Presidential Leadership

Presidential Leadership

Political leadership is the most wanted and at the same time most feared concept in U.S. political system. It is a major part of modern presidency, and perhaps the hardest thing for a president to achieve. There are several reasons political leadership is hard for a president to achieve. For one, founding fathers feared concentrated powers thus they established the system of checks and balances. Congress challenges almost everything a president attempts to accomplish. Secondly, the American people do not want concentrated power, and they want to get their point across, so they organize into interest groups. Interest groups can be very powerful, either working for or against the president, so the presidents are careful not to have them as an enemy. In order to achieve political leadership, the president must be able to use his powers of persuasion, that is be able to get his point across in Washington community and be able to "go public", that is be able to effectively communicate with the American public. For a president to achieve these two concepts, persuasion and going public, he must meet a number of other requirements, which will be discussed in following paragraphs.

It is a known fact that the United States presidents do not have many formal powers. A president cannot "make" Congress do anything. He cannot order Supreme Court around and he cannot ignore the interest groups. In order for a president to achieve his political agenda, he must use his powers of persuasion. For example, for a president to get the military to act in a certain matter, or for a congressman to vote in his favor a president must be able to persuade them to do so. In order to be able to persuade, a president...

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...not seem like difficult tasks, but they indeed are. Only a handful of our previous presidents have been able to effectively reach out to the public. When one considers the variety of people that live in the United States it is understandable why it is so hard to please everyone. The task of persuading is also not getting any easier, especially with the split-ticket voting many Americans prefer. Over the last few decades one could rarely see Democratic president and Democratic Congress in at the same time and vice versa. In order to succeed in persuading and going public, a United States president must have moral authority, must have a good staff working with him and must have good public approval ratings. If all of these requirements are met president will be able to take up more policies and resolve more issues thus becoming a more effective political leader.