The Literary Presidency

The American Constitution is quite succinct as to the qualifications and responsibilities of the president of the United States. Under Article II, Section 1, "the executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America," who must be a "natural born citizen," at least thirty-five years of age, and "have been fourteen years a resident." Article II, Section 2 specifies the president's responsibilities and duties. He is commander in chief of the "Army and Navy of the United States" and will have power to make treaties, appoint "ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States." Section 3 adds to these responsibilities the State of the Union address and empowers the president to convene Congress "on extraordinary occasions" and to "receive ambassadors and other public ministers" and "take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States." But Americans consider more than the constitutional job description when electing a president. There is an "impression of the presidency [that] is embedded in the public mind.(1) Thomas E. Cronin would describe this impression as an "unwritten presidential job description, the one we carry around in our heads," which is weighed in when making a presidential choice: It calls for the president to be a visionary problem-solver, a unifying force for the nation, a healer and sage. Thus, every four years we search anew for a superstar blessed with the judgement of Washington, the brilliance of Jefferson, the genius of Lincoln, the political savvy of FDR, and the youthful grace of JFK.(2) This "vision of the presidency" as all-powerful superstar was, according to Cronin, particularly potent in the "1940-1966 period."(3) The next decade (1966-1977) Vietnam, Watergate, and Nixon--tarnished the star's luster but did not dim it. The quadrennial search continues. Cronin, in The State of the Presidency, discusses the sources of this impression of the presidency as being derived from 1950s and 1960s textbooks and from prime-time television. Their sources, no doubt, are rooted in FDR, who rescued the nation from "the depths of the Great Depression" and was a "stalwart solider of freedom," and in Truman, who "brought World War II to a proud conclusion.(4) This article will argue for a third element to be added to these two to make a triadic presidential mythos. Popular political fiction of the 1960s and early 1970s provides a third source for the presidential mythos, a source that is remarkably consistent with the textbook and prime-time images of the presidency. But before examining the third, literary element of the mythos, what is the textbook and the prime-time presidency? College texts of the 1950s and 1960s describe a presidency that was growing "dramatically larger, gaining significantly more resources, and responsibilities."(5) The presidency, according to these texts, had already acquired mythic stature and power. Clinton Rossiter, in The American Presidency, even describes the presidency as a mythic source: "The final greatness of the Presidency lies in the truth that it is not just an office of incredible power but a breeding ground of indestructible myth."(6) This "incredible power," real and mythic, of the presidency is practically imperial, as a look at a sample presidential job description from an introductory text proves: If the President is a king, it is equally clear he is no mere constitutional monarch. For in an era in which many monarchies all over the world have disappeared, and the power of kings has declined, the power of the President has enormously increased ... attributable mainly to the fact that the President is the literal embodiment of American mass democracy.(7) Cronin also asserts that television is another source of the American presidential mythos, making the president the "hero of the silver screen. …