lacks the legal precision of the powers of Congress. The language almost invites activist Presidents to come close to the constitutional line. The excesses of Richard Nixon and the democratic boldness of Abraham Lincoln both find sanction in the Constitution’s laconic imprecision.

One power the Constitution does not grant--but one that is seized upon as the most imposing feature of the President’s power--is his ability to commandeer center stage at will. However wise or articulate the leaders of Congress are, they can’t preempt Bill Cosby to lay their ideas before the country. They must be content to say their piece after Ted Koppel goes off the air. To be able to occupy this political high ground and not use it to good political effect is to squander a major resource of the presidency.

George Bush is a self-proclaimed environmental President who has never spoken out boldly on the environment. While his able transportation secretary, Samuel Skinner, expressed frustration and anger with the tardy and ineffective cleanup of the oil spill at Prince William Sound, the President’s comments have been muted and forgettable. Is this the man who wants to pattern himself after Teddy Roosevelt whose fiery imprecation against the robber barons of his day was to damn them as “malefactors of great wealth?” While Bush could probably not muster that kind of high Edwardian dudgeon, he certainly could have given voice to what many Americans felt about the despoiling of the environment. It might not have brought back to life a single sea otter or cormorant, but it would have made us all feel a little better.

Using his major appointees to make points that he, personally, ought to be making indicates that the President believes in that quaint and unworkable theory known as “cabinet government.” One of the features of this notion of presidential stewardship is that you hand off to your principal appointees the opportunities to make major policy statements. We saw evidence of that approach last week when Secretary of State James A. Baker laid down the law to American Jewish groups about the necessity of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over territory.

In the same manner, the defense secretary, Dick Cheney, has been the most prominent spokesman on the decision to deploy both the MX and Midgetman missiles and the point man for the Administration’s views on maintaining short-range nuclear missiles in Europe. Even on housing policy--an area not likely to see a great infusion of resources--housing secretary Jack Kemp has had all the best lines. If Ronald Reagan’s blissful inattention to detail gave the impression of a government running on automatic pilot, Bush’s more nearly resembles a corporate board meeting in which a division director gets up to report on his own product line while the chairman nods in benevolent approval.

Failure to express adequately the support and good wishes of the American people to the people of China as they attempt to free themselves from the dreary statism of the current regime can be excused as avoiding statements that might give diplomatic offense. The failure of the Administration to rally the Panamanian people or the governments of Latin America to stand up to Manuel Noreiga can be explained as a commendable exercise in subtlety with neighbors wary of U.S. meddling. And I suppose that writing off Mikhail Gorbachev’s arms-reduction gestures as the bravado of a “drugstore cowboy” can be viewed in traditional Cold War terms as a mild put-down--but it should not be forgotten that is was presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater who delivered the quip, not the President.

Perhaps it was Teddy Roosevelt’s old rival Woodrow Wilson who put most eloquently the case for an articulate presidency when he said that the person in the Oval Office speaks “not the rumors of the street but a new principle for a new age”. That he is “a man to whom the voices of the nation . . . unite in a single meaning, and reveal to him a single vision.”