The President's Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Carter.

Abstract

The President's domestic agenda is a critical force in the national policy process. Despite recent increases in congressional initiative, the President remains a powerful agent in the distribution of political benefits. This research rests on the analysis of the five most recent administrations: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. The study is restricted to the President's domestic agenda--to the exclusion of foreign affairs. The end aim of this research is to isolate those variables which can be said to have an impact on domestic choice. In the effort, the research concentrates on two primary sources of data: (1) 126 interviews with past and present members of the five presidential staffs; and (2) Office of Management and Budget legislative clearance records. This study hinges on a resource definition of presidential power. According to this theory, Presidents are constrained by the level of both internal and external resources. The internal resources involve at least four separate entities--time, energy, information, and expertise--while the external resources focus on congressional support, public approval, and electoral margin. Without these requisite resources, presidential bargaining is not seen as having an impact on policy outcomes. Furthermore, these resources rise and fall over the term of office, creating two distinct policy patterns. The cycle of declining influence appears as time, energy, and congressional support drop, while the cycle of increasing effectiveness arrives as information and expertise grow. Initially, this research was concerned with the basic parameters of the President's domestic program. What does the domestic agenda look like? When is the agenda set? Here, each agenda item can be separated into three components: the issue or problem orientation, the alternative or programatic solution, and the priority or level of White House concern. Using both the staff interviews and the OMB clearance data, it is clear that the president's domestic agenda is set very early in the term and repeated often. The study also asked why certain issues emerge from the domestic policy process. According to the staffs, issues are generally selected on the basis of perceived benefits. Presidents are quite willing to borrow ideas from any available source, but they consistently search for issues with the greatest political "payoffs." If issues are selected on the basis of benefits, how are the alternatives chosen? Once again according to the staffs, alternatives are selected on the basis of perceived costs. Moreover, there are clear differences between Democrats and Republicans on the kinds of alternatives which emerge from the presidential cost considerations. Democrats tend to prefer large-scale expenditure proposals, while Republican Presidents opt for smaller-scale items. Republicans also have turned to the veto much more frequently in recent years as a tool of domestic policy. These differences flow from the interaction between congressional support and each President's political ideology. Finally, how do Presidents make the domestic choices? In examining the domestic policy process, this study argues that Presidents have a choice of several distinct organizational styles, or the staff anarchy of the garbage can. However, given the context of domestic choice and the level of internal and external resources, Presidents generally drift toward the behavioral model, opting for bargaining of staff differences or slipping into efforts at internal staff domination. As before, the cycles of declining influence and increasing effectiveness have a significant impact on domestic decisions. As the cycle of declining influence grows, the White House tends to lapse into coalitional conflict and domination. Since the cycle of declining influence creates limits on the President's domestic agenda, the staffs engage in zero-sum conflict.