Carter Revisionism:
The Flight from Politics
James Fallows. "The Passionless Presidency: The Trouble With
Jimmy Carter's Administration." The Atlantic Monthly, May
1979, pp. 33-48. Cited in the text as Fallows.
Erwin Hargrove. Jimmy Carter as President: Leadership and the
Politics of the Public Good. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State
University Press, 1988. Cited in the text as Hargrove.
Charles Jones. The Trusteeship Presidency: Jimmy Carter and the
United States Congress. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State
University Press, 1988. Cited in the text as Jones.
1
994 appears to have been a good year for former president Jimmy
Carter. In June, Carter brokered an agreement with the late
Korean leader Kim Il-Sung to end, at least temporarily, North
Korea's resistance to outside nuclear inspection.' In September,
Carter once again gained international attention when he negotiated
a last-minute agreement with Haiti's Raoul Cedras in which Cedras
agreed to give up power by October 15th, thereby averting a U.S.
invasion. Carter's actions led one Washington reporter to write that
Carter, "who also builds homes for the poor, has a knack for
connecting with dictators. "2
Carter's prominence as an active and public-spirited ex-president undoubtedly finds a welcome audience among those academicians and journalists who wish to put the likable ex-president in a
more favorable light historically. Herbert Hoover, who shared with
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
323
Carter the unusual background of a career in engineering prior to
being elected to the highest officein the land, also benefited from
favorable perceptions of his accomplishments as an ex-president.
Even Harry Truman acknowledged having a high regard for Hoover.
Yet, rehabilitation of Hoover's reputation was, in most circles,
strictly limited to his post-presidential accomplishments. In contrast, perceptions of Jimmy Carter's civic-minded achievements as
an ex-president seem to have spilled over into reassessments of
Carter's presidency as well.
The first wave of what may prove to be a steady stream of kinder
and gentler assessments on Carter's presidency emerged with great
fanfare at the end of the 1980s. The object of this essay is to point out
some of the deficiencies that exist in the two highly acclaimed books
which form the corpus of what may aptly be called "Carter revisionism." Though well intentioned, the Carter revisionists fall short of
the mark, both analytically and substantively, in meeting the exacting
standards of scholarship associated with the major revisionist movement of the past fifteen years-"Eisenhower revisionism."
The first major revisionist publication on Carter's presidency,
Erwin Hargrove's Jimmy Carter as President: Leadership and the
Politics of the Public Good, received the imprimatur of the American
Political Science Association's Richard Neustadt award, signifying
the best work published on the American presidency in 1988.
Hargrove was joined in this effort, by another eminent scholar of
American politics, Charles Jones, who served as president of the
American Political Science Association in 1994. Jones' companion
volume, The Trusteeship Presidency: Jimmy Carter and the United
States Congress also appeared in 1988. Not since the publication of
Fred Greenstein's seminal work The Hidden Hand Presidency:
Eisenhower as Leader has there been as much attention focused on
the reevaluation of a modern president.
Unlike "Eisenhower Revisionism" which began in earnest in the
early 1980s and was predicated on the use of newly available archives,
the reappraisals of Carter's presidency, as set forth by Hargrove and
Jones, rest almost exclusively on an extensive oral history project on
the Carter presidency sponsored by the White Burkett Miller
324
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Hence, from
the outset, a clear distinction must be drawn between the methodical evolution of revisionist scholarship on Eisenhower's presidency,
and the rather hasty emergence of what might be called "pseudo
revisionism" on the Carter presidency.
Eisenhower revisionism evolved as a natural outgrowth of the
availability of a plethora of newly declassified White House docu ments which directly challenged existing scholarship and conventional wisdom on many levels. The sheer volume of new primary
source materials left little doubt that existing conceptions of
Eisenhower's leadership skill, of his level of involvement in making
decisions and running the executive branch, and of the functioning
of his advisory and administrative system, were, quite simply, highly
inaccurate. Deeply flawed perspectives on the Eisenhower presidency were greatly in need of revision.
What is perplexing, in retrospect, is that so many scholars and
journalists had been so wrong about so many aspects of a modern
presidency. From the perception that Eisenhower was a passive
president who possessed only a limited understanding of government, to the notion that Dulles ran foreign:policyhimself, to the idea
that Eisenhower's National Security Councilactually voted on
decisions, to the widely accepted paradigm that Ike's whole White
House system was consciously modeled along the lines of a military
system, the record needed a lot of straightening out. Eisenhower
revisionism would not have been necessary had the writers of history
gotten it correct the first time around;
In sharp contrast with Eisenhower revisionism, the works of
Charles Jones and Erwin Hargrove are not predicated on the
availability of new archival materials. Even though many of the
Carter presidential papers were available as early as 1984, next to no
use is made of these materials. Instead, heavy reliance is placed on
the aforementioned oral history project sponsored by the University
of Virginia. Hence, while -Eisenhower revisionism made use of
thousands of pages of declassified presidential papers that directly
challenged preexisting notions concerning how his presidency op erated, Carter revisionism, as set forth in these two widely heralded
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
325
books, rests almost exclusively on oral history interviews.
Oral histories, by their very nature, offer a very tenuous foundation for writing history. The less than contemporaneous recollections of Jimmy Carter and his top associates are no substitute for
Cabinet papers, internal memoranda, presidential correspondence,
or even precise diary entries. Compounding these inherent deficiencies, the Carter oral history project is even more suspect than the
oral history projects conducted by the presidential libraries under
auspices of the National Archives in that its origins seem to have
been predicated on putting the former president in a more favorable
light. University of Virginia scholar Kenneth Thompson notes, for
example, that James Sterling Young enlisted former Carter aide Jody
Powell to engage in "word-of-mouth advertising" to attract former
Carter officials to Virginia to participate in the oral history interviews
(Jones, foreword, p. )iv.): More importantly, the oral history project
seemed to take on a "friends of Jimmy" aura in that the oral histories
themselves were open only to the select club of scholars who were
called upon to do the interviewing.
James Sterling Young, the director of the Carter oral history
project, was formally reprimanded by the American Historical
Association's Professional Division for denying a distinguished
University of Maryland historian access . to the oral history interviews. In a letter dated December 18, 1989, the Deputy Executive
Director of the American Historical Association wrote that the
Association remained "uncertain about who proposed the restrictive
stipulation and about the nature of the funding for the Carter
Presidency Project." The Professional Division concluded that there
had been "unfair restriction of access" to the Carter oral history
project and urged the University of Virginia "to take appropriate
steps" to end "this distressing situation." 3
Though we can only speculate, it seems that Carter revisionism
was founded, in part, on ideological grounds rather than solely on
substantive academic grounds. Clearly, there is very little common
ground with Eisenhower revisionism in the amount and quality of
new information revealed. Indeed, the only real common ground
with Eisenhower revisionism seems to be a mindset amongst Carter
326
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
revisionists that if Eisenhower's reputation can be unalterably
enhanced through new scholarship, surely Jimmy Carter's can be as
well.
Having made this point, however, it is clear that the scholarly
efforts that resulted from Virginia's oral history project on the Carter
presidency are considerably weaker than revisionist works on the
Eisenhower presidency in posing a clear challenge to "conventional
wisdom." Despite loading the deck in favor of elevating Jimmy
Carter's stature as President, the Jones and Hargrove works fail to
make a case that Carter's Presidency was much different than it
appeared to most observers a decade earlier.
By way of example, one area that serves to illustrate the qualitative difference in scholarship on the Eisenhower and Carter presidencies involves insights concerning the level of engagement of each
president in policy-making. Whereas Eisenhower revisionists have
thoroughly dismantled the charge that Eisenhower delegated excessively-to the point of having little understanding of major issuesthere are grounds for skepticism about Hargrove's assertions that
Carter was not bogged down in too much detail, or that his
significant accumulation of policy specifics actually enhanced his
ability to lead.
Interestingly, the single most important and incisive account
influencing perceptions of the Carter Administration as a flawed, if
not failed presidency, was written not by an academic, but by
journalist, and former Carter speechwriter, James Fallows. Like
Bob, Woodward's recent account of the Clinton Administration's
approach to policy-making, Fallows' seminal Atlantic Monthly article sent shockwaves throughout the Washington community and
beyond when it first appeared in 1979.
Although Jones and Hargrove do not provide an explicit juxtaposition of their findings with Fallows' pathbreaking account, it is
clear that their evaluations are aimed, quite directly, at countering
the type of "conventional wisdom" on Carter's presidency made
famous by Fallows' work.
This paper will utilize an explicit point-counterpoint analysis of
the early view of Carter's presidency, as explicated by Fallows, with
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
327
the new "revisionist" perspective presented by Hargrove and Jones.
This comparative analysis will serve to demonstrate that the Carter
revisionists are without foundation in pressing the claim that there
is now sufficient evidence available to debunk "conventional wisdom" concerning Carter's presidency. The following specific points
of contention will be addressed. First, the revisionist assertion that
Carter had a "coherent ideology" and a clear strategy of governance,
will be weighed against James Fallows' now famous argument that
Carter's was a "passionless presidency" pursuing a long list of goals
without an overarching theme or vision.
Second, a critique will be offered of the argument set forth by
Erwin Hargrove that Carter was a "nonpolitical politician" who can
only be understood by moving away from the modern conception of
the presidency most often associated with the work of Richard
Neustadt. In Hargrove's view, accounts which emphasize bargaining and persuasion, are of little use in understanding Carter's
presidency. As will be shown, however, the revisionist effort to
construct a new framework of analysis which separates policy from
politics amounts to little more than an ex-post facto attempt at
rationalizing Carter's apolitical, "policy wonk" approach to leadership.
Relatedly, the subordination of personality to policy in Carter
revisionism will be assessed against the backdrop of important
personal characteristics of Jimmy Carter's leadership style. As with
the revisionist de-emphasis on institutions and on traditional processes of bargaining and accommodation, the de-emphasis on personality and persuasive ability tend to cloud rather than enhance our
understanding of Carter's presidency.
Fourth; Erwin Hargrove's conclusion that Carter succeeded
quite nicely as our first policy wonk president, and that he was not
needlessly sidetracked by extraneous detail as earlier observers
suggested, will be, judged on the weight of existing evidence.
Another revisionist argument that deserves scrutiny is the notion posited by Charles Jones that "it will be difficult to sustain
censure of a president motivated to do what is right." This argument,
and the corresponding assertion that Carter should be judged by his
328
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
good intentions more than his record, will be assessed against James
Fallows' notion that it is not enough for a president merely to be
right, a president must also lead.
Finally, it is worthwhile to explore the ramifications of the belief
shared by Jones and Hargrove that the ultimate judgment of history
toward the Carter presidency "will be much less harsh. A key
question raised in this discussion is whether, as Jones and Hargrove
suggest, bad luck and unfavorable conditions should weigh heavily
in our assessment of a president, or whether the chips should fall
where they may, regardless of historical circumstance?
Public Goods or Passionless Presidency?
From his vantage point as a top aide to President Carter, James
Fallows incisively noted in 1979 that there had been strong indications that "Carter did not really know what he wanted to do in such
crucial areas as taxes, welfare, energy, and the reorganization of
government." In each of these areas, Fallows suggested, "Carter's
passionate campaign commitments turned out to be commitments
to generalities, not to specific programs or policies" (Fallows, 40).
Although Erwin Hargrove acknowledges that a major "achievement" of Carter's campaign "was to persuade the voters to trust him,
without details" (Hargrove, 34), he and Fallows offer strikingly
different explanations for Carter's vagueness on key issues.
Hargrove asserts that "Carter was a leader in search of `public
goods"' (Hargove, 34). As a statesman who wished to approach
policy on the basis of objective merit, Carter "attempted to preserve
as much latitude and autonomy as possible during the campaign"
(Hargrove, 35). Carter believed, according to Hargrove, "that correct answers to problems could be developed through study and
analysis" (Hargrove, 171).
In Hargrove's view, Carter's "public goods" orientation "had a
coherent ideology with which he hoped to transcend competing
demands, and these ideas were clearly presented in his first presidential speeches" ( Hargrove,35). Fallows, who as chief speech
writer for the president was himself intimately involved in preparing
many of Carter's early speeches, offers a vastly different assessment
4.
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
329
of what Hargrove politely labels "a point-counterpoint balancing of
opposites" (Hargrove, 35). "I came to think," Fallows observed,
that Carter believes fifty things, but no one thing. He holds
explicit, thorough positions on every issue under the sun, but
he has no large view of the relations between them, no line
indicating which goals (reducing unemployment? human
rights?) will take precedence over which (inflation controls? a
SALT treaty?) when the goals conflict. Spelling out these
choices makes the difference between a position and a philosophy, but it is an act foreign to Carter's mind (Fallows, 42).
Hargrove would have us believe that Carter's problem was not,
as Fallows suggested, an inability to integrate or synthesize. Rather,
the problem was that Carter tried to "achieve such grand syntheses"
(188). Hargrove adds, however, that Carter either was unable "to
"
persuade others of his integrated solutions, or, in a cruel twist of
fate, "found those solutions broken apart by events" (188). More to
the point, Hargrove suggests, Fallows' portrayal of Carter as an
engineer lacking a clear philosophy or sense of direction "missed the
mark" (23).
Notwithstanding Hargrove's assertions, the preponderance of
evidence seems to suggest quite clearly that Carter was unable to
escape his heritage as an engineer. Rather, he displayed a marked
propensity to view problems as discrete tasks to be solved scientifically, one at a time. As Fred Greenstein incisively notes:
Jimmy Carter gave policy analysis a bad name by immersing
himself in policy content and failing to assess adequately the
political feasibility of his programs. But the flaw was in Carter's
analytic mode. Feasibility and substance both need analysis.
Carter made the mistake of seeking to break complex issues
into a multitude of technical components and attempting to
evaluate them by politically neutral criteria. Effective policy
analysis should be neither apolitical nor atomized. Rather, it
should identify the grand contours of policies and project their
consequences in order to weigh their substantive and political
330
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
costs and benefits.
4
It is probably not merely coincidence that the curriculum of the
United States Naval Academy during Carter's tenure as a student
was decidedly slanted toward its engineering component over the
study of politics and other liberal arts disciplines. This separation
between science and the arts may explain why fellow Naval Academy
graduate Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential campaign seems to have
shared Carter's affinity for pristine problem solving devoid of the
murky waters of politicsa In any case, what appears to have been
lacking in Carter's approach to policy-making was the statesman's
skill to synthesize-to blend seemingly disparate parts into a grander
whole-to be precisely what Hargrove and Jones seem happy to say
that Carter was not-a political leader.
The evidence that Hargrove cites in the form of oral history
interviews tends to further undermine rather than reinforce the
contention that Carter's policies were weaved together into a cohesive and well directed program. Stuart Eizenstat, for example, tends
to strengthen Fallows' apprehension of a rudderless presidency in
his assessment of Carter.
One always knew that he wanted to spend as little money as
possible and yet at the same time he wanted welfare reform, he
wanted national health care insurance; he wanted an urban
policy, he wanted job training programs. And I think that that
tended to lead to some of the clearest internal conflicts...perhaps
led to the public perception of an administration without the
clearest of courses. You know the question of where are you
taking the country....You can't keep a foot in each path without
severe cost (Hargrove, 36).
Charles Jones joins Hargrove in suggesting that Carter's approach to policy as a "trustee" president was more integrative than
segmental," favoring "comprehensive approaches rather than issueby-issue treatments (Jones, 3). Once again, however, this revisionist
view is sharply at odds with the argument made with considerable
force by James Fallows in 1979 that Carter viewed policy in discrete
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
331
terms, failing to see interrelationships between issues. In assessing
the formulation of Carter's speeches, Fallows noted:
Carter thinks in lists, not arguments; as long as the items are
there, their order does not matter, nor. does the hierarchy
among them. Whenever he gave us an outline for a speech, it
would consist of six or seven'subjects ("inflation," "need to fight
waste") rather than a theme or tone. His Inaugural address,
which he wrote almost entirely by himself, is an illustration of
this approach and a prime example of his style (42).
Carter was, in contemporary parlance, a "policy-wonk." He
lived, breathed and literally dined over policy (most notably at
forums such as the Vance, Brezinski, and Brown Breakfast and
Luncheon Meetings [called V-B & B meetings by the inner circle]).'
But Carter's insatiable appetite for detailed knowledge in numerous
policy areas and his impressive command of information were of
limited value when it came to the question of leadership. "For the
part of his job that involves leadership," Fallows suggested, "Carter's
style of thought cripples him. He thinks he `leads' by choosing the
correct policy; but he fails to project avision larger than the problem
he is tackling at the moment" (42-43).
Ultimately, Fallows concluded, "Carter often seemed more
concerned with taking the correct position than with learning how
to turn that position into results" (35). While Charles Jones applauds
Carter for wanting "to advocate policies solely on merits" (3),
without concerning himself with politics, journalist Hedrick Smith
suggests that this was a major flaw in Carter's approach to leadership.
The former president "had trouble," Smith suggests, "connecting
ends and means and converting his high-minded goals into a
politically saleable program." 7
The Policy/Politics Dichotomy
In marked contrast with James Fallows' pathbrealdng account of
1979, the Hargrove and Jones studies purport to demonstrate that
Carter had a strategy for governance and exercised clear leadership.'
Questions concerning Carter's competence as a leader, the authors
332
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
suggest, stemmed from the fact that Carter exercised a unique form
of "nonpolitical" policy leadership. Hence, Hargrove and Jones
propose that presidential policy-making can be divorced from
politics and that traditional forms of political analysis are inadequate
in explaining Carter's leadership.
Charles Jones in The Trusteeship Presidency places Jimmy
Carter on a plane with Edmund Burke for insisting that good public
policy and politics are separate and distinct enterprises. As a trustee
of the people, Carter, we are told, had a preference for " doing what's
right, not what' s political" (Jones, 3). "It seems clear," Jones writes,
"that President Carter judged it important that representatives
separate electoral politics from policy-making... In fact, this separation appears to be at the heart of the image of the president as antipolitical" (Jones,;6).
James Sterling Young elaborates on the trusteeship theme in his
foreword to Erwin Hargrove's book, describing Carter as "an
elected politician who concentrates on policy work and who makes
the achievement of good policy his main goal" (Hargrove, foreword,
xix). The policy leader does not let the thankless task of politics deter
him from seeking noble policy ends. "Hismētier," Young notes, "is
issue politics more than party or institutional politics, and his forte
is issue leadership rather than the leadership of institutions or
organizations"(Hargrove, foreword, xix). In other words, issues and
policy analysis are what really count in the modern technocratic era.
Congress, the executive branch, interest groups and parties are
strictly of secondary concern. Hence, Young suggests, Carter "talked
policy rather than politics and lobbied legislators to vote for the best
rather than the politically expedient policy" (Hargrove, foreword,
xviii).
Carter's full fledged acceptance of a wall of separation between
politics and policy is well documented in the oral history interviews
cited by Hargrove and Jones. One White House aide suggested that
Carter was "too smart not to understand the importance of politics
in government, but he often rejected it" (Hargrove, 18). Another
aide said of Carter: "He was not curious about the political aspects
of people in the beginning....His notion that he was the smartest
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
333
person made him not want to horse trade" (Hargrove, 20).
Hargrove and Jones go far beyond merely acknowledging the
existence of a policy/politics dichotomy in Carter's thinking. Indeed,
they go to great lengths to endorse and legitimize Carter's attempt
to view the policy-making process in a political vacuum. In the eyes
of the Carter revisionists, it seems, politics stops not at the waters'
edge, as Arthur Vandenberg once suggested, 9 but at the voting booth
on election day! Hence, Carter's preoccupation with issues and
policy development, and his personal antipathy toward politics, find
a welcome reception in the works of Hargrove and Jones.
Hargrove, for example, lauds Carter's role as "a nonpolitical
politician who sought the achievement of `public goods' through a
combination of homework and moral appeals (164). To understand
Carter's "operational code," Hargrove suggests, is to understand that
many mistook as "incompetence and inexperience what were, in
fact "deliberate strategies of leadership on his part" (165). A key
factor that would explain these erroneous judgments, Hargrove
suggests, "may have been that Carter's critics, in politics, the press
and universities, accepted bargaining models of political leadership
as the norm for presidents and perceived Carter's rejection of such
norms as ineptness rather than deliberate strategy" (165). Hargrove's
argument is intriguing. Carter's perceived shortcomings were really
his strengths. The fault lies not in Carter's abilities, but in the
inability of political analysts to understand that Carter was operating
on a more sophisticated, highly principled, and morally exalted level
of "policy" leadership than ordinary presidents!
It is quite accurate to say that analysts relied heavily on traditional modes of analysis in assessing Carter's presidency. It is far less
clear that Hargrove and Jones have built a convincing case that
concepts like bargaining, accommodation and persuasion are any
less meaningful norms of analysis for understanding presidential
politics during and after Carter's presidency than they were before
he assumed office. If anything, traditional modes of analysis seem far
more convincing in explaining Carter's successes and failures as
President than the "public goods' or "trusteeship" frameworks set
forth by the authors. The notion that policy can be made indepen-
334
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
dently of politics or that Carter could operate successfully as a
"nonpolitical politician" in the intensely political milieu of Washington, is naive and simplistic.
Carter himself seems to have come closer to capturing the
limitations of his so called "trusteeship " presidency than either
Hargrove or Jones, when he stated in a New York Times interview:
"We had an overly optimistic impression that I could present a bill
to Congress that seemed patently in the best interests of the country
and the Congress would take it and pretty well pass it. I have been
disabused of that expectation." 10 Moreover, as James David Barber
notes; Carter, with the advantage of hindsight, could see the
limitations of his outsider status in Washington. "Having run deliberately and profitably as one who had never been part of the
Washington scene, I was not particularly eager to change my attitude
after becoming president. This proved to be a mistake." 11 Commenting on this "after the fact" acknowledgement, Barber noted incredulously: "How he had supposed one might accomplish a reformation
of government without participation in or persuasion of Washington
remains a mystery.""
In a telling revelation of the unresolved tension arising from the
policy/politics dichotomy, one Carter aide said:
I always had the sense of a man who was an engineer, who truly
believed that if he knew enough about details of a subject, he
could make a decision that was in the public interest rather
than in the interest of particular groups. Therefore, you
needed a lot of information; therefore, you needed substance;
therefore, don't bother me about the politics. But then suddenly, he would be forcibly jerked back from this position...into
a sort of purely political context in which a decision had to be
made and I don't think it was ever integrated. I had the feeling
of moving between the two [substance and politics] but never
of pulling it together (Jones, 7).
In attempting to build the case that Carter was a Burkean trustee
seeking noble policy ends, Jones and Hargrove overlook the fact that
Edmund Burke was himself aparty politician who appreciated the
Carter Revisionism The Flight from Politics
335
importance of finding the practical means for effectuating the
desired ends in politics. As Burke put it:
For my part, I find it impossible to conceive, that any one
believes in his own politics, or thinks them to be of any weight,
who refuses to adopt the means of having them reduced into
practice. It is the business of the speculative philosopher to
mark the proper ends of government. It is the business of the
politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out proper
means toward those ends, and to employ them with effect. 13
The suggestion that policy can be separated from politics is no
more tenable today than was Woodrow Wilson's assertion in 1887
that politics and administration are separate and distinct enterprises. 14 Paul Appleby, in response to Wilson's dictum, wisely
countered that "administration is politics by other means." Appleby,
of course was merely borrowing from the insights of Von Clausewitz
who had perceptively noted that even in war, politics is inescapable. ls Unlike Appleby and Von Clausewitz, Hargrove and Jones
show far more respect for the policy/politics dichotomy than it
deserves.
The Absence of Persuasion
The admiration that Jones and Hargrove display for Carter's pursuit
of "good policy," no matter how politically impracticable, seems
misplaced. Both authors seem more intent on providing a rationale
for Carter's behavior than in critically analyzing its pitfalls. What the
Jones and Hargrove studies demonstrate, quite inadvertently, is that
too much smugness concerning the "correctness" of one's policies
may engender stiffer opposition, both in and out of Congress, than
more traditional avenues of bargaining and accommodation. A
congressman's recollection of a White House meeting with Carter
on proposed legislation underscores this point. "We had barely got
seated and Carter started lecturing us about the problems he had
with one of the sections of the bill. He knew the details better than
most of us, but somehow that caused more resentment than if he had
6
left the specifics to us."1
336
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
Persuasive skills and a spirit of purposeful accommodation were,
all too often, found wanting in Carter's personal style. One instance,
among many others chronicled by political scientist Betty Glad in
her book on the Carter years, serves to illustrate this point. When
labor leader George Meany told the president that labor could not
go along with a wage deceleration proposal that was being developed
by the White House, Carter responded: If you can't support me, I'd
rather not talk." The president then walked out of the room leaving
Meany standing. l '
James David Barber aptly notes that Carter "had little taste for
dealing-'not much of a trader,' he called himself-and he too often
found congressional delays and machinations not merely mistaken,
but also `disgusting. '.'18 Carter himself makes no effort to hide his
disdain for the legislative temperament, stating: "As an engineer and
as a governor I was more inclined to move rapidly and without
equivocation and without the long interminable "consultations and so
forth that are inherent, I think, in someone who has a more
legislative attitude, or psyche, or training, or experience" (Hargrove,
15).
Elaborating on Carter's discomfort with politics as usual, a
White House aide confided: "He was running against the sort of
system of inside deals and so forth. He saw himself above that
system. He did not enjoy politics per se in the same sense that a
Humphrey or a Johnson did" ( Hargrove., 17).
Carter's aversion to traditional politics led to strained relations
with Congress from the very beginning. Even when it came to the
simple courtesy of consultation, Carter often seemed insensitive to
the views of Democratic leaders in the Congress. Senator John
Glenn, one of Carter's staunchest supporters, complained that the
Ohio appointees in the Carter administration "were not active
Democrats," and that he first found out about the appointments not
from the White House but through the press. is
When Carter decided to target nineteen water projects for
elimination in the 1978 budget, several of the affected Congressmen
first learned of the news through local newspaper reports. Referring
to the water project hit list, Morris Udall of Arizona said: "I seem to
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
337
remember some speeches...about openness and consulting with
Congress.... Senator Gary Hart of Colorado added: "I don't think
20
we were dealt candidly with....It's known as being blind-sided."
Though on policy grounds Carter's proposed cuts in water projects
had great merit, the Senate voted 65-24 to gut the proposal. Senate
Majority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia suggested that the
vote was more a reflection of discontent with the perceived breach
of consultation with the Senate than a repudiation of the merits of
the policy. 21
Carter acknowledged that his veto of the water projects "caused
the deepest breach between me and the Democratic leadership"
(Jones, 48). Yet, he persisted in his pursuit of the "correct" policy at
great cost to his stature politically. The water projects episode would
not have warranted a chapter in Profiles in Courage, but it does fit
nicely into Charles Jones' trusteeship model of leadership. "Performing as the trustee," Jones asserts, "encourages one to reject a
politics based on bargaining....The trustee, in fact, has to protect his
or her outsider status" (208). Comparing Carter's outsider status to
that of William Proxmire during his early career in the Senate, Jones
adds, "The outsider feels impelled to stand for principle absolutely,
preferring defeat on those terms to half-a-loaf ' (208).
Carter's veto of numerous water projects certainly protected his
status as an outsider in the Washington community, but one has to
question, in light of Richard Neustadt's analysis, whether Washington reputation can be enhanced more by adhering to high principle
than through practicing the arts of political persuasion.
Though both Jones and Hargrove report that there was a
learning curve in the Carter administration, it is significant to note
that the inflexibility and lack of consultation that surrounded the
water projects hit list of 1977 was repeated a year later when Carter
vetoed the annual public works bill in October. 1978 because it
included some of the same water projects that had been targeted the
previous year. Carter later acknowledged that "almost every Democratic leader lined up against me," and that "the battle left deep
scars" (Jones, 148). In describing the veto, a member of Carter's
congressional liaison team said:
338
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
President Carter really believed in it. He thought it was a waste
of public money. We predicted what the outcome would be
and he said, "I'm going to do it anyway." I think we maybe
underestimated it and certainly other people underestimated
it. It caused a bitterness that took a long time to get over (Jones,
149).
The inflexibility and lack of consultation that surrounded the
water projects controversies of 1977 and 1978 closely mirrored the
administration's behavior in other policy areas, most notably, perhaps, in the development of a comprehensive energy program. One
Carter aide noted that the energy proposals were "conceived in
secret [and] presented to the country as a fait accompli without the
consultation of interested parties" (Jones, 94). Another long-time
Carter aide 'described the process of preparing the energy program
as "vintage Carter." "The assignment to prepare a plan was given to
the [person] responsible for policy. It dealt with a national problem
requiring a comprehensive solution, so there was no need to
compromise or consult" (Hargrove, 49).
But Carter's non consultative "public goods" leadership was
really not leadership at all. This point was made clear in June of 1977
when the New York Times reported that Senate Majority Leader
Robert Byrd "was publicly castigating a president of his own party
for ineffective lobbying, as Carter, to the amazement of many
Washington politicians, expressed his surprise that the auto and 2oil
lobbies were organized enough to `chip away' at his program."2
The Subordination of Personality to Policy
While Jones and Hargrove applaud Carter's efforts "to do what's
right, not what's political," they show amazingly little interest in the
role that personality itself played in shaping Carter's quest for policy
perfection.
Carter's uniquely impolitic style was undoubtedly influenced
early on by his mentor in the Navy, Admiral Hyman Rickover.
"Second to my own father," Carter once noted, "Admiral Rickover
had more effect on my life than any other man." 23 Charles Jones
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
339
suggests that "Rickover reinforced Carter's style, providing a model
that suited the future president's predispositions and 'goals" (11).
What Jones overlooks, however, is that Rickover's abrasive and
unyielding style, and his insensitivity to human relations made him
a less than an ideal role model for successful political leadership.
Carter's own description of Rickover is revealing:
He has absolutely no tact-doesn't care for anything. As a
matter of fact, all the time I worked for him he never said a
decent word to me. However, he did change my life because
he had one characteristic, and still has it, which has always been
unique. He would never accept mediocrity or low average
achievement in relation to anything he did or anyone under
him did.
I helped him and a few others develop the first two atomic
submarines... and whenever the Admiral would come around
to inspect my work, if I had done a perfect job-which wasn't
too often, but every now and then I did-he never said a word,
never once did he say, "good job, Jimmy" or "well done,
Carter:" If he found no fault, he simply looked, turned around
and walked away.
However, if I made the slightest mistake, in one of the loudest
and most obnoxious voices I ever heard, he would turn around
and tell the other people in the area what a horrible disgrace
I was to the Navy and that I ought to be back in the oldest and
slowest and smallest submarine from which I had come. m
Although Hargrove and Jones openly acknowledge Rickover's
strong influence on Carter, they ignore the ramifications of this
influence for Carter's own leadership. As a role model, Rickover
undoubtedly reinforced Carter's own drive for perfection, as well as
his reluctance to extend praise or to cultivate close friendships with
those in the Washington community. What may have been a viable
style for a career Naval officer became a liability in the arena of
340
THE
POLITICAL
SCIENCE REVIEWER
politics.
In apparent admiration for Rickover, Carter once commented:
"I do not...ever remember his saying a complimentary word to me.
The absence of a comment was his compliment. He expected the
maximum from us but he always contributed more" (Hargrove, 2).
Like Rickover, Carter was hardworking, tough, and not easily moved
to extend praise. When Carter seemed constitutionally incapable of
offering some choice words of praise during his visit to the state of
a Democratic U.S Senator who was running for reelection, Thomas
Cronin concluded: It was as if he didn't like politics, and yearned
to be above both politics and politicians" (Jones, 1).
Susan Clough, who served as Carter's personal secretary , once
noted that Carter would walk by her desk on his way to Camp David
for a holiday without speaking a word - no "Happy Thanksgiving,"
or "Merry Christmas," nothing. 25 Taken alone, Clough's observation
would seem insignificant. When measured against other evidence,
however, it indicates that Carter seemed lacking in some of the most
rudimentary of political skills-the ability to flatter others-to
motivate loyalists to work selflessly-the ability to seem genuinely
interested in the lives of subordinates so that their sacrifice and effort
seem worthwhile. The technical and philosophical narrowness of
the "public goods" and "trusteeship" modes of analyses presented by
Hargrove and Jones is reflected in the fact that there is virtually no
meaningful discussion of the impact of these basic human qualities
on political leadership.
One aspect of Carter's personality that Hargrove does address,
at least tangentially, is the centrality of self, or what Betty Glad
describes as Carter's "self absorption." As Hargrove suggests, Carter's
presidency was intensely personal. The president "took credit for
major achievements, seldom sharing it.: And it therefore followed
that he would find himself alone with failure. His management of the
hostage crisis is perhaps the best example" (173-174).
Carter's reluctance to share credit was accompanied by an
equally troubling tendency to seize upon good ideas and internalize
them as his own. As one friend put it, Carter "finds it difficult to
admit he gets ideas from other people. It's as if he thinks of
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
341
everything good himself." 26 As Carter biographer Betty Glad notes,
the centrality of self manifested itself in other ways. In a memorial
speech for Congressman Jerry Litton of Missouri; Carter spoke
almost as much about himself as about the public servant he was
eulogizing. In Carter's words:
He was born, like I was, on an isolated farm-before the
Roosevelt-Truman era-without electricity, without indoor
plumbing. But it didn't hurt us....He joined the FFA [Future
Farmers of America] like I did as a high school boy....I was
Secretary of the Plains High School FFA.... 27
Carter's description of a meeting that he had with the wives and
parents of the eight soldiers killed in the hostage rescue attempt in
Iran had a similar tone: "In every instance, they reached their arms
out for me and we embraced each other, and I could feel that their
concern was about me, not about them."28 Reporter Joe Margolis 'of
the Chicago Tribune commented that Carter's description of his
meetings with the anguished families was not unlike those wander-29
ing poets who see "all the world as reflections of their own egos."
Consistent with Glad's description of a president who was self
absorbed, James Fallows noted that Carter was at his best rhetorically when he was speaking about himself. Recalling an extemporaneous speech that Carter gave before the Illinois legislature in 1978,
Fallows wrote:
He was speaking with gusto because he was speaking about the
subject that most inspired him: not what he proposed to ga, but
who he was. Where Lyndon Johnson boasted of schools built
and children fed, where Edward Kennedy holds out the
promise of the energies he might mobilize and the ideas he
might enact, Jimmy Carter tells us that he is a good man. His
positions are correct, his values sound. Like Marshal Petain
after the fall of France, he has offered his person to the nation.
This is not an inconsiderable gift; his performance in office
shows us why it is not enough (Fallows, 34).
While Hargrove and Jones are preoccupied with Carter's "policy
342
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
correctness," Fallows seems to have had it right all along in suggesting that Carter must ultimately be judged not by his positions or lofty
ideals, but by his performance in office.
Micromanagement in the Oval Office
Erwin Hargrove challenges as inaccurate the conventional view that
Carter "did little else but policy work...was no kind of politician, no
delegator either-a president who ran policy himself down to the
last detail" (xix). Yet, if anything, Hargrove strengthens the established view of Carter as a president buried in detail. He notes, for
example, that Carter's concern with detail manifested itself early in
his political career when as a state senator he "pledged to read every
bill before he voted on it and did so" (4). Carter, by his own
admission, "spent hour after hour studying the structure of the
federal government in preparation of the budgets" (Hargrove, 25).
This observation tends to reinforce rather than diminish James
Fallows' earlier pronouncement that Carter "would pore over
budget tables to check the arithmetic, and during his. first six months
in office would personally review all requests to use the White
House tennis court" (38).
Indeed, Hargrove does far more to explain why Carter had an
obsession with detail than he does to refute the contention that this
preoccupation with detail had a decidedly negative effect on his
administration. Hargrove reveals, for example, that Carter's quest
for mastery of detail can be explained in part by his training under
Admiral Hyman Rickover. As Carter himself notes, Rickover "insisted that we know our jobs in the most minute detail, which is really
a necessary characteristic of good submariners" (Hargrove, 6). The
role of a submariner, of course, is quite different from that of a
political leader, but Carter's propensity for immersion in detail
clearly carried over into his political career. As Carter candidly
revealed in the Virginia oral history project:
I think I took to the White House the same basic philosophy
that I had as governor and the same one that I used in my
private affairs even on a submarine when I was younger. I was
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
343
trained by Rickover, I'm an engineer at heart, and I like to
understand details of things that are directly my responsibility... (Hargrove, 6).
Whereas Hargrove views such detailed knowledge as "a valuable
resource in political and administrative persuasion," others have
expressed skepticism about the fruits of such efforts. Fallows, for
example, thought the president's behavior was that of a "perfection
ist accustomed to thinking that to do a job right you must do it
yourself' (38). Noting that Carter "read hundreds of pages of
material on welfare programs and did almost everything but draft the
legislation," Joseph Califano, Secretary of Health Education and
Welfare, said somewhat ruefully that Carter was "the highest paid
assistant secretary for planning that ever put a reform proposal
together." 30 Attorney General Griffin Bell added that Carter was
3
"about as good a president as an engineer could be." 1
Hargrove admits that Carter "sometimes became overloaded
with decisions," but he suggests, based on his research, that there is
"little evidence that Carter got bogged down in details and failed to
see the forest for the trees" (28). This is a troubling revelation given
the many examples that have surfaced concerning Carter's tendency
to take in detail at almost intoxicating levels. One of the more notable
examples of Carter's micromanagement of a decision of import is
offered by Hugh Sidey, White House correspondent forTime. In his
account of the planning for the Iran Hostage rescue attempt, Sidey
reveals:
At one stage in reviewing the attack plans on the embassy
compound where the hostages were held, the president asked
about the Iranian guards stationed inside the embassy, near the
wall that the commandos intended to scale. Were they volunteers or conscripts? he wondered. If they were radicals, Carter
explained, he could go along with killing them, but if they were
only peasant conscripts, he wanted them knocked out temporarily. 32
Carter's decision-making, Sidey concludes, was gripped by the
344
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
"tyranny of the trivial." Intent on maintaining complete control over
the direction of policy, Carter resisted the attempts by top aides to
lighten his workload. "Whenever I tried to relieve him of excessive
detail," noted National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Carter
would show real uneasiness, and I even felt some suspicion, that I
was usurping authority. " 33
In his memoirs, Carter wrote that he came into office believing
that "my ability to govern well would depend upon my mastery of the
extremely important issues I faced."" One point that the Jones and
Hargrove studies help demonstrate, though quite inadvertently, is
that knowledge and mastery of policy does not ensure good decisions
or enlightened leadership. Mere expertise in the form of policy
details did not keep Carter from vacillating over the decision to
deploy the neutron bomb at the cost of considerable embarrassment
to NATO leaders. Nor did Carter's comprehensive understanding of
the details of the Iran hostage rescue attempt make the endeavor any
less a failure. Nor for that matter, did Carter's detailed understanding of his legislative proposals engender any feelings of good will on
Capitol Hill. In fact, if there is a lesson to be learned from Carter's
presidency, it is that mere mastery of policy does not bolster
leadership if it is left unaccompanied by political adeptness. Indeed,
too much emphasis on the details of policy may well detract from
leadership. Matthew Kerbel's conclusions in a recent study of the
Carter and Reagan presidencies is instructive on this point: "Conventional wisdom may claim that knowledge is power, and in fact
other forms of knowledge-of how to bargain and organize-do
strengthen the president's hand. But knowledge in the form of
policy specifics is of less value to the president who hopes to use
"ss
power to realize policy objectives.
Drawing on several case studies from the Carter and Reagan
years, Kerbel suggests that "technical expertise, or facility with
information and detail, is...unrelated to success: President Carter
was perceived to hold a greater command of detail than President
Reagan, but his expertise was at its greatest during his failed
initiatives. "3s
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
345
Carter's Foreign Policy: A Many-Splintered Thing37
"For Carter," Hargrove suggests, "national security issues were a
perfect way of playing to his strengths as a leader" (122). The
president's "deliberate pursuit of hard problems to solve, often
contrary to his advisers' prudent warnings, reflected his will and skill
in facing and overcoming difficult obstacles" (Hargrove, 122),
The Panama Canal treaties, the Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt, progress in normalizing relations with
China, and the negotiation of a strategic arms limitation accord with
the Soviets were all notable accomplishments for the Carter presidency. Yet, the failure to have the SALT II treaty ratified by the
United States Senate and the inability to provide a clear direction in
U.S.-Soviet relations did much to diminish these accomplishments
even before the Iran hostage predicament began to cast a shadow
over the administration's foreign policy.
Hargrove notes that Zbigniew Brzezinski's consoling remark to
Carter, as the SALT II treaty was withdrawn from the Senate, was
that he "would have to be Harry Truman and contain the Soviets
before he could be Woodrow Wilson and bring the peace" (156). But
Carter's general ambivalence in superpower relations prior to the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and his unwillingness or inability to
resolve the deep philosophical schism between national security
advisor Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance suggests that
he was no Harry Truman when it came to decisiveness.
In a major foreign policy address delivered at the U.S. Naval
Academy in Annapolis on June 7, 1978; Carter attempted to reconcile the apparent contradictions between the Secretary of State and
the National Security Advisor over the course and conduct of foreign
affairs. The speech, according to James Fallows, "was intended to set
the record straight on U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union, which
was then very muddied because of the varied comments coming
from Brzezinski and Vance" (43). In preparing the speech, however,
Carter unwittingly exacerbated the problems that had arisen from
having two principal foreign policy spokespersons rather than one.
After soliciting memoranda from Vance and Brzezinski with sugges-
346
' THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
tions for the tone and content of the speech, Carter, by Fallows'
account,
assembled the speech essentially by stapling Vance's memo to
Brzezinski's without examining the tensions between them.
When he finished rewording the memos, the speech was done.
It had an obvious break in the middle, like the splice in a
film .... The Washington Post's story the next morning was titled
Two Different Speeches," an accurate and obvious ' interpretation, but one that galled Carter and those around him (43).
Carter's Naval Academy address drew attention to the problems
posed by the irreconcilable conflict that pervaded Carter's foreign
policy decision-making process. Hargrove asserts that "a less dis jointed policy-making process would not, by itself, have made policy
more coherent, for the contradictions within policy problems had to
be addressed" (185). Moreover, Hargrove suggests that Carter's
"strategy of attempting integration among opposites" in his advisory
process "was plausible and rational" (188),
In their memoirs, however, Cyrus Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski
offer insights that are sharply at odds with Hargrove on this point.
Both the National Security Advisor and the former Secretary of State
agree that process was a major determinant of the problems that
Carter faced in the foreign policy arena. Vance suggests, for example, that Brzezinski's habit of making public statements at odds
with those of the State Department "became a political liability,
leaving the Congress and foreign governments with the impression
that the administration did not know its own mind." 38 Brzezinski
himself. acknowledges that his dual role as "protagonist as well as
coordinator of policy" projected the image of an administration "in
which the National Security Advisor overshadowed the Secretary of
State," with "adverse consequences not only for me personally but
more significantly for the president himself.' .
Former Foreign Affairs editor William Bundy, in assessing the
impact of Carter's undisciplined approach to foreign policy, reached
a conclusion consistent with the observations of Vance and Brzezinski,
which is to say, strongly at odds with Hargrove's judgment. As Bundy
put it:
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
347
It is unlikely that, historians or future practitioners of foreign
policy will find the Carter administration anything but a
negative example of method and process.... As in other briefer
periods of such disarray, the moral is simple: a President who
cannot impose teamwork on his senior advisors will be in deep
4o
and recurrent trouble.
The Constraints of History Thesis
In the end, both Hargrove and Jones turn to historical circumstance
as a fall back position for explaining Carter's problem-plagued
presidency. It is not that Carter lacked leadership skill, we are told,
but that Carter's unique. skills did not interface well with the
historical environment. Jones, for example, explains that Carter had
the misfortune of facing a resurgent and highly independent Congress which was intent on jealously guarding its prerogatives in
national policy-making after the Vietnam and Watergate traumas of
the Johnson and Nixon years. Although Carter "encountered serious
opposition, criticism, even ridicule, when he sought to translate his
trust into programs designed to change Washington politics and
policy making," Jones asserts, "the ultimate judgment will be much
less harsh" (217). For in the long run, Jones argues, "it will be
difficult to sustain censure of a president motivated to do what is
right" (217).
Erwin Hargrove, in elaborating on what might be called a
"constraints of historical circumstance" theme, suggests that "the
final irony" was that Carter "became the scapegoat for all unresolved
national and international problems. Everybody-politicians, the
public, interest groups and media-piled on him" (188). In what
sounds more like an excuse than an explanation Hargrove proclaims:
"Many conditions were highly unfavorable to the exercise of leadership at all and, indeed, a number of events were simply bad luck for
the president. Most of the achievements were personal, and it is not
clear that anyone else could have done better" [emphasis added]
(192).
According to Hargrove, the "bad luck" and "highly unfavorable
348
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
conditions" faced by Carter do not conform to the "dominant
normative model " of the president as skillful bargainer with a
sensitivity to power relationships." Hence, Richard Neustadt's
pathbreaking 1960 portrayal of Franklin Roosevelt as a president
who keenly understood the importance of Washington reputation
and of a leadership based on persuasion is, in Hargrove's view
"incomplete" as a standard for assessing Carter's presidency (163).
For "presidents are effective or ineffective in part because of
situational factors over which they have no control" (Hargrove,163).
Undoubtedly, historical context is, as Hargrove and Jones suggest, an important variable in explaining a president's perceived
success or failure.. But as historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., noted in
1977: "The problems Carter faces are pretty tough, but they aren't
41
in the same class with the problems that Franklin Roosevelt faced."
Moreover, it is difficult to imagine a Franklin Roosevelt, even during
the darkest hours of the great depression or World War II, delivering
a speech focusing on a "malaise," real or imagined, in the American
republic. Yet, Carter was convinced that the problems he faced did,
in fact, have a deep underlying current in the American public. At
a May 1979 White House dinner attended by John Gardner, Bill
Moyers, Haynes Johnson, and Patrick Caddell, among others,
Carter "seemed to be seeking confirmation that his problems could
be traced to some malady of the public." The
guests, however,
42
thought that Carter "had himself to blame."
Carter's preoccupation with a national malaise points to one of
the former president's chief liabilities-the lack of historical perspective. Jones, and Hargrove do not build a convincing case that
Carter was merely a victim of historical circumstance. Rather, it can
be argued that Carter did not understand historical circumstance.
Not only is a flight from politics evident in Carter's style and
temperament, but a flight from history as well. This ahistorical
quality in Carter's presidency was among the factors broached by
Fallows in his prescient account in 1979. It was clear to Fallows early
on that Carter viewed problems as "technical, not historical." Hence,
the former president "wanted to analyze the `correct' answer, not to
understand the intangible, irrational forces that had skewed all
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
349
previous answers....When he said that, this time, tax reform was
going to happen, it was not because he had carefully studied the tales
of past failures and learned how to surmount them, but because he
had ignored them so totally as to think that his approach had never
been tried" (Fallows; 44).
Hedley Donovan, the former editor of Time, reached a similar
conclusion regarding Carter's lack of historical insight. In some
twenty-five to thirty private conversations with Carter, and from
first-hand observation at dozens of larger meetings, Donovan observed, "I almost never heard him mention any previous U.S.
president, or World War II or I, or de Gaulle, Stalin, Hitler,
43
Churchill, the Depression." Over time, Donovan came to believe
'
that Carter s "odd lack of a sense of history," contributed to his
inability to conceptualize "except on such a broad and platitudinous
44
scale as to give little specific direction to policy."
Richard Neustadt and Ernest May join Fallows and Donovan in
suggesting that a better understanding of historical context would
likely have enhanced Carter's leadership. They argue, for example,
that the administration's early setback in negotiating a strategic arms
limitation agreement with the Soviets, was brought about in large
part because of Carter's "ahistorical cast of mind. "45 Neustadt and
May conclude that "less ignorance in certain areas and different
operating style, are quite conceivable, even in a new president.... Given
moderate changes on those scores, identifying and applying relevant
issue history to SALT in 1977 does not strike us as either unduly hard
or fanciful. "4s
Hargrove and Jones rest their case for Carter revisionism on the
assertion that Carter's relatively apolitical cast of mind and the less
than fortuitous historical circumstances of his tenure as president
can only be fully understood and adequately explained through new
modes of political analysis. Yet, one must question, on the basis of the
previous discussion,. whether the "public 'goods" and "trusteeship"
frameworks of analyses set forth by Hargrove and Jones actually offer
more compelling insights into Carter's presidency than the more
traditional yardsticks of analyses posited in Neustadt's Presidential
Power orRossiter's The American Presidency.
350
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
Merely because Carter had little regard for his professional
reputation within the Washington community and did not fare well
in his performance of such traditional roles as chief executive, chief
legislator or chief of state, it does not follow that new vehicles of
analysis should be constructed with the apparent aim of casting the
former president in a more favorable light. Franklin Roosevelt once
noted that "history cannot be rewritten bywishful thinking." Hargrove
and Jones, by jettisoning some fairly common standards of political
assessment seem to be indulging in precisely the type of wishful
thinking that Roosevelt cautioned against.
Phillip Henderson
The Catholic University
of America
NOTES
1. On April 20, 1995, the talks between the United States and
North Korea that had been precipitated by Carter's 1994 visit broke
down when agreement could not be reached on a plan to prevent
North Korea from restarting its plutonium producing nuclear,reactor.
Shortly after Carter's meeting with Kim Il-Sung, Henry Kissinger
presciently noted that the Carter mission had only prolonged North
Koreas nuclear program. In a column for the Washington Post,
Kissinger noted that Carter's visit to North Korea had "vitiated" the
Clinton administration's "almost apologetic" threat to use sanctions
against North Korea. Although Carter's trip was labeled "private,"
Kissinger wrote,
no set of measures more confusing to friend and adversary alike
could have been imagined than to combine a move for sanctions with the occasion of a visit to North Korea by the highestranking American to have ever gone there. President Carter
was known to be strongly opposed to sanctions; he had expressed the view that the source of the crisis was not Pyongyang's
conduct but a "misunderstanding," easily removed by high-
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
351
level contact. Permitting Carter to go was bound to embarrass
countries that had agreed to sanctions... Not surprisingly, Kim
Il Sung used the Carter visit to induce yet another American
retreat. The sanctions effort was suspended when barely
started. In return for "good faith" negotiations-and for so long
as these negotiations go on-Pyongyang has agreed not to
reprocess the plutonium illegally removed from the reactor...
The much-touted Pyongyang concessions are more compatible with an attempt to gain time than with a serious effort' .'
to solve the nuclear problem....
2. Rowan Scarborough, "Carter's Diplomacy an Enigma: Rights
Champion Embraces Dictators," Washington Times, September
28, 1994, p. Al.
3. Letter of December 18, 1989 from James B. Gardner, Deputy
Executive Director, American Historical Association, to James Sterling Young, Director, Carter Presidency Project.
4. Fred I. Greenstein, "Reagan and the Lore of the Modern
Presidency: What Have We Learned?" in Fred I. Greenstein, editor,
The Reagan Presidency: An Early Assessment (Baltimore, The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), p. 170.
5. It is worth noting that political science now places a strong
second to engineering in the number of majors that it enrolls at the
Naval Academy.
6.The V B & B meetings were Carter's informal attempt to chart
policy in the realm of national security. Fore an account of these
meetings see: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle (New
York, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983), pp. 70, 302, 419-420.
7. Hedrick Smith, The Power Game, (New York, Random
House, 1988), pp. 338-339.
8. James Sterling Young, in his foreword to Erwin Hargrove's
book suggests that "The question...is not whether Carter had a
strategy for governance or whether he exercised leadership. The
question is whether his strategy and his kind of leadership fitted with
what the country wanted or needed in his time (Hargrove, xxi).
9. Vandenberg made this observation on several occasions, one
of which was in a letter to John, Foster Dulles of August 9, 1948 which
352
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
is included in the Vandenberg Papers, Bentley Historical Library,
The University of Michigan.
10. Quoted in James David Barber, The Presidential Character,
(Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1985, Third Edition),
p. 441.
ll: Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Edmund Burke's quotation is taken from Louis Bredvold,
The Philosophy of Edmund Burke, p. 134.
14. Woodrow Wilson, "The Study of Administration," Political
Science Quarterly, Vol. 2, June 1887, pp.197=222.
15. See Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, edited with an introduction byAnatol Rapoport (Middlesex, England, Penguin Books, Ltd.,
1968), p. 119.
16. Fred Greenstein, "Reagan and the Lore of the Modern
Presidency," in Fred Greenstein, editor, The Reagan Presidency:
Early Appraisals, p. 167.
17. This incident is discussed in Betty Glad's Jimmy Carter: In
Search of the Great White House (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980),
P. 496.
18. Barber, The Presidential Character, p. 441.
19. Betty Glad, Jimmy Carter, p. 418.
20. Ibid., p. 419.
21. Ibid.; pp. 419-420.
22. Quoted in Matthew Kerbel, Beyond Persuasion: Organizational Efficiency and Presidential Power (Albany, New York, State
University of New York Press, 1991), p. 28.
23. Quoted in Barber, The Presidential Character, p. 411.
24. Quoted in Barber, Ibid.
25. Quoted in Philip Galley, "Carter Left Few Friends in
Capital," New York Times, April 18, 1982.
26. Quoted in Glad, Jimmy Carter, p. 488.
27. Quoted in Glad, p. 499.
28. Glad, p. 500.
29. Ibid.
30. Quoted in Stephen Hess,Organizing the Presidency, (Wash-
Carter Revisionism: The Flight from Politics
353
ingtōn, D.C., Brookings, 1988, 2nd edition), p. 142.
31. Ibid.
32. Hugh, Sidey, "Assessing a Presidency, Time, August 18,
1980, p. 14.
33. Quoted in Hess, Organizing the Presidency; p. 142.
34. Ibid.
35. Matthew Kerbel, Beyond Persuasion: Organizational Efficiency and Presidential Power (Albany, New York, State University
of New York Press, 1991) p. 125.
36. Ibid., p. 128.
37. Stephen Bailey first coined the apt phrase "Many Splintered
Thing" to describe policy processes in his essay "The President and
his Political Executives," Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, 307, (September 1956): 24.
38. Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices, (New York, Simon & Schuster,
1983) p. 36.
39. Quoted in Kenneth W. Thompson, review of Power and
Principle, by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Presidential Studies Quarterly,
vol. 13, Fall 1983, pp. 666-668.
40. William P. Bundy, "The National Security Process," International Security, vol. 7, no. 3, Winter 1982-1983, p. 104.
41. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., interviewed by Howard K. Smith,
for "Every Four Years," Public Broadcasting Corporation, 1977.
42. Barber, The Presidential Character, p. 439.
43. Hedley Donovan, Roosevelt to Reagan: A Reporter's Encounters With Nine Presidents, New York, Harper and Row Publishers, 1985, p. 233.
44. Ibid.
45. Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time, (New
York, The Free Press, 1986), p. 132.
46. Ibid.