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JAMES P. PFIFFNER, The Modern Presidency (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 251 pp., $45.00 cloth (ISBN 0-312-10239-9).
The American presidency has been described variously as the most conspicuous office in the world, the longest-running affirmative action program for white Euro-American males in American history (a white ethnocracy, as it were), and as a highly protean and political institution combining symbol, myth and reality. These and other descriptions may explain why it appears and has been referred to over time as heroic, traditional, textbook, imperial, Post-imperial, dual, modern, post-modern, imperiled, rhetorical, plebiscitary, institutional, and impossible, to name but a few.
The twenty years during which the presidency was created was a period known as the "age of democratic revolution" in Europe and America. Specifically, observers such as R. E. Shalhope labeled this period alternately as "the opening of American society," "the shift from Enlightenment rationalism to romantic democracy," and "the democratization of the American mind." However labeled, this revolutionary age, between 1760 and 1820 precisely, gave birth to a significant transformation in America's cultural, intellectual and political life.
As a result of their unhappy experiences under King George III and the colonial governors in his service, one manifestation of this transformation emerged in the "Founding Fathers'" distrust of unchecked executive power, fearing its degeneration into tyranny. It is in this transformational context that James P. Pfiffner begins his introduction to America's highest political office in The Modem Presidency. At the outset, however, he states that his "purpose is to focus on the transformation of the presidency from a small group of advisers" characteristic of Franklin Roosevelt and his predecessors "to a large collection of bureaucracies supporting the president" and White House since Roosevelt (p. vii). Put another way, his emphasis is less on the "president as a person" and more "on all of the supporting people and institutions" (p. vii). And his premise reflects the belief that "advisers, organization, and institutions make a difference" and are essential for a well-organized, successful president and presidency (p. vii).
Pfiffner, a professor of government and public policy at George Mason University, explores three broad themes in this volume. And develops his discussion of them through eight chapters. Each of these chapters has its own conclusion. In Chapters One...