The Historical Presidency: “Rallying Force”: The Modern Presidency, Social Movements, and the Transformation of American Politics

This article explores the relationship between the modern presidency and social movements, an uneasy but critical alliance in the quest for both liberal and conservative reform during the past half-century. Focusing on Lyndon Johnson's relationship to the civil rights movement and Ronald Reagan's collaboration with the Christian Right, we explore the idea, born of the Progressive era, that the presidency is inherently disposed to ally itself with major reform movements. Presidency scholars, like many citizens, regularly perceive occupants of the Oval Office as leading agents of change in a labyrinthine political system that can be difficult to navigate. Social movement scholars, in turn, associate social and political transformation with organized, collective insurgencies of ordinary people motivated by common purposes or social solidarities. By definition, social movements are, to borrow James Jasper's words, "conscious, concerted, and relatively sustained efforts by organized groups ... to change some aspect of their society by using extra-institutional means" (1999, 5). Although both presidents and social movements have played leading roles in the development of major legal and policy innovation over the course of American political development, the respective literatures on executive power and insurgency rarely intersect. Salutary efforts to probe the subject tend to emphasize the inherent conflict between a centralizing institution tasked with conserving the constitutional order and grassroots associations dedicated to structural change (e.g., see Riley 1999; Sanders 2007). To be sure, the relationship between presidents and insurgents is fraught with tension; nonetheless, it has significant formative potential given the ambition and capacity of both actors under opportune conditions to transform the political order. For all of their differences, the ambitions and work of presidents and movements are sometimes complementary rather than antagonistic. Our central point is that the emergence of the modern presidency recasts in important ways the relationship between executive power and social movements. Constrained by constitutional norms, the separation and division of powers, and a decentralized party system, the disruptive potential of executive power was often limited until the twentieth century. With the advent of the modern presidency during the Progressive era, however, the White House was more likely to challenge the existing order of things. To be sure, modern executives regularly have shied away from close relationships with controversial social movements and sometimes openly attacked them (Tichenor 1999, 2007). Nonetheless, the consolidation of the modern presidency during the New Deal realignment invested the executive with powers and public expectations that made it a critical agent of social and economic reform (Milkis 1993). Once the White House became the center of growing government commitments, its occupants were more likely to profess support for the same high ideals that prominent social movements in their camps championed (Miroff 1981, 14). The idea that the executive office might act as a spearhead for social justice--a rallying point for democratic reform movements--reached a critical juncture during the Johnson presidency. The nation received glimpses of the transformational possibilities of presidential-movement collaborations during the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John E Kennedy. But they also demonstrated the deep conflicts of interest and ideology that inherently divided presidents and movements. Only with Lyndon Johnson was the full panoply of modern presidential powers--political, administrative, and rhetorical--deployed on behalf of insurgent interests and demands. Johnson claimed broad authority to transform domestic policy on his own terms at a time when Congress and parties were subordinate to a "modern" presidency at high tide and a national administration unprecedentedly expansive. …