Presidency Diminished, Some Scholars Believe

Is the presidency shrinking?

Even as Bill Clinton struggles to revive his own presidency, the controversies swirling around his White House are causing concern that his successors will inherit an office with diminished authority, adding to the institutional damage done since the Watergate scandal a quarter of a century ago.

Already, warns Princeton University presidential scholar Fred Greenstein, “it’s becoming decreasingly possible for a president to ask people to do things and get results, to press for legislation and to expect a certain number of people to line up behind him.”

And Greenstein fears that more trouble lies ahead. “To the extent that the office is weakened, then individuals who occupy it are going to have trouble reaching their goals.”

Particularly ominous are the consequences of the legal battles Clinton has been fighting and mostly losing against independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr. “The courts are behaving as if the president of the United States is merely a common citizen,” said University of New Orleans historian Douglas Brinkley.

In a purely legal sense, “they are correct,” he acknowledged. But in the political world, Brinkley said, “the American people know that the president isn’t just a common person, that his position has to have a bit of special privilege attached to it.”

Adding weight to that viewpoint is the recent opinion filed by U.S. Circuit Judge David S. Tatel in dissenting from last month’s ruling rejecting a claim of attorney-client privilege and compelling White House lawyers to testify before the grand jury investigating Clinton’s relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

In disagreeing, Tatel said that the need for such a privilege is “particularly strong” in the wake of the Watergate scandal that forced the resignation of President Nixon in 1974. That scandal, he contended, “while ushering in a new era of accountability and openness in the highest echelons of government, also increased the president’s vulnerability.”

Tatel claimed that “aggressive press and congressional scrutiny,” along with the independent counsel law, have combined to make it hard for any president “to navigate the treacherous waters of post-Watergate government.”

Indeed, Johns Hopkins University political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg argued that, by itself, the independent counsel law threatens to upset the delicate balance among the branches of government wrought by the Founding Fathers.

“We have so criminalized the ordinary behavior of the executive branch that it’s very difficult for a president to be certain that he’s living within the law.”

Even as presidential jeopardy under the law has been increasing, analysts said, the prestige of the office has been declining under the cumulative weight of scandal and the relentless scrutiny of the media.

“The grandeur of the presidency has been going downhill,” said Greenstein, who argues that life was easier for pre-Watergate presidents. “Nobody even thought of photographing [Franklin D.] Roosevelt’s braces, [Dwight D.] Eisenhower got away with all his stonewalling and nobody tried to blow the whistle on [John F.] Kennedy’s private life.”

But the presidential mystique began to evaporate after Watergate, Greenstein said, and even though Ronald Reagan’s engaging personality harnessed to his strong convictions provided “a little blip up,” increasing media exposure took a toll. Television cameras caught Reagan dozing off in a 1982 audience with the pope and 10 years later recorded George Bush throwing up in the lap of the Japanese foreign minister.

“I think that the dignity of the presidency is a coffin that already has a lot of nails in it,” said Greenstein. The Lewinsky matter “may add some more.”

Adding to the threats to presidential power is the phenomenon of divided government, which has become the norm in recent years. In the 26 years since the Watergate scandal erupted, the same party has simultaneously controlled the White House and both branches of Congress for only six years: during Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency and during the first two years of Clinton’s first term.

The result has been to set off what amounts to political guerrilla warfare between the executive and legislative branches. The Democratic-controlled Congress brought the Reagan presidency to its knees in the final two years of his tenure with its investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal.

And even though Clinton has used the Republican-controlled Congress as a political whipping boy, the GOP lawmakers have made things miserable for Clinton and his friends by investigating the president and his political allies. By the recent reckoning of House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), no fewer than 50 House committees have spent $17 million on inquiries into administration actions that he described as politically motivated.

But whatever the merits of Gephardt’s complaint, some scholars contend that over the long run the inherent vitality of the institution will ensure its recovery from whatever setbacks have been inflicted under Clinton--depending on the conduct of future occupants of the Oval Office.

“In a crisis, the country is going to instinctively rally around the president to lead us back to the promised land,” said Boston University history professor Robert Dallek, author of “Hail to the Chief,” a book about the successes and failures of chief executives.

“It seems to me that the presidency is going to be hurt when presidents do things that are wrong or stupid,” said Alonzo Hamby of Ohio University. “Watergate did damage the presidency, at least for a time. But it damaged the presidency because Nixon did some things that were wrong and stupid.”

Hamby is not troubled about the effect of the recent court decision that members of the Secret Service could be called to testify about allegations of wrongdoing against the president they are guarding. “Presidents simply shouldn’t be doing anything actionable within earshot of Secret Service agents,” Hamby said. “In fact, they shouldn’t be doing anything actionable in general.”

Said University of Wisconsin presidential scholar Charles Jones: “The prestige of the presidency depends on the proposition that whoever holds the office is going to be truthful, honest and conduct his personal life in a manner that won’t be a public embarrassment. If that turns out not to be the case, then we get into the kinds of problems” Clinton has had.