How Governors Built the Modern American Presidency. Saladin M. Ambar

critical experiences before FDR. As such, both Wood-row Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt have been seen as crucial precursors to the invigoration of the presidency. And while Neustadt did not make the case explicitly in his discussion of the 1880s, it is worth considering just how comparable and informative the politics of that period were to those encountered by modern executives.

      However critical the TR and Wilson presidential narratives are for understanding the modern presidency, though, they do not go far enough. This approach suggests somehow that Roosevelt and Wilson either invented, or sublimely fell into, a new language of American executive power, one with no discernible or meaningful antecedents. To extend the linguistics metaphor, American governors best represent the most proximate Linear B of the modern presidency. It was they who developed the institutional roots of discourse, practices, and theories that ultimately grew into modern executive parlance in the United States. All classical periods have their founders; the modern presidency's was most closely tied to late nineteenth-century executives and to governors in particular. There may have been a share of clerks (to use Neustadt's term) in the White House before the iconic FDR, but not all executives were worthy (or unworthy, as it were) of this appellation.

      So where are the key indicators of the birth of the modern presidency to be found? For the political scientist Jeffrey Tulis, little has been more critically suggestive of the rise of the modern presidency than the dramatic increase in rhetoric among twentieth-century presidents. Tulis sees the willful use of popular rhetoric as a reflection of new forms of democratic politics and changing values within the polity. As he explains, “Rhetorical practice [among presidents] is not merely a variable, it is also amplification or vulgarization of the ideas that produce it.”³⁸ In Tulis's model, there is ample evidence to suggest that prior executive office played a role in altering the rhetorical dispositions of American presidents, while also serving as a fundamental variable in the creation of the modern presidency. As others have rightly noted, however, Tulis's conclusions are contingent upon a more restricted sense of what constitutes “rhetoric.”³⁹ Whether or not one accepts a more limited definition of rhetoric, such as confining it to speechmaking only, we are left to ponder where the earliest and most significant rhetorical strategies were employed among American executives.

      In considering the value of the rhetorical presidency as a portent of the modern executive office, it is worth remembering that the genetic coding of American presidents has changed considerably over time. To start, the political DNA of chief executives has trended toward prior executive experience to a much greater extent in the second half of American political development than in the first. In Tulis's model, for example, Andrew Johnson is the great statistical outlier of his time, having “violated virtually all of the nineteenth-century norms encompassed by the doctrine.”⁴⁰

      But what if Johnson's break with prior presidential norms reflects a greater willingness among former governors to defy the traditional encumbrances upon public utterances? What if the subsequent transformation of presidential rhetoric can be traced to the parallel rise in prior executive experience? Interestingly, Johnson was the first former governor to occupy white House since the administration of James K. Polk over twenty years earlier. Governors, after all, were the earliest executives to perfect the art of public appeals; they were, more than any other institutional constituency in America, predisposed to prerogative power and the denigration of legislative authority. Can it be mere coincidence that those presidents with prior elective executive experience in Tulis's study average close to twice as many speeches per year as their nonexecutive counterparts?⁴¹ It would seem the rhetorical presidency may well have been presaged, if not begun, by the popular rhetorical governorship. To be certain, hostility toward “up-start” executives in the early 1900s was not restricted to presidents alone. As John F. Reynolds points out, “Complaints of ‘executive usurpation' found expression in legislatures in New Jersey, Colorado and elsewhere, manifesting a more activist executive branch at the state as well as the national levels.”⁴²

      Looking at the tables provided below, we can see that those presidents most often linked to the turn in rhetorical practices associated with the modern presidency were those with disproportionate backgrounds in executive office and as governors. The examples of Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes, and William McKinley, along with their more prolific successors Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, serve to remind us that the modern presidency is very much linked to this corresponding rise in executive experience. Tables 1 and 2 show the political experience of American presidents as it relates to the number of years spent in prior executive administration and elective executive office. The capital “X” denotes a sitting governor or one elected directly to the White House; the lowercase “x” reflects a conventional governorship. “Y” represents a governorship under the Articles of Confederation, and “T” represents a territorial governorship.

      As Mel Laracey and others argue, Tulis does not capture the totality of rhetorical practices among nineteenth-century presidents in his The Rhetorical Presidency. Granted, even if Tulis mostly discusses presidential speech-making (albeit with clear policy preferences), he nevertheless demonstrates an important dynamic of new presidential behavior. That there was such willingness to openly convey personal political views in this new manner by presidents—especially by those who were former governors—is but another reason to explore the relationship between the modern presidency and governorship.

      As scholars continue to debate the origins, meaning, and very existence of the modern presidency, there will hopefully be more space to consider the relevance of prior political experience in assessments of the American presidency's development. The growth of elective executive office in presidential background is unmistakable. Consider the two halves of American political history. During the tenures of the last twenty-one presidents from Grover Cleveland to George W. Bush, presidents have been over three times as likely to have had prior experience as elected executives as their twenty-one counterparts from George Washington to Chester Arthur. Further, the period from FDR to George W. Bush represents a near quadrupling of years served in some executive capacity compared to those in the first half of the nation's history. By whatever means one considers the presidency, it is clear that, over time, executive experience no longer proved embarrassing or prohibitive of political advancement. And governors were “ciphers” no more.

Table 1. Years of Public Service for U.S. Presidents

Table 2. Years of Public Service for U.S. Presidents

      Why Hudson Progressives?

      The modern presidency was built upon a demonstrable intensification of and emphasis on executive background, coupled with a sudden and related proliferation of governor-presidents. These were clustered as a group during late state development in the United States. New York's governors were particularly crucial figures in this era, and, as such, they began to be featured prominently in the national press. Their status as iconoclasts went as far back as Tilden, and the ensuing increase in press coverage from the last quarter of the nineteenth century through FDR demonstrates just how important New York's (and, to a lesser degree, New Jersey's) governors were in redefining the stature of state executives. As can be seen in the following chart, the significant contributions of Tilden, Cleveland, TR, and ultimately FDR are revealed in the increased press attention they garnered. The New York Times's increased coverage of New York's governors since the paper's inception through the governorship of FDR reveals the elevated status of this crucial cadre of state executives in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and beyond (see Figure 1).

      A similar pattern of coverage for governors can be seen in other national papers as well, including the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post. This broader look at the Hudson executive influence will be taken up in Chapters 3 and 4.