The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency

by John Dickerson

Henry David Thoreau wrote in 1854, “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”47

One must check the optimism about technology or risk winding up like the New York Times editorial that cheerfully applauded the state of campaigning in 1928, before the brutal anti-Catholic contest of that year: “There are many things to deplore; some things to make us ashamed; others to stir our zeal for reform; but, on the whole, there is reason enough for all Americans to look forward with happy confidence to another twelve months of keeping step with what Rufus Choate called the glorious music of the American union.”48

The original objective for Facebook, says Sean Parker, the company’s first president, was “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” Parker says it’s “exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”59

“Belonging is stronger than facts.” Or, as the political scientist Brendan Nyhan says, “partisanship is a hell of a drug.”80

When one side only of a story is heard and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it insensibly.2 —George washington

“There never was a strong people that did not rank subordination and discipline among the signal virtues. Subjection to moods is the mark of a deteriorating morality. There is no baser servitude than that of the man whose caprices are his masters, and a nation composed of such men could not long preserve its liberties.”5

“I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such….For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good.”1

They say they don’t like negative ads, but they repeat the claims made in them. They are critical of the news, but their opinions are shaped by what they hear on cable TV. They claim they are independent, but they have voted for one party all of their lives. They say they don’t care about the candidate horse race, but it consumes their conversations.

If we are to repair the presidency, then politicians, the public, and the press need to change how we think about the institution.

The political class, traditional media, and social media have all responded to this moment of conflict by magnifying and increasing the emotional appeals and coarseness of our public discourse.

We must no longer confuse good campaigning skills with good governing skills.

campaigns encourage “destroying your adversary.” Governing requires the art of “making love to your adversary.”

we should think about presidential skills like honesty, political awareness, and decisiveness on a continuum. Within each, there is a range. We don’t want presidents who are completely political, driven only by the pursuit of power, with no underlying values at all. We also don’t want to embrace the other extreme, electing a candidate who is too fastidious to succeed in politics.

“The next successful president is likely to be somebody who concentrates relentlessly on a few well-chosen goals,” Daniels says. “Someone who makes it plain that ‘there is only so much of me and there are only so many days. We have big problems. It’s not that I don’t care. I care deeply, but you’re not going to see me doing these things. You hired me to do a different job.’ ”27

“Many of the big decisions were not what to do, but what to stop doing.”28

As Michael Lewis detailed in The Fifth Risk, federal agencies oversee vast and vitally important parts of American life. They make sure our water is clean, nuclear weapons are secure, unsafe planes are grounded, and drugs heal instead of harm.

Americans are better than our political class. The group More in Common, which seeks to repair America’s political divide, commissioned extensive polling to examine the actual contours of America’s landscape. It found that much of our polarization is driven by roughly one-third of the population, ideologues on both wings who are highly engaged with social media and their causes.

A survey by The New York Times found that only 16 percent of people placed their political party affiliation among the top three terms they used to describe themselves.

“Across the country, in towns outside the media spotlight, a new America is being built—one that is innovative, compromise-minded, optimistic, and working toward practical solutions to the problems of this age,” they write.

The researchers found that participants are more empathetic and reasonable when they’re not just relying on sound bites and tribal chants.

The success and prosperity of the United States of America, though, are still not guaranteed. They are dreams that are tested with each new presidency and that will be tested for as long as the office shall last. In our present moment of partisanship, distraction, and expectation, the office is stretched and misshapen. After 230 years, the challenge remains to keep the sun rising.

We applaud performers, partisan swashbucklers, minters of just the answers we wanted to hear.

plot. We get distracted by pageantry and competition.

character, decision making, reliability, team-building, and a preference for the public interest over the private one.

To combat these situations in the past, people of good faith have deployed reason, facts, and tradition—the foundations of political understanding—but those seemed up for debate too.

Abraham Lincoln said, “With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.”3 What if it is no longer possible to cobble together public sentiment?

weakening standards of the office, thinning of the line between campaigning and governing, a lack of Congressional accountability, the rise of the partisan media echo chamber, among others.

“If people don’t believe what you believe as a matter of religion, then they’re heretics and blasphemous,” says historian Jill Lepore. “That doesn’t belong in politics. Politics needs to be supple. There needs to be give and take. You have to be able to tolerate the political opinions of your political opponents. They have to be legitimate opinions. They can’t be heresies.”10

A president who wants to repair must elevate the power of ideas so that they are strong enough to combat political self-interest and partisanship.

People talk in the abstract about bipartisanship, unity, and empathetic leadership but are impatient when leaders try to carry out those ideas in practice.

The problem for the modern president is that the activists who win elections are the least patient, and the media environment of modern politics demands fresh product of emotional content. There will be far more coverage of a handful of charismatic ideological dissenters from within the president’s own party than there will be of the patient spadework a president does to make progress building bridges with the other party.

One of the hardest tasks for partisan voters is watching their champion spend time on the concerns of the opposition, but a president is obligated to see the issues of concern to Americans not in his political base. A president is obligated to see systemic racism or the threat to the future felt by residents of small towns and rural areas that are thinning under economic churn. Partisans have warped those issues, bu...