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Richard Nixon Presidential Library
White House Special Files Collection
Folder List
Box Number Folder Number Document Date
Document Type
Document Description
39
2
05/1968
Report
Study of the Presidency - A Preliminary
Outline of Problems and Issues. 26 pages.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Page 1 of 1
STUDY OF THE PRESIDENCY
May, 1968
A Preliminary Outline of Problems and Issues
Caveat
Even to take up the idea of improving the Office
of the President raises the question: Is there such a thing
as an "Office of the President" apart from the President
who occupies it? Is there "a right way" to be President?
A study of the Presidency should recognize that
the answer may be "no" and in any case will be contested.
Nonetheless, as its minimum assignment, such a study could
and should
a) show what has been happening -- throughout
180 and especially the last 36 years -- to
the concept and functioning of that Office;
b) discuss alternative approaches to the key
issues today (e.g. the war power, coordina-
tion of domestic programs) ;
c) sum up certain lessons of administrative
effectiveness, applicable at any level; and
d) end up by displaying before future
Presidents and the nation the choices
available and the consequences of choosing.
Bradley H. Patterson, Jr.
2
I. SOME ISSUES IN THE PRESIDENT'S ROLE AS CHIEF ADMINISTRATOR
A. The key dilemma: A singular President and a Plural
Executive Branch
Article II Section I begins "The Executive Power
shall be vested in a President of the United States of America."
This one man, with one body and one brain, is thus in the eyes
of the Constitution, alone responsible for carrying out tens
of thousands of public statutes and for directing the work of
6 million employees. Both statutes and employees are increas-
ing yearly.
Early or late in the study, two questions must be
faced:
1. Is there any limit at all on the number
of statutes, programs and employees
which a President can direct with enough
effectiveness to make elections meaning-
ful?
2. Should the Presidency be multiple?
The answer to both questions is probably "no"
but this then forces examination of all the modes of a
President's Administrator Role.
As preliminary research:
Graph the number of public laws in
effect at the start of each
President's term, beginning in 1789;
3
-- Graph the number of civil and military
employees in the same manner;
-- Graph the federal budget likewise;
B. With respect to some of the Statutes: The
laws assign specific duties to the President.
1. How many are there of these specific
assignments? Make a catalogue.
2. How many have been delegated and to
whom?
3. How many are still undelegated?
4. Of the undelegated assignments, how
many others could or should be
delegated?
C. For All of the Statutes: There is the
President's obligation to "Take Care That the Laws be
faithfully executed.
1. To do this the President needs informa-
tion on how programs are being adminis-
tered, especially advance information
on problems being encountered.
a. From recent history, what are
some notable examples of this
need?
b. What information mechanisms for
producing advance information
been tried? Which have the
greatest promise of effectiveness?
4
C. Is the President used too often
as Ombudsman for the Congress,
Governors, Mayors and the rest?
What is the irreducible minimum
for this role?
2. An unavoidable part of the "Take Care" Role
is the President's ultimate obligation to be
Chief Coordinator in program administration.
With special reference to the domestic sphere:
a. Describe this obligation, with
examples.
b. What can be learned, useful to
domestic program coordination, from
the accomplishments in forging a
national security community over
the past quarter century? What
essential differences?
C. Evaluate (linked with "b" above)
the program coordination role of:
-- Committees (e.g. Cabinet, NSC,
EOC and on down to regional and
local levels e.g. Federal Executive
Boards)
-- Executive Office troubleshooting
task forces (e.g. on Neighborhood
Centers)
5
-- The Bureau of the Budget, OST, OEP.
-- A new unit in the Executive Office.
-- Special White House Assistants and
Staffs (Califano, Bundy/Rostow &
Companies).
-- Interagency information exchanges
(the Vance-Ball Agreement, CHECKPOINT
procedures) .
-- Special Agency Centers (NMCC, Operations
Centers, Chart Rooms, Situation Room).
-- Interchange of agency personnel (e.g.
State/Defense/JCS)
-- The Metropolitan Expediter experiment.
-- The reforms proposed in the Inter-
governmental Relations Act.
-- Consolidated Departmental regional
boundaries and offices.
-- Regional Presidential coordinators.
-- Training programs for the bureaucracy
(Executive Seminar Centers, Career
Executive Institute, War Colleges)
d. Another way of looking at it: could the
problem of federal program coordination
be lessened by delegating the operation
of certain federal programs out of the
federal bureaucracy to geographically
6
based units at other levels of our
federal system: e.g.: Neighborhood
Corporations, Cities, Multi-County
Units, Regional Governmental Organiza-
tions, States?
Pros and cons of this approach.
D. For Statutes yet to come: a President may need
new flexibility.
1. To vary tax rates within a given range:
give the arguments pro and con.
2. To vary interest rates within a given
range: give the arguments pro and con.
3. To transfer funds among appropriation
titles or programs: give the arguments
pro and con.
E. The President's Control: Is the Executive
Branch being insulated from him?
The Congress frequently attempts to drive
wedges between the President and his subordinates, vesting
statutory power in the hands of independent bodies or of
long-term officers. Does the nation benefit or suffer from
this?
1. Review this problem with respect to
Departments and Agencies (e.g. the
REA issue of 1959, the Small Business
Administration, terms of office for
FBI, JCS).
7
2. Review this problem with respect to
the Regulatory Commissions: do they
improperly circumscribe the President's
ability to meet his responsibilities?
8
II. SOME ISSUES IN THE PRESIDENT'S ROLE AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF
Article II, Section 2:
"The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army
and Navy of the United States and of the Militia of the
several States, when called into the actual Service of the
United States;"
The dilemma:* The same singular President, one
body and one brain, also' responsible for the actions of
3-1/2 million persons in the Armed Forces -- in their use
of bayonets or megatons -- with shorter and shorter warning
times and with the constant danger of small, far-off crises
escalating into major confrontations.
The basic question: With new gadgetry making
Washington-to-front-line communications easier and easier,
what principles of delegation should a President follow?
As preliminary research:
-- Discuss and if possible graph or
otherwise portray the stages through
which Presidential military communica-
tions have come: from the packet of
letters on board a sailing ship through
telegraph and telephone to today's
facilities.
-- Forecast them ten years ahead.
-- Graph the size of the Armed Forces
beginning in 1789.
*For a discussion of the War Power in the sense of making
and keeping commitments, see Section III.
9
-- Graph the size of the Armed Forces
Budget beginning in 1789.
A. Strategic Crises
1. What are the best estimates as to the
warning time Presidents in the near
future will have with respect to
strategic threats?
2. What do present and future strategic
weapons developments portend for the
variety of Presidential options, the
length of time he may have to choose
and his ability to delay, redirect or
recall weapons once chosen?
3. What new facilities and procedures, if
any, need to be initiated to equip a
President to survive and to command in a
strategic crisis?
B. Tactical Crises
1. What are the factors which tend to force
Presidents to play a personal hand in
tactical national security crises? (There
are at least ten.) Give examples from
recent history.
10
2. What are the risks a President runs
who feels impelled to play such a
personal hand?
3. What principles should govern the
balance to be struck?
4. What aids and helps should be
developed or enlarged for the President
to make this balance more tolerable?
11
III. SOME ISSUES IN THE PRESIDENT'S ROLE AS CHIEF DIPLOMAT
Article II, Section 2:
"He shall have the power, by and with the Advice and
Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, providing two
thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall
nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the
Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers
and Consuls,
Article II, Section 3:
"
he shall receive Ambassadors and other public
Ministers;"
"The Congress shall have Power
To declare War,"
"
To make rules for the Government and Regulations of
the land and naval Forces.
The dilemma:
Chairman Fulbright:
"You think it is outmoded to
declare war?"
Under Secretary Katzenbach:
"In this kind of context I think
the expression of declaring a
war is one that has become out-
moded in the international arena."
(S Res. 151 Hearings, August, 1967,
page 81)
Chairman Fulbright:
"Would the President, if there
were no [Tonkin] resolution, be
with or without constitutional
authority to send U.S. soldiers
to South Vietnam in the numbers
that are there today?"
Under Secretary Katzenbach:
"It would be my view, as I indi-
cated, Mr. Chairman, that he does
have that authority. I think there
would be others both inside and
outside of the Government who
would not agree with that
yes,
I think it includes the authority
to bomb North Vietnam. (S Res.
151 Hearings, August, 1967, page 141).
12
A. The President's Power to Make and Keep
Commitments.
1. The Secretary of State should be asked to
prepare a list of all the nations with which we have dip-
lomatic relations and for each one set forth what it
(not we) believes are either formal (e.g. NATO) or
informal (e.g. Israel) U.S. commitments to it which could
involve the use of US armed forces.
2. What are the prospects over the next eight
years that under any of these believed commitments
U.S. armed forces help will be requested?
3. What are the prospects over the next eight
years that any of these requests could be met by peace-
keeping forces other than of the U.S. (e.g. UN, Regional?)
4. Should the new President endorse and abide
by S. Res. 187?* Give a full analysis of the arguments
pro and con. If not, what principles should guide future
Presidents' relationships with Congress with
I
rd to the
use of U.S. Armed Forces in meeting foreign requests for
assistance?
*Text appended
13
B. The President as Negotiator
1. Graph, in terms of hours if possible, the
international bilateral and multilateral conferences (in
the U.S. or abroad) in which the President has personally
participated as a substantive negotiator, from President
Roosevelt through President Johnson. What trend here does
the Secretary of State forecast for the future?
2. Analyze the procedures now used in preparing for,
in "advancing" and in conducting every aspect of a Presi-
dential conference at home or abroad with another Head of
Government with a view to recommending steps to save
Presidential time and energy without degrading his ability
to conduct negotiations effectively.
C. The President as Manager of the National Security
Community
1. Review the arrangements in the national security
community for keeping the President informed -- the respective
roles of the White House Staff, the Situation Room, the Depart-
mental Command/Operations Centers. Examine the possibilities
(and pros and cons) of increased automation, faster data
storage and retrieval, improved communications (especially to
Ambassadors), secure conference television.
14
2. How effectively are Ambassadors acting as
Presidential agents in knitting together the Country
Teams abroad? What further improvements if any are
needed here in the interests of the Presidency?
3. Make an analytic comparison of the
national security policy machinery used by Presidents
Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson in
such a way that present options and choices for the
new President are clearly set forth.
4. Include in the above a critical review of
the current and future abilities and procedures in the
national security community to anticipate crises in
foreign affairs and to form contingency plans both
interdepartmental and intergovernmental.
15
IV. ISSUES IN THE PRESIDENT'S ROLE AS CHIEF RECOMMENDER
Article II, Section 3
"He shall from time to time give to the Congress
Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to
their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge
necessary and expedient;"
A. The Increasing Role
1. Graph (in terms of numbers of Messages,
or perhaps of words) the growth of formal
proposals Presidents have made to Congress
from Washington's term on.
2. Describe the changes in technique: from
the written note to the evening, televised
address to a Joint Session.
3. Compare comments on this practice by
Presidents, Senators and Congressmen
and others. The future: more of same
undiminished or even increasing?
B. Information for Policy Formulation
1. Make a thorough analysis of OEO's
Information Center function -- what it
has done already (County-by-County
Poverty Indicators, a catalogue of
assistance programs, County-by-County
Federal expenditure analysis), and what
it foresees being able to do in the future
16
(construction of models, testing of
alternative hypotheses).
2. Do the same for OEP's PARM system and
the facilities this represents.
3. Review the economic information function
of the Council of Economic Advisers--
what it can contribute.
4. Distill from these analyses and any
other systems being inaugurated in
progressive Departments, alternative
proposals for constructing a Presi-
dential information system for policy
formulation (fitting same hand-in-glove
with the information systems for pro-
gram coordination-- being discussed
under Section 1-B above).
C. Unresponsible Advice for Policy Formulation
1. Total (in numbers) the Citizens Commissions
and Councils (those made public and those
not made public) advisory to the Presi-
dent from Roosevelt's time on.
2. Describe and show the plusses and minuses
for the President of the various roles
Advisory Commissions play vis-a-vis the
Presidency (e.g. researchers, balloon-
floaters, crises-calmers, stallers,
wakers-up of somnolent Departments, policy
17
reviewers and innovative proposers,
lobbiers-in-Congress, talent pools,
keep-Congress-happy groups, patronage
outlets, even needlers of the Presi-
dent himself, etc) and name an example
or two of each of these types.
3. Name the whole total in being as of
January 1, 1968 which were advisory to
the President. Analyze the problems
of overlap, vague terms of reference,
poor attendance.
4. Analyze the rocky road every President must
in the end travel from unresponsible to
responsible advice -- from the blue-sky
proposals of Commissions to feasible
legislative recommendations.
5. From all the above, what guiddines can be
proposed for the President's use of public
advisory groups --- perhaps to make that
final stretch less rocky for him?
6. Explore the idea of a common secretariat
and common facilities for public advisory
groups to the President.
D. Responsible Advice for Policy Formulation
1. How open are the channels between the
President and the senior career
18
bureaucracy? How open should they be?
-- White House social receptions
from time to time?
-- Should the President visit more
Federal field installations?
-- Should the President oftener visit
the Departments for closed-door
& and A sessions with assembled
career officers?
-- Should the President, should the
White House Staff, directly seek
the advice of career officers?
Analyze the benefits and risks
in view of the pressures on the
President from program-loyal
bureaucracies.
-- What other ways, if any, to bring
the President closer to his career
helpers?
19
2. The role of Cabinet Members and
the other political executives --
the razor-edges they walk:
a.
Between the bureaucracies
and the President;
b.
Between Congress and its
Committees and the President;
C. Between outside pressure
groups and the President.
d. What additional measures,
if any, are needed to ensure
that the President gets Cabinet
Members' unvarnished advice?
3. The Bureau of the Budget features
its Legislative and Budget Reviews
as machinery for policy formulation:
Any improvements possible?
20
4. The role of Committees:
a. Cabinet Committees: Make an analysis
of their strengths and weaknesses.
e.g. the Cabinet Committee on Balance
of Payments probably has been quite
effective; the Economic Opportunity
Council probably has not. What
makes for success-- in terms of
helping the President? How can the
sense of Presidential or inter-
departmental perspective come to flower
on the part of senior career and
Sub-Cabinet/Cabinet officers?
b. The Cabinet as a collective body.
How have different Presidents used
it? Accomplishments and limitations;
lessons earned from the Eisenhower
experience; role of a Cabinet Sec-
retariat; options for a new President.
C. Committee management: how can good
techniques help a President? What
about a common secretariat located in
or near the White House for the senior-
most Cabinet Committees? What could
its role be in policing the adequacy
of distribution of papers, flagging
21
the key decisions and knottiest
problems for the President, supplying
common facilities?
5. The role of the Executive Office:
It's in six pieces (BCB, CEA, OEP,
NSC, OST, OEO) with more continually
proposed. Does it make sense to have
such a subdivided staff, fractioned by
statute, in the Executive Office of the
President? Do the President's problems
fit into such packages? Is some con-
solidation in order in the President's
own environs?
E. Other Possible Issues Surrounding the President's
Policy-Formulating Relationship with Congress
1. Evaluate the consultative arrangements -
at White House and at Cabinet level.
2. Review the doctrine of Executive
Privilege.
22
V. ISSUES IN THE PRESIDENT'S ROLE AS CHIEF PARTISAN
The dilemma is between the President who
knows that both foreign and domestic issues are complicated,
full of gray areas, with key supporters for his positions
on both sides of the political aisles vs the same Presi-
dent who must rise before his partisans every 2 or 4
years and state the issues as being the "good guys against
the bad guys".
This dilemma is probably not ameliorable.
A. The Decline of Patronage
Analze the effect of the decreasing number of
non-merit positions (e.g. IRS, Customs, Post
Office) on the President's ability to use
patronage as a lever of persuasion and
influence.
B. The President's Relationships to the Party -
What are the Proprieties?
1. In Fund-raising?
2. For his personal role in campaigning?
3. In building the party for the future?
23
VI. ISSUES IN THE PRESIDENT'S ROLE AS CHIEF OF STATE
A. Answering his mail
1. Graph the numerical increase in mail to the
President since 1932.
2. Graph the numerical increase in gifts sent
in to the President since 1932.
3. Graph the increase in private requests for
Presidential statements and messages since
1932.
4. After considering both precedent and prognosis,
what would be some useful guidelines for the
future in what has been called the Pastoral
Role of the President?
B. Communicating with the American Public
The country looks to the President to provide
unifying leadership particularly amid the disorder and
dissension of these times. What new or refurbished modes
of communication should the President consider?
-- "walks in the ghetto" a la Lindsay
-- some kind of local Presidential presence,e.g.
at regional level
-- Fireside chats a la Roosevelt.
-- Giving the thousands of White House tourists
more information about the Presidency
What others?
24
VII. OTHER AREAS OF INQUIRY
A. Assistance from the Vice President
At least in the public mind, the question almost
always arises: "What can the Vice President do to help
with the burden on the President?" Being fully aware of
the extreme sensitivity of President-Vice President
relationships,a proper study could and should discuss the
possibilities and the limits of Vice Presidential assist-
ance in the form of:
1. Trips and Conferences abroad
2. The "Staff officer" function on specific
problems (e.g. as Vice President Johnson
did on the supersonic transport.)
3. Chairmanship of Cabinet committees
4. Liaison with special groups (e.g. Vice
President Humphrey with Mayors)
5. Political duties.
B. Structure of the White House Staff
Here particularly the caveat at the beginning of
this outline comes into play: there is no "right" structure.
Yet since the Brownlow-Merriam Report of 1937, there is
experience with various forms. What light does this experience
shed on the alternatives open to a new President?
1. A staff of specialists or generalists?
25
2. A structure of hierarchy or equality?
3. The need for internal communication
devices.
4. Cooperation with special staffs (e.g.
national security) and with coordinating
units in the Executive Office.
5. Idea of a Conference Secretary and what
he could do (e.g. decision records, rapid,
limited distribution systems).
6. Desirable and undesirable methods of
liaison and quick communication between
White House Staff and key parts of the
bureaucracy.
7. The extension of White House staff: secre-
tariats, duty centers in the Departments.
C. The Presidential Role with the Press
1. What are the proprieties if any? New
rules needed? The choices facing
each President.
D. Presidential Facilities
The White House Residence was rebuilt 18 years
ago. But the White House office facilities, and some of the
procedures in it are not far removed from horse-and-buggy
days:
26
1. The Chief Physical Needs
a. Space for offices
b. Conference facilities; a Cabinet
Room with visual display capability
C. An auditorium
d. Reception facilities
e. Ceremonial facilities
f. Press facilities
2.
Communications Procedures
a.
Messengers getting in and out of
cars and driving them around town;
electronics surely have moved us
beyond this
b.
Explore a tube delivery system;
secure multiple LDX; secure
conference television
E.
Should there be more of a Role for Ex-Presidents?
1. In the Congress or in the Executive
Branch?
2. Constitutional or statutory? -- or
stick with informal arrangements?