How Governors Built the Modern American Presidency
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A governor's mansion is often the last stop for politicians who plan to move into the White House. Before Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, four of his last five predecessors had been governors. Executive experience at the state level informs individual presidencies, and, as Saladin M. Ambar argues, the actions of governors-turned-presidents changed the nature of the presidency itself long ago. How Governors Built the Modern American Presidency is the first book to explicitly credit governors with making the presidency what it is today. By examining the governorships of such presidential stalwarts as Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, political scientist Ambar shows how gubernatorial experience made the difference in establishing modern presidential practice. The book also delves into the careers of Wisconsin's Bob La Follette and California's Hiram Johnson, demonstrating how these governors reshaped the presidency through their activism. As Ambar reminds readers, governors as far back as Samuel J. Tilden of New York, who ran against Rutherford Hayes in the controversial presidential election of 1876, paved the way for a more assertive national leadership. Ambar explodes the idea that the modern presidency began after 1945, instead placing its origins squarely in the Progressive Era. This innovative study uncovers neglected aspects of the evolution of the nation's executive branch, placing American governors at the heart of what the presidency has become—for better or for worse.
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How Governors Built the Modern American Presidency
Saladin M. Ambar
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Each of these executive stories revolves around the aforementioned variables that make up critical components of the modern presidency. These begin with leadership of the legislative branch—namely, the setting of legislative goals and the executive's direction of the legislative agenda. Second, modern presidents have come to be identified as leaders of their party. This represents a break with early republican notions of the president as party representative, or figurehead. As we shall see, it was governors who helped break this subordinate identification with party, as party leadership and, at times, defiance frequently came to be seen among voters as powerful and appealing qualities in their executives. The third element in the subnational origins of the modern presidency is the great emphasis placed on press and media relations by these governors and governor-presidents.33 The changing dynamic of press coverage of governors, marked by the institutionalization of press relations within the executive office, foreshadowed a key innovation in presidential practices. Finally, as the administrative capacities of the states grew, new ideological arguments were presented by governors to both justify and sustain the changes occurring in their executive offices. The relationship between ideology and public policy became increasingly important in this era as state executives sought new powers for their progressive agendas. With these developments in mind, it is essential to reconsider the traditional understandings of the relevance of presidential background and prior public office. In doing so, this work will cast some light back on the institutional nature of American political development, and make the case for the significance, if not centrality, of the American governorship to the birth of the modern presidency.
Why Presidential Background Matters
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