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Samson unbound: opposition presidents and the failure of party leadership
The Social Science Journal 40 (2003) 371–383
Samson unbound: opposition presidents and the failure of party leadership David A. Crockett∗ Department of Political Science, Trinity University, 715 Stadium Drive, San Antonio TX 78212 7200, USA
Abstract This article explores the difficulty faced by presidents from the opposition party in their capacity as party leaders. The article accepts as a given Skowronek’s regime cycle vision of American political history, and focuses on his “preemptive president” category. All such “opposition presidents” face roughly the same constrained historical context; thus, it is possible to make inferences and generalize about this type of president. Through a comparison of opposition presidents with “governing party” presidents, I examine one weakness inherent in this type of presidency, focusing specifically on partisan success by measuring the success of an opposition president’s party versus that of a governing party president. © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction For over forty years scholars have struggled to analyze the periodicity observed in American politics. Despite variations in the details, there has emerged a rough consensus that American political history can be described as a series of eras that tend to favor one party over another, eras bounded by punctuated change (Burnham, 1970; Burnham, 1991; Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes; Carmines & Stimson, 1989; Chubb & Peterson, 1985; Key, 1955; Kleppner, 1979; Lubell, 1965; Rockman, 1984; Sundquist, 1983). Stephen Skowronek’s work has been most helpful in connecting presidential leadership to the constraints of history, identifying different leadership projects associated with different situations. In this line of analysis, the advantaged political party in a specific era (e.g., the Democratic party during the New Deal era) can be considered the “governing party,” and the disadvantaged political party (e.g., the GOP during ∗
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that same era) the “opposition party.” Depending on their partisan alignment with these forces, specific presidents are more or less able to redefine politics by condemning a bankrupt past (“reconstructors”), follow in the footsteps of “great” presidents by adapting the new politics to changing times (“articulators”), or struggle to salvage a regime that has become discredited (“disjunctors”) (Skowronek, 1993). The central task of any president, then, is to understand the possibilities for action permissible in the politics of his time (Hargrove & Nelson, 1984, p. 78). My interest lies in Skowronek’s fourth, almost throwaway, category, which he calls “preemptive presidents.” These presidents come from the opposition party in a specific era, at a time when the governing party is still robust. Thus, although such presidents desire to “preempt” the received policy agenda, they take office during a time when they cannot hope to transform politics in their favor. Skowronek calls such presidents “the wild cards of presidential history,” and makes the point that such presidents have a tendency to provoke constitutional crises by overreaching their authority (1993, p. 44). While granting the latter, I question the former. Since these presidents all face the same leadership dilemma—governing at a time when they can not command the power to define politics in their favor—it seems quite possible that the same type of regularity Skowronek uncovered in his other types of presidents is present here as well. Perhaps these presidents are not such “wild cards” after all. It is important to clarify that there are two different types of opposition presidents in Skowronek’s schema, and they face two very different scenarios. The first type is his “reconstructor,” a president who is opposed to the “previously established regime” when that regime is breaking apart. The reconstructor essentially finishes the job by repudiating the bankrupt past and establishing a new regime (Skowronek, 1993, p. 36). The reconstructor, thus, is an “opposition president” who transforms himself into the new governing party leader. He does not remain in an oppositional status. Skowronek’s second type is the “preemptor,” who remains in his oppositional status because he is unable to transform politics in his favor, despite his desire to do so. Thus, the preemptive president remains an “opposition president,” and that is how I will refer to him throughout this analysis. Following Skowronek, then, there are twelve presidents who fall into this category: the Whig presidents during the Jacksonian Democracy (William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore); Democrats Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland (counted as two different presidents), and Woodrow Wilson during the long Republican hegemony; Republicans Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford during the New Deal era; and Democrat Bill Clinton during the current post-New Deal, Reaganesque era.1 In this article I explore one problem associated with opposition presidencies. From Lincoln’s suspension of certain constitutional protections to Franklin Roosevelt’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court, Skowronek makes clear that there are dangers associated even with presidents who enjoy the greatest flexibility to define the agenda in their terms. No political context, and no leadership strategy, is free of dangers, but it may be true that there are problems systemic to each specific type of context. Here I focus specifically on the president’s role as leader of his party. It is a fact of history that presidents such as Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt— all reconstructors in Skowronek’s schema—left their parties stronger than they found them. Not only were these presidents personally successful, in the sense of winning reelection handily, but they were successful as party leaders. Do the constraints faced by opposition presidents cause problems in the areas of achieving personal and party success? If so, we should observe two things. First, opposition presidents should win reelection at a lower rate than presidents
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from the governing party. Second, opposition presidents should see their political parties fare much worse than their governing party counterparts. Specifically, opposition presidents should see their parties perform worse in terms of gaining and maintaining control of congressional seats than their governing party counterparts. In attempting to answer this question, I focus my attention specifically on partisan success, measuring the electoral success of an opposition president’s party versus a governing party president’s. If an oppositional status has associated with it inherent problems with party leadership, we should see that reflected in standard measurements of party success. Since the notion of legitimate opposition did not gain credence in American politics until the Jacksonian age (Hofstadter, 1969), for the purposes of this project I limit my examination to the modern party era that began in the late 1820s. By pursuing this project in a transhistorical way, I hope to demonstrate that there is much to be learned from presidential politics prior to the birth of the “modern presidency,” and to reinforce the notion that presidential leadership is a contingent and context-bound phenomenon. 2. Personal success Most presidents have at least some concern for personal success in their presidency, and that success is usually brought about by reelection, but presidents are also seen as the leaders of their parties, and historically have been held responsible for their parties’ fortunes while in office. Thus, presidents are often concerned with two measurements of success. They want to achieve personal success through reelection, and they typically want to foster the success of their partisan allies. Despite the constrained circumstances opposition presidents face, when personal success is measured in terms of a simple popular vote they are remarkably successful. In fact, all elected opposition presidents who stood for reelection won at least a plurality of the popular vote. None of the Whig presidents stood for reelection, and Ford was never elected to begin with, but Cleveland won three straight popular vote victories (losing in the Electoral College in 1888), and all four elected 20th century opposition presidents were reelected, the last three in very strong fashion. By contrast, of the fourteen elected “governing party” presidents who stood for reelection during this period, only eight won popular vote victories, a success rate of just 57%. If we remove from consideration Skowronek’s great redefiners—Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan—the success rate drops to 25%.2 Table 1 presents this data graphically. For those who might object to my exclusion of presidents who succeeded to the office due to death or resignation, but who then pursued electoral victory in their own right, Table 2 expands the data in Table 1 by including such presidents. Oddly enough, opposition presidents who are able to acquire their party’s nomination for a subsequent term, or for a complete term in their own right, appear to enjoy a greater frequency of success than their governing party counterparts. 3. Success as party leader Turning our attention to party success, it appears that opposition presidents are much less successful in leading their parties to greater electoral victory. The weakness of opposition presidents as party leaders can be demonstrated in several ways. For example, when we examine
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Table 1 Popular vote results of elected presidents seeking reelection President of governing party
President of opposition party
Popular vote victory
Jackson (1832) Lincoln (1864) Grant (1872) McKinley (1900) F. Roosevelt (1936–1944) Reagan (1984) 8 of 14 contests, 57%
Cleveland (1888) Cleveland (1892) Wilson (1916) Eisenhower (1956) Nixon (1972) Clinton (1996) 6 of 6 contests, 100%
Popular vote defeat
Van Buren (1840) B. Harrison (1892) Taft (1912) Hoover (1932) Carter (1980) Bush (1992) 6 of 14 contests, 43%
No entries
0 of 6 contests, 0%
Tables 1 and 2, it becomes clear that the personal electoral success of opposition presidents does not translate easily to others. In no case did the immediate party successor to an opposition president win election in his own right, including the most recent example of Clinton’s party successor, Al Gore.3 The races by Nixon in 1960 and Ford in 1976 were extremely close, but ultimately unsuccessful. Gore’s effort in 2000 was the closest an opposition party successor has come, but he still fell short. With the exception of vice presidential succession, the nation has never witnessed back-to-back opposition presidents. Thus, in a very real sense, the success enjoyed by opposition presidents remains more personal and individual than partisan. Table 2 Popular vote results of all presidents seeking reelection President of governing party
President of opposition party
Popular vote victory
Jackson (1832) Lincoln (1864) Grant (1872) McKinley (1900) T. Roosevelt (1904) Coolidge (1924) F. Roosevelt (1936–1944) Truman (1948) L. Johnson (1964) Reagan (1984) 12 of 18 contests, 67%
Cleveland (1888) Cleveland (1892) Wilson (1916) Eisenhower (1956) Nixon (1972) Clinton (1996)
Popular vote defeat
Van Buren (1840) B. Harrison (1892) Taft (1912) Hoover (1932) Carter (1980) Bush (1992) 6 of 18 contests, 33%
Ford (1976)
6 of 7 contests, 86%
1 of 7 contests, 14%
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Table 3 Presidential coattail effect, U.S. House, 1828–2000 Partisan context
Average seats gained
Governing party advantage
Opposition party president Governing party president Total, presidential party
4.7 20.5 16.2
336% 245
Source: Data from Stanley and Niemi, 1998, pp. 32–36; computed by the author.
The weakness of opposition presidents extends to other institutions. Presidential candidates are expected to bring gains for their party in Congress when they win election to the office. This can work to the president’s advantage, providing him with the necessary partisan support in Congress to advance his agenda. This “coattail effect” can be measured, and opposition presidents’ success compared to that of governing party presidents. Tables 3 and 4 lay this out, providing the average general election seat gains in both houses of Congress for the parties of opposition presidents and governing party presidents. Since 1828, the opposition party has been victorious in twelve different presidential elections, while the governing party has been victorious in 32 different contests. In their twelve electoral victories, opposition presidents have led their parties to average seat gains of 4.7 in the House and 1.25 in the Senate. By contrast, governing party presidents have averaged seat gains of 20.5 in the House and 2.66 in the Senate. Thus, governing party presidents average partisan gains in the House over four times those of opposition presidents, and gains in the Senate over twice those of opposition presidents. Even when looking at House and Senate figures as a whole, opposition presidents are severe under-achievers, their coattail effects minimal at best. A similar demonstration of the opposition president’s weakness as party leader can be seen in midterm election results. It is well known that the president’s party tends to lose ground in Congress in midterm elections. This “midterm loss effect” can be measured, and the relative success or failure of opposition presidents compared to that of governing party presidents. Tables 5 and 6 lay this out, providing the average midterm election seat losses in both houses of Congress for the parties of opposition presidents and governing party presidents. Since 1830, opposition presidents have experienced twelve different midterm elections, while governing party presidents have been involved in thirty different midterm contests.4 In their twelve midterm elections, opposition presidents have suffered average seat losses of 37.4 in the House and 1.67 in the Senate. By contrast, governing party presidents have suffered average seat losses of 30.2 in the House and 1.63 in the Senate. The difference between opposition presidents Table 4 Presidential coattail effect, U.S. Senate, 1828–2000 Partisan context
Average seats gained
Governing party advantage
Opposition party president Governing party president Total, presidential party
1.25 2.66 2.27
113% 82
Source: Data from Stanley and Niemi, 1998, pp. 32–36; computed by the author.
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Table 5 Presidential midterm loss effect, U.S. House, 1830–1998 Partisan context
Average seats lost
Opposition party lag
Opposition party president Governing party president Total, presidential party
37.4 30.2 32.2
24% 16
Source: Data from Stanley and Niemi, 1998, pp. 32–36; computed by the author.
and their governing party counterparts is not as dramatic here as with the coattail effect, especially in the Senate, where the opposition party’s lag is a mere 2%. However, opposition parties in the House still suffer markedly greater declines under opposition presidents than governing parties do under governing party presidents. Again, opposition presidents are not good party leaders. Historical data provide the context for these figures. As a party the Whigs never fared very well under Whig presidents. That was certainly true under Tyler, who pursued his personal goals with complete disregard for his party’s fortunes. The same can be said fifty years later for Cleveland in his second presidency, who suffered the worst House midterm election loss in American history in 1894, losing 116 Democrats. The fact that Tyler and Cleveland were known for their great personal rectitude undoubtedly had something to do with their lack of ideological flexibility, and their preference for personal principle over party fortune (Nevins, 1932, pp. 764–766; Peterson, 1987, pp. 312; Seager, 1963, p. 147; Welch, 1988, pp. 205–207). Still, more nimble opposition presidents prove to be no better at party leadership. Despite early legislative success, Wilson’s Democrats lost badly in the 1914 midterm election, and despite moving toward the progressives Wilson lost further ground in 1916. After six years of policy success, Wilson appealed for Democratic seats in 1918, and lost control of Congress (Blum, 1956, pp. 152–155; Link, 1954, pp. 78–79, 249). Eisenhower consciously fostered an image of nonpartisanship that ran counter to his 1954 warning of divided government, and he lost control of Congress. When he campaigned strongly against Democratic “extremists” in 1958, the popular general suffered the worst Senate midterm loss in American history, losing thirteen Republicans (Pach & Richardson, 1991, pp. 72–73, 183–185). Nixon himself was purely personal in his orientation to party fortunes, supporting reelection not for Republicans in general, but for people from both parties who supported him. His actions were most egregious in 1972, when he might have been able to translate his political advantage into significant congressional gains. Instead, running a personal campaign out of the White House, and seeking to be “president of all the people,” Nixon won a landslide victory while failing to win either Table 6 Presidential midterm loss effect, U.S. Senate, 1830–1998 Partisan context
Average seats lost
Opposition party lag
Opposition party president Governing party president Total, presidential party
1.67 1.63 1.64
2% 2
Source: Data from Stanley and Niemi, 1998, pp. 32–36; computed by the author.
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Table 7 Presidential success as party leader, U.S. House President(s)
Ratio before
Ratio after
Gain/loss
Whig presidents Cleveland Wilson Eisenhower Nixon/Ford Clinton Jackson Polk Pierce/Buchanan Lincoln Grant Hayes/Arthur McKinley T. Roosevelt Harding/Coolidge Hoover F. Roosevelt Truman Kennedy/Johnson Carter Reagan
.55 .62 .58 .46 .43 .61 .60 .64 .60 .48 .74 .37 .69 .55 .54 .54 .50 .56 .65 .67 .36
.30 .38 .30 .40 .33 .49 .48 .51 .24 .76 .47 .43 .55 .56 .61 .27 .56 .49 .56 .56 .40
−.24 −.24 −.28 −.06 −.10 −.13 −.12 −.13 −.36 +.28 −.27 +.07 −.13 +.01 +.07 −.28 +.06 −.07 −.09 −.11 +.04
Source: Data from official U.S. House web site; computed by the author. Rounding of ratios leads to some minor apparent discrepancies.
house of Congress (Milkis, 1993, pp. 228–230). As with the rest, Clinton’s personal success at winning elections coincided with his party’s loss of congressional control. While it is true that the “coattail effect” has eroded somewhat in recent years for both parties, the weakness of opposition presidents in this area has been fairly consistent throughout American history. The scholarship analyzing divided government points to the reasons for this weakness. Opposition parties in specific political eras suffer disadvantages on issues that prevent them from taking long-term control of the institutions of government. Individual opposition presidents are successful because it is easier for voters to register temporary dissatisfaction with the governing party by replacing the executive than it is by transferring control of the entire legislature. But, because the opposition party may very well be weak at the state level as well, the party tends to field weaker challengers in congressional races, giving the opposition president little for his coattails to work with. Party decomposition will eventually affect the governing party as well, but the election of opposition presidents may only be the first sign of this process (Aldrich & Niemi, 1996, pp. 96–97; Fiorina, 1992, pp. 8–14, 69–70; Jacobson, 1991, pp. 66–68). There is one more interesting measure of a president’s ability to help his party, and that is to compare his congressional party strength before he enters office with its strength when he leaves office. Tables 7 and 8 present some of this data. I have chosen to list first, and in boldface, the opposition presidents, in order to highlight their situation. I then list, in chronological order, various other presidents to serve as a comparison. The tables are not comprehensive, for I have skipped a few presidents and made logical pairings of others, including grouping all
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Table 8 Presidential success as party leader, U.S. Senate President(s)
Ratio before
Ratio after
Gain/loss
Whig presidents Cleveland Wilson Eisenhower Nixon/Ford Clinton Jackson Polk Pierce/Buchanan Lincoln Grant Hayes/Arthur McKinley T. Roosevelt Harding/Coolidge Hoover F. Roosevelt Truman Kennedy/Johnson Carter Reagan
.42 .47 .46 .49 .36 .56 .56 .44 .58 .39 .84 .61 .49 .62 .51 .50 .49 .59 .65 .60 .41
.35 .38 .39 .36 .38 .50 .67 .56 .30 .72 .53 .55 .62 .65 .58 .38 .59 .49 .57 .46 .45
−.07 −.10 −.07 −.13 +.02 −.06 +.11 +.12 −.28 +.33 −.31 −.05 +.13 +.03 +.07 −.13 +.10 −.10 −.08 −.14 +.04
Source: Data from official U.S. Senate web site; computed by the author. Rounding of ratios leads to some minor apparent discrepancies.
the Whig presidents together and considering Cleveland’s two presidencies as a whole. The tables illustrate what distinguishes opposition presidents from the rest. Following each of the presidents, I note ratios of presidential partisans in Congress to the total number of seats in each chamber at that time in history. The first ratio is the ratio of presidential partisans after the midterm election prior to the president’s first election—in effect, the partisan situation inherited by the presidential candidate. For example, Whigs comprised 55% of the House (132 of 242 seats) following the midterm election of 1838, the situation Harrison inherited when he ran for office in 1840. Then, I note the ratio of presidential partisans in each house of Congress after the last election prior to the president’s departure—in effect, what the president leaves to his party. For example, Whigs made up only 30% of the House (71 of 234 seats) after the election of 1852, after which Fillmore vacated the White House. Finally, I list the gain or loss of the president’s party in Congress during this period. What is immediately apparent is that it is not an easy task for any president to gain ground in Congress over the course of an administration, but the task seems particularly difficult for opposition presidents. In the House, no opposition president or group of opposition presidents was able to finish his term with his party stronger than when he had found it. The Whigs, Cleveland, and Wilson did especially poorly, while Eisenhower fared the best. Redefiners such as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan made gains, but the list of positive performances is not limited solely to them. It does, however, exclude the opposition presidents. The situation is slightly better in the Senate, where the losses are not as heavy, and Nixon and Ford stay in positive territory despite Watergate. Still, the trend for opposition presidents remains negative
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in the Senate as well, with parties having a better chance of gaining ground when they are governing parties under governing party presidents. The popular Eisenhower fared the worst of the opposition presidents, followed closely by Cleveland.
4. Speculation on other partisan dangers I should make a brief aside concerning the potential danger of opposition presidents to governing parties, for opposition presidents do not cause trouble only for their own party. They can also cause trouble for the governing party, once the opposition president leaves and the governing party regains control of the executive branch. The tendency at that point is for the once-again victorious governing party to overreach in its new position and go too far with its agenda, often prompting, or at least facilitating, the conditions necessary for a long-term redefinition of politics, one that works to its disadvantage. The explanation for this is simple. Governing parties see opposition presidents as interlopers, as not quite legitimate holders of an office that is rightfully theirs. Nevertheless, the governing party is forced to wait impatiently four or eight years until the opposition president leaves before it can recapture the office and restart the “proper” national agenda. By that time, years of opposition leadership have created a backlog of governing party proposals and agenda items, developed by governing party leaders as a natural extension of the principles established by the regime founder. When the governing party once again controls the presidency, it is ready to march forward with its backlog of proposals as though nothing had changed. The problem is that things have changed. If nothing else, the electoral era has aged. Typically, by the time the opposition leader has left the scene, anywhere from sixteen to twenty-eight years have passed since the regime founder first took power. For example, twenty-four years passed from the rise of Andrew Jackson in 1828 to Franklin Pierce’s reestablishment of the Jacksonian Democracy in 1852. Twenty-eight years passed from the rise of Franklin Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy’s reestablishment of the New Deal Democracy following the Eisenhower interregnum. While the elite political figures retain their loyalty to the party doctrine that made them successful, the electoral coalition that brought the party to power has begun its now well-documented decomposition. Supporters of the dominant regime at its founding are beginning to die off, while new voters for whom that regime’s principles are less relevant are entering the electorate (Andersen, 1976). This type of generational replacement means the governing party, when it retakes power, enjoys a less firm base of support. Times have changed, and issues have shifted—but the trend is for the governing party to lay the seeds of its own long-term defeat by failing to adapt its party orthodoxy to these changing circumstances. History demonstrates how this has played out. After being forced to tolerate Whig presidents Taylor and Fillmore, who wrestled with the crisis of 1850 until its resolution tamed civil war fever, Democrats elected Pierce and Buchanan. The result was Democratic support of the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealing the Missouri Compromise, giving rise to “Bleeding Kansas,” heightened sectional tensions, and secession. The inability of Democratic presidents to manage the turmoil led to the rise of the Republican party, and within two terms the governing party was dethroned. Likewise, after being forced to work under the conservative and fiscally responsible Cleveland for four years, Republican Benjamin Harrison and his Billion Dollar Congress
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promptly busied themselves in so many areas, and spent so much money, that the country sent packing 85 GOP congressmen in the midterm election of 1890, the third largest midterm loss in American history. Republicans escaped the fate of losing their status as the governing party only because Democrats had the misfortune of being the party in power as the Panic of 1893 turned into depression, and Cleveland proved too maladroit to adapt. Had the close election of 1892 gone the other way, there may never have been an extension of the Republican era. A serious argument can be made that eight years of Wilson, coupled with the internal strife in the GOP, effectively killed progressivism as a major force in the Republican party. The result was eight years of Harding’s return to “normalcy” and keeping “Cool with Coolidge,” until the GOP found itself incapable of dealing with the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt ended 72 years of Republican power. Then, after eight years of Eisenhower, Kennedy wanted to “get the country moving again.” A backlog of Democratic proposals had built up during the 1950s, and the result was Kennedy’s “New Frontier” and Johnson’s “Great Society.” Along with the new Democratic energy came great social unrest, a revolution in cultural mores, and American involvement in Vietnam. Within eight years, the party was in shambles. When Reagan finally redefined politics in 1980, he did so to a large extent by repudiating the 1960s. The evidence here is suggestive. It is only natural that governing parties would experience frustration with the presence of opposition presidents. This is certainly true if the opposition president spends his time attacking the reigning governing philosophy, but it is also true if he pursues a more moderate course, thus taking credit for accomplishments coveted by others. In a sense, governing parties and their presidents are tempted to “make up for lost time” once they retake control of the executive branch, and they over-extend themselves. The governing party over-compensates and takes action (or does not take action, as the case may be) that leads to its own repudiation. The obvious conclusion is that governing parties and their presidents must be as mindful of their historical context, and the dangers associated with that context, as any opposition president, particularly when they recapture the office from the opposition party. History demonstrates that a crisis point confronts the governing party less than a decade after it resumes control of the executive branch. The threat of this dynamic in the Reagan era, now over twenty years old, lies with President George W. Bush and the GOP. The Republican party should be especially aware of the counsel to be cautious of overreaction and overextension with the passing of the Clinton years.
5. Conclusion Nelson (Nelson, 2000) makes mention of a “Samson model” of the presidency in which the president we hope is powerful proves himself weak (2000, p. 7). It is certainly true that partisans hope that victory in a presidential election will bring greater gains at lower levels. For the opposition party, the opposite appears to be true. Counter to expectations, opposition presidents are fairly strong as individual candidates, but they prove to be weak in their task as party leaders. However personally successful they are in attaining power, they appear to be failures when it comes to strengthening their parties. Perhaps the reason for this phenomenon lies in the broader context of this type of presidency. Opposition presidents take power at a time in which their opponents—the governing party—retain the power to define the terms of
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political debate. The broader political and historical context favors the governing party, not the opposition party. It may be only natural, then, for opposition party victory in the executive branch to be more personal than partisan, and for that victor to be incapable of transferring victory to his partisan team. The very context of opposition leadership forces such presidents to be weaker party leaders. The conditions under which they win election, and the type of leadership necessary for personal success, requires someone who is not a strong party leader. The Henry Clays of the world need not apply. The problem is that the very thing that leads to success for the opposition president—through moderation or some sort of tempered agenda—works against success for his own party. From this perspective, an ambitious member of the opposition party in Congress should hope for defeat at the presidential level, for that may be his only hope for controlling Congress. Thus, with the possible exception of Wilson—and even he ultimately failed in his greatest crisis— none of the opposition presidents can be considered strong party leaders. Notes 1. There is a lot of “devil in the details” argument about realignment, particularly concerning where the lines should be drawn. Skowronek’s work tracks very closely with realignment theory and the standard classification of electoral eras in American politics. The conflicts are relatively minor, and easily accounted for by bearing in mind the different emphases between realignment and regime cycles. For example, Skowronek ignores the realignment of 1896, describing instead a long Republican era that lasted from 1860 to 1932. Although the governing philosophy of the GOP did not remain constant throughout that time, the GOP took advantage of the breakup of the 1890s to effect a transformation that allowed the party to claim the power to define politics for yet another generation. The fact that the substance of that definition changed over time does not take away from the fact that the GOP remained the dominant party. Similarly, instead of 1968, Skowronek points to 1980 and the Reagan revolution as a major change in political eras. Again, this does not conflict with the scholarly work that demonstrates that a new electoral era began in the late 1960s, one characterized by candidate-centered politics and divided government. Skowronek himself discusses the dawning of a new “plebiscitary” system at this time. However, considering Nixon’s actions, it seems difficult to conclude that there was a sharp change in governing philosophy. Both parties continued to see themselves in New Deal terms until 1980, when Reagan crystallized the transformation taking place in the GOP and redefined the terms of political debate. Thus, Skowronek stands on firm ground when he speaks of both a “plebiscitary” era that began in 1968–1972, and a “Reagan era” that began in 1980 (Aldrich, 1995; Aldrich & Niemi, 1996; Skowronek, 1993, pp. 53–55; Wattenberg, 1990). 2. Of course, any such chart grossly oversimplifies American political history. Realignments do not usher in wholly stable systems that remain unchanged until the next realignment. Clearly, the advantaged party in a specific era tends to experience much greater success early in the era. As the era proceeds, the issues that brought success to the governing party evolve and change, making consistent control of institutions far more problematical. In
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fact, the advent and success of opposition presidents is one indication that the governing party is not as powerful as it was at the beginning of an era. 3. Nixon won in 1968, but not in his initial 1960 effort. He first had to put eight years between himself and Eisenhower. 4. Because it is unclassifiable, I ignore the midterm election of 1866. Lincoln was the winner of the presidential election in 1864, which should have made the GOP the presidential party in the midterm election of 1866. However, Democrat Andrew Johnson was actually president in 1866, giving that party a claim to being the presidential party. All of this is despite the fact that the Lincoln–Johnson ticket was nominally from neither party, but a “Union” party ticket.
References Aldrich, J. H. (1995). Why parties? The origin and transformation of party politics in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Aldrich, J. H., & Niemi, R. G. (1996). The sixth American party system: Electoral change, 1952–1992. In S. C. Craig (Ed.), Broken contract? Changing relationships between Americans and their government. Boulder: Westview Press. Andersen, K. (1976). Generation, partisan shift, and realignment: A glance back to the New Deal. In N. H. Nie, S. Verba, & J. R. Petrocik (Eds.) The changing American voter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Blum, J. M. (1956). Woodrow Wilson and the politics of morality. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Burnham, W. D. (1970). Critical elections and the mainsprings of American politics. New York: W. W. Norton. Burnham, W. D. (1991). Critical realignment: Dead or alive? In B. E. Shafer (Ed.), The end of realignment? Interpreting American electoral eras. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Campbell, A., Converse, P. E., Miller, W. E., & Stokes, D. E. (1966). Elections and the political order. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Carmines, E. G., & Stimson, J. A. (1989). Issue evolution: Race and the transformation of American politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chubb, J. E., & Peterson, P. E. (1985). Realignment and institutionalization. In J. E. Chubb & P. E. Peterson (Eds.), The new direction in American politics. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Fiorina, M. (1992). Divided government. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Hargrove, E. C., & Nelson, M. (1984). Presidents, politics, and policy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Hofstadter, R. (1969). The idea of a party system: The rise of legitimate opposition in the United States, 1780–1840. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jacobson, G. C. (1991). The persistence of Democratic House majorities. In G. W. Cox & S. Kernell (Eds.), The politics of divided government. Boulder: Westview Press. Key, V. O., Jr. (1955, February). A theory of critical elections. Journal of Politics, 17, 3–18. Kleppner, P. (1979). The third electoral system, 1853–1892: Parties, voters, and political cultures. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Link, A. S. (1954). Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive era, 1910–1917. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers. Lubell, S. (1965). The future of American politics (Rev. 3rd ed.). New York: Harper and Row, Publishers. Milkis, S. M. (1993). The president and the parties: The transformation of the American party system since the New Deal. New York: Oxford University Press. Nelson, M. (2000). Evaluating the presidency. In M. Nelson (Ed.), The presidency and the political system, (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press. Nevins, A. (1932). Grover Cleveland: A study in courage. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. Pach, C. J., & Richardson, E. (1991). The presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (Rev. ed.). Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
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Peterson, M. D. (1987). The great triumvirate: Webster, Clay and Calhoun. New York: Oxford University Press. Rockman, B. A. (1984). The leadership question: The presidency and the American system. New York: Praeger Publishers. Seager, R. (1963). And Tyler too: A biography of John and Julia Gardiner Tyler. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. Skowronek, S. (1993). The politics presidents make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush. Cambridge: The Belknap Press. Stanley, H. W., & Niemi, R. G. (1998). Vital statistics on American politics, 1997–1998. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press. Sundquist, J. L. (1983). Dynamics of the party system: Alignment and realignment of political parties in the United States (Rev. ed.). Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Wattenberg, M. P. (1990). The decline of American political parties, 1952–1988. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Welch, R. E., Jr. (1988). The presidencies of Grover Cleveland. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Samson unbound: opposition presidents and the failure of party leadership David A. Crockett∗ Department of Political Science, Trinity University, 715 Stadium Drive, San Antonio TX 78212 7200, USA
Abstract This article explores the difficulty faced by presidents from the opposition party in their capacity as party leaders. The article accepts as a given Skowronek’s regime cycle vision of American political history, and focuses on his “preemptive president” category. All such “opposition presidents” face roughly the same constrained historical context; thus, it is possible to make inferences and generalize about this type of president. Through a comparison of opposition presidents with “governing party” presidents, I examine one weakness inherent in this type of presidency, focusing specifically on partisan success by measuring the success of an opposition president’s party versus that of a governing party president. © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction For over forty years scholars have struggled to analyze the periodicity observed in American politics. Despite variations in the details, there has emerged a rough consensus that American political history can be described as a series of eras that tend to favor one party over another, eras bounded by punctuated change (Burnham, 1970; Burnham, 1991; Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes; Carmines & Stimson, 1989; Chubb & Peterson, 1985; Key, 1955; Kleppner, 1979; Lubell, 1965; Rockman, 1984; Sundquist, 1983). Stephen Skowronek’s work has been most helpful in connecting presidential leadership to the constraints of history, identifying different leadership projects associated with different situations. In this line of analysis, the advantaged political party in a specific era (e.g., the Democratic party during the New Deal era) can be considered the “governing party,” and the disadvantaged political party (e.g., the GOP during ∗
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that same era) the “opposition party.” Depending on their partisan alignment with these forces, specific presidents are more or less able to redefine politics by condemning a bankrupt past (“reconstructors”), follow in the footsteps of “great” presidents by adapting the new politics to changing times (“articulators”), or struggle to salvage a regime that has become discredited (“disjunctors”) (Skowronek, 1993). The central task of any president, then, is to understand the possibilities for action permissible in the politics of his time (Hargrove & Nelson, 1984, p. 78). My interest lies in Skowronek’s fourth, almost throwaway, category, which he calls “preemptive presidents.” These presidents come from the opposition party in a specific era, at a time when the governing party is still robust. Thus, although such presidents desire to “preempt” the received policy agenda, they take office during a time when they cannot hope to transform politics in their favor. Skowronek calls such presidents “the wild cards of presidential history,” and makes the point that such presidents have a tendency to provoke constitutional crises by overreaching their authority (1993, p. 44). While granting the latter, I question the former. Since these presidents all face the same leadership dilemma—governing at a time when they can not command the power to define politics in their favor—it seems quite possible that the same type of regularity Skowronek uncovered in his other types of presidents is present here as well. Perhaps these presidents are not such “wild cards” after all. It is important to clarify that there are two different types of opposition presidents in Skowronek’s schema, and they face two very different scenarios. The first type is his “reconstructor,” a president who is opposed to the “previously established regime” when that regime is breaking apart. The reconstructor essentially finishes the job by repudiating the bankrupt past and establishing a new regime (Skowronek, 1993, p. 36). The reconstructor, thus, is an “opposition president” who transforms himself into the new governing party leader. He does not remain in an oppositional status. Skowronek’s second type is the “preemptor,” who remains in his oppositional status because he is unable to transform politics in his favor, despite his desire to do so. Thus, the preemptive president remains an “opposition president,” and that is how I will refer to him throughout this analysis. Following Skowronek, then, there are twelve presidents who fall into this category: the Whig presidents during the Jacksonian Democracy (William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore); Democrats Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland (counted as two different presidents), and Woodrow Wilson during the long Republican hegemony; Republicans Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford during the New Deal era; and Democrat Bill Clinton during the current post-New Deal, Reaganesque era.1 In this article I explore one problem associated with opposition presidencies. From Lincoln’s suspension of certain constitutional protections to Franklin Roosevelt’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court, Skowronek makes clear that there are dangers associated even with presidents who enjoy the greatest flexibility to define the agenda in their terms. No political context, and no leadership strategy, is free of dangers, but it may be true that there are problems systemic to each specific type of context. Here I focus specifically on the president’s role as leader of his party. It is a fact of history that presidents such as Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt— all reconstructors in Skowronek’s schema—left their parties stronger than they found them. Not only were these presidents personally successful, in the sense of winning reelection handily, but they were successful as party leaders. Do the constraints faced by opposition presidents cause problems in the areas of achieving personal and party success? If so, we should observe two things. First, opposition presidents should win reelection at a lower rate than presidents
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from the governing party. Second, opposition presidents should see their political parties fare much worse than their governing party counterparts. Specifically, opposition presidents should see their parties perform worse in terms of gaining and maintaining control of congressional seats than their governing party counterparts. In attempting to answer this question, I focus my attention specifically on partisan success, measuring the electoral success of an opposition president’s party versus a governing party president’s. If an oppositional status has associated with it inherent problems with party leadership, we should see that reflected in standard measurements of party success. Since the notion of legitimate opposition did not gain credence in American politics until the Jacksonian age (Hofstadter, 1969), for the purposes of this project I limit my examination to the modern party era that began in the late 1820s. By pursuing this project in a transhistorical way, I hope to demonstrate that there is much to be learned from presidential politics prior to the birth of the “modern presidency,” and to reinforce the notion that presidential leadership is a contingent and context-bound phenomenon. 2. Personal success Most presidents have at least some concern for personal success in their presidency, and that success is usually brought about by reelection, but presidents are also seen as the leaders of their parties, and historically have been held responsible for their parties’ fortunes while in office. Thus, presidents are often concerned with two measurements of success. They want to achieve personal success through reelection, and they typically want to foster the success of their partisan allies. Despite the constrained circumstances opposition presidents face, when personal success is measured in terms of a simple popular vote they are remarkably successful. In fact, all elected opposition presidents who stood for reelection won at least a plurality of the popular vote. None of the Whig presidents stood for reelection, and Ford was never elected to begin with, but Cleveland won three straight popular vote victories (losing in the Electoral College in 1888), and all four elected 20th century opposition presidents were reelected, the last three in very strong fashion. By contrast, of the fourteen elected “governing party” presidents who stood for reelection during this period, only eight won popular vote victories, a success rate of just 57%. If we remove from consideration Skowronek’s great redefiners—Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan—the success rate drops to 25%.2 Table 1 presents this data graphically. For those who might object to my exclusion of presidents who succeeded to the office due to death or resignation, but who then pursued electoral victory in their own right, Table 2 expands the data in Table 1 by including such presidents. Oddly enough, opposition presidents who are able to acquire their party’s nomination for a subsequent term, or for a complete term in their own right, appear to enjoy a greater frequency of success than their governing party counterparts. 3. Success as party leader Turning our attention to party success, it appears that opposition presidents are much less successful in leading their parties to greater electoral victory. The weakness of opposition presidents as party leaders can be demonstrated in several ways. For example, when we examine
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Table 1 Popular vote results of elected presidents seeking reelection President of governing party
President of opposition party
Popular vote victory
Jackson (1832) Lincoln (1864) Grant (1872) McKinley (1900) F. Roosevelt (1936–1944) Reagan (1984) 8 of 14 contests, 57%
Cleveland (1888) Cleveland (1892) Wilson (1916) Eisenhower (1956) Nixon (1972) Clinton (1996) 6 of 6 contests, 100%
Popular vote defeat
Van Buren (1840) B. Harrison (1892) Taft (1912) Hoover (1932) Carter (1980) Bush (1992) 6 of 14 contests, 43%
No entries
0 of 6 contests, 0%
Tables 1 and 2, it becomes clear that the personal electoral success of opposition presidents does not translate easily to others. In no case did the immediate party successor to an opposition president win election in his own right, including the most recent example of Clinton’s party successor, Al Gore.3 The races by Nixon in 1960 and Ford in 1976 were extremely close, but ultimately unsuccessful. Gore’s effort in 2000 was the closest an opposition party successor has come, but he still fell short. With the exception of vice presidential succession, the nation has never witnessed back-to-back opposition presidents. Thus, in a very real sense, the success enjoyed by opposition presidents remains more personal and individual than partisan. Table 2 Popular vote results of all presidents seeking reelection President of governing party
President of opposition party
Popular vote victory
Jackson (1832) Lincoln (1864) Grant (1872) McKinley (1900) T. Roosevelt (1904) Coolidge (1924) F. Roosevelt (1936–1944) Truman (1948) L. Johnson (1964) Reagan (1984) 12 of 18 contests, 67%
Cleveland (1888) Cleveland (1892) Wilson (1916) Eisenhower (1956) Nixon (1972) Clinton (1996)
Popular vote defeat
Van Buren (1840) B. Harrison (1892) Taft (1912) Hoover (1932) Carter (1980) Bush (1992) 6 of 18 contests, 33%
Ford (1976)
6 of 7 contests, 86%
1 of 7 contests, 14%
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Table 3 Presidential coattail effect, U.S. House, 1828–2000 Partisan context
Average seats gained
Governing party advantage
Opposition party president Governing party president Total, presidential party
4.7 20.5 16.2
336% 245
Source: Data from Stanley and Niemi, 1998, pp. 32–36; computed by the author.
The weakness of opposition presidents extends to other institutions. Presidential candidates are expected to bring gains for their party in Congress when they win election to the office. This can work to the president’s advantage, providing him with the necessary partisan support in Congress to advance his agenda. This “coattail effect” can be measured, and opposition presidents’ success compared to that of governing party presidents. Tables 3 and 4 lay this out, providing the average general election seat gains in both houses of Congress for the parties of opposition presidents and governing party presidents. Since 1828, the opposition party has been victorious in twelve different presidential elections, while the governing party has been victorious in 32 different contests. In their twelve electoral victories, opposition presidents have led their parties to average seat gains of 4.7 in the House and 1.25 in the Senate. By contrast, governing party presidents have averaged seat gains of 20.5 in the House and 2.66 in the Senate. Thus, governing party presidents average partisan gains in the House over four times those of opposition presidents, and gains in the Senate over twice those of opposition presidents. Even when looking at House and Senate figures as a whole, opposition presidents are severe under-achievers, their coattail effects minimal at best. A similar demonstration of the opposition president’s weakness as party leader can be seen in midterm election results. It is well known that the president’s party tends to lose ground in Congress in midterm elections. This “midterm loss effect” can be measured, and the relative success or failure of opposition presidents compared to that of governing party presidents. Tables 5 and 6 lay this out, providing the average midterm election seat losses in both houses of Congress for the parties of opposition presidents and governing party presidents. Since 1830, opposition presidents have experienced twelve different midterm elections, while governing party presidents have been involved in thirty different midterm contests.4 In their twelve midterm elections, opposition presidents have suffered average seat losses of 37.4 in the House and 1.67 in the Senate. By contrast, governing party presidents have suffered average seat losses of 30.2 in the House and 1.63 in the Senate. The difference between opposition presidents Table 4 Presidential coattail effect, U.S. Senate, 1828–2000 Partisan context
Average seats gained
Governing party advantage
Opposition party president Governing party president Total, presidential party
1.25 2.66 2.27
113% 82
Source: Data from Stanley and Niemi, 1998, pp. 32–36; computed by the author.
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Table 5 Presidential midterm loss effect, U.S. House, 1830–1998 Partisan context
Average seats lost
Opposition party lag
Opposition party president Governing party president Total, presidential party
37.4 30.2 32.2
24% 16
Source: Data from Stanley and Niemi, 1998, pp. 32–36; computed by the author.
and their governing party counterparts is not as dramatic here as with the coattail effect, especially in the Senate, where the opposition party’s lag is a mere 2%. However, opposition parties in the House still suffer markedly greater declines under opposition presidents than governing parties do under governing party presidents. Again, opposition presidents are not good party leaders. Historical data provide the context for these figures. As a party the Whigs never fared very well under Whig presidents. That was certainly true under Tyler, who pursued his personal goals with complete disregard for his party’s fortunes. The same can be said fifty years later for Cleveland in his second presidency, who suffered the worst House midterm election loss in American history in 1894, losing 116 Democrats. The fact that Tyler and Cleveland were known for their great personal rectitude undoubtedly had something to do with their lack of ideological flexibility, and their preference for personal principle over party fortune (Nevins, 1932, pp. 764–766; Peterson, 1987, pp. 312; Seager, 1963, p. 147; Welch, 1988, pp. 205–207). Still, more nimble opposition presidents prove to be no better at party leadership. Despite early legislative success, Wilson’s Democrats lost badly in the 1914 midterm election, and despite moving toward the progressives Wilson lost further ground in 1916. After six years of policy success, Wilson appealed for Democratic seats in 1918, and lost control of Congress (Blum, 1956, pp. 152–155; Link, 1954, pp. 78–79, 249). Eisenhower consciously fostered an image of nonpartisanship that ran counter to his 1954 warning of divided government, and he lost control of Congress. When he campaigned strongly against Democratic “extremists” in 1958, the popular general suffered the worst Senate midterm loss in American history, losing thirteen Republicans (Pach & Richardson, 1991, pp. 72–73, 183–185). Nixon himself was purely personal in his orientation to party fortunes, supporting reelection not for Republicans in general, but for people from both parties who supported him. His actions were most egregious in 1972, when he might have been able to translate his political advantage into significant congressional gains. Instead, running a personal campaign out of the White House, and seeking to be “president of all the people,” Nixon won a landslide victory while failing to win either Table 6 Presidential midterm loss effect, U.S. Senate, 1830–1998 Partisan context
Average seats lost
Opposition party lag
Opposition party president Governing party president Total, presidential party
1.67 1.63 1.64
2% 2
Source: Data from Stanley and Niemi, 1998, pp. 32–36; computed by the author.
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Table 7 Presidential success as party leader, U.S. House President(s)
Ratio before
Ratio after
Gain/loss
Whig presidents Cleveland Wilson Eisenhower Nixon/Ford Clinton Jackson Polk Pierce/Buchanan Lincoln Grant Hayes/Arthur McKinley T. Roosevelt Harding/Coolidge Hoover F. Roosevelt Truman Kennedy/Johnson Carter Reagan
.55 .62 .58 .46 .43 .61 .60 .64 .60 .48 .74 .37 .69 .55 .54 .54 .50 .56 .65 .67 .36
.30 .38 .30 .40 .33 .49 .48 .51 .24 .76 .47 .43 .55 .56 .61 .27 .56 .49 .56 .56 .40
−.24 −.24 −.28 −.06 −.10 −.13 −.12 −.13 −.36 +.28 −.27 +.07 −.13 +.01 +.07 −.28 +.06 −.07 −.09 −.11 +.04
Source: Data from official U.S. House web site; computed by the author. Rounding of ratios leads to some minor apparent discrepancies.
house of Congress (Milkis, 1993, pp. 228–230). As with the rest, Clinton’s personal success at winning elections coincided with his party’s loss of congressional control. While it is true that the “coattail effect” has eroded somewhat in recent years for both parties, the weakness of opposition presidents in this area has been fairly consistent throughout American history. The scholarship analyzing divided government points to the reasons for this weakness. Opposition parties in specific political eras suffer disadvantages on issues that prevent them from taking long-term control of the institutions of government. Individual opposition presidents are successful because it is easier for voters to register temporary dissatisfaction with the governing party by replacing the executive than it is by transferring control of the entire legislature. But, because the opposition party may very well be weak at the state level as well, the party tends to field weaker challengers in congressional races, giving the opposition president little for his coattails to work with. Party decomposition will eventually affect the governing party as well, but the election of opposition presidents may only be the first sign of this process (Aldrich & Niemi, 1996, pp. 96–97; Fiorina, 1992, pp. 8–14, 69–70; Jacobson, 1991, pp. 66–68). There is one more interesting measure of a president’s ability to help his party, and that is to compare his congressional party strength before he enters office with its strength when he leaves office. Tables 7 and 8 present some of this data. I have chosen to list first, and in boldface, the opposition presidents, in order to highlight their situation. I then list, in chronological order, various other presidents to serve as a comparison. The tables are not comprehensive, for I have skipped a few presidents and made logical pairings of others, including grouping all
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Table 8 Presidential success as party leader, U.S. Senate President(s)
Ratio before
Ratio after
Gain/loss
Whig presidents Cleveland Wilson Eisenhower Nixon/Ford Clinton Jackson Polk Pierce/Buchanan Lincoln Grant Hayes/Arthur McKinley T. Roosevelt Harding/Coolidge Hoover F. Roosevelt Truman Kennedy/Johnson Carter Reagan
.42 .47 .46 .49 .36 .56 .56 .44 .58 .39 .84 .61 .49 .62 .51 .50 .49 .59 .65 .60 .41
.35 .38 .39 .36 .38 .50 .67 .56 .30 .72 .53 .55 .62 .65 .58 .38 .59 .49 .57 .46 .45
−.07 −.10 −.07 −.13 +.02 −.06 +.11 +.12 −.28 +.33 −.31 −.05 +.13 +.03 +.07 −.13 +.10 −.10 −.08 −.14 +.04
Source: Data from official U.S. Senate web site; computed by the author. Rounding of ratios leads to some minor apparent discrepancies.
the Whig presidents together and considering Cleveland’s two presidencies as a whole. The tables illustrate what distinguishes opposition presidents from the rest. Following each of the presidents, I note ratios of presidential partisans in Congress to the total number of seats in each chamber at that time in history. The first ratio is the ratio of presidential partisans after the midterm election prior to the president’s first election—in effect, the partisan situation inherited by the presidential candidate. For example, Whigs comprised 55% of the House (132 of 242 seats) following the midterm election of 1838, the situation Harrison inherited when he ran for office in 1840. Then, I note the ratio of presidential partisans in each house of Congress after the last election prior to the president’s departure—in effect, what the president leaves to his party. For example, Whigs made up only 30% of the House (71 of 234 seats) after the election of 1852, after which Fillmore vacated the White House. Finally, I list the gain or loss of the president’s party in Congress during this period. What is immediately apparent is that it is not an easy task for any president to gain ground in Congress over the course of an administration, but the task seems particularly difficult for opposition presidents. In the House, no opposition president or group of opposition presidents was able to finish his term with his party stronger than when he had found it. The Whigs, Cleveland, and Wilson did especially poorly, while Eisenhower fared the best. Redefiners such as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan made gains, but the list of positive performances is not limited solely to them. It does, however, exclude the opposition presidents. The situation is slightly better in the Senate, where the losses are not as heavy, and Nixon and Ford stay in positive territory despite Watergate. Still, the trend for opposition presidents remains negative
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in the Senate as well, with parties having a better chance of gaining ground when they are governing parties under governing party presidents. The popular Eisenhower fared the worst of the opposition presidents, followed closely by Cleveland.
4. Speculation on other partisan dangers I should make a brief aside concerning the potential danger of opposition presidents to governing parties, for opposition presidents do not cause trouble only for their own party. They can also cause trouble for the governing party, once the opposition president leaves and the governing party regains control of the executive branch. The tendency at that point is for the once-again victorious governing party to overreach in its new position and go too far with its agenda, often prompting, or at least facilitating, the conditions necessary for a long-term redefinition of politics, one that works to its disadvantage. The explanation for this is simple. Governing parties see opposition presidents as interlopers, as not quite legitimate holders of an office that is rightfully theirs. Nevertheless, the governing party is forced to wait impatiently four or eight years until the opposition president leaves before it can recapture the office and restart the “proper” national agenda. By that time, years of opposition leadership have created a backlog of governing party proposals and agenda items, developed by governing party leaders as a natural extension of the principles established by the regime founder. When the governing party once again controls the presidency, it is ready to march forward with its backlog of proposals as though nothing had changed. The problem is that things have changed. If nothing else, the electoral era has aged. Typically, by the time the opposition leader has left the scene, anywhere from sixteen to twenty-eight years have passed since the regime founder first took power. For example, twenty-four years passed from the rise of Andrew Jackson in 1828 to Franklin Pierce’s reestablishment of the Jacksonian Democracy in 1852. Twenty-eight years passed from the rise of Franklin Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy’s reestablishment of the New Deal Democracy following the Eisenhower interregnum. While the elite political figures retain their loyalty to the party doctrine that made them successful, the electoral coalition that brought the party to power has begun its now well-documented decomposition. Supporters of the dominant regime at its founding are beginning to die off, while new voters for whom that regime’s principles are less relevant are entering the electorate (Andersen, 1976). This type of generational replacement means the governing party, when it retakes power, enjoys a less firm base of support. Times have changed, and issues have shifted—but the trend is for the governing party to lay the seeds of its own long-term defeat by failing to adapt its party orthodoxy to these changing circumstances. History demonstrates how this has played out. After being forced to tolerate Whig presidents Taylor and Fillmore, who wrestled with the crisis of 1850 until its resolution tamed civil war fever, Democrats elected Pierce and Buchanan. The result was Democratic support of the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealing the Missouri Compromise, giving rise to “Bleeding Kansas,” heightened sectional tensions, and secession. The inability of Democratic presidents to manage the turmoil led to the rise of the Republican party, and within two terms the governing party was dethroned. Likewise, after being forced to work under the conservative and fiscally responsible Cleveland for four years, Republican Benjamin Harrison and his Billion Dollar Congress
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promptly busied themselves in so many areas, and spent so much money, that the country sent packing 85 GOP congressmen in the midterm election of 1890, the third largest midterm loss in American history. Republicans escaped the fate of losing their status as the governing party only because Democrats had the misfortune of being the party in power as the Panic of 1893 turned into depression, and Cleveland proved too maladroit to adapt. Had the close election of 1892 gone the other way, there may never have been an extension of the Republican era. A serious argument can be made that eight years of Wilson, coupled with the internal strife in the GOP, effectively killed progressivism as a major force in the Republican party. The result was eight years of Harding’s return to “normalcy” and keeping “Cool with Coolidge,” until the GOP found itself incapable of dealing with the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt ended 72 years of Republican power. Then, after eight years of Eisenhower, Kennedy wanted to “get the country moving again.” A backlog of Democratic proposals had built up during the 1950s, and the result was Kennedy’s “New Frontier” and Johnson’s “Great Society.” Along with the new Democratic energy came great social unrest, a revolution in cultural mores, and American involvement in Vietnam. Within eight years, the party was in shambles. When Reagan finally redefined politics in 1980, he did so to a large extent by repudiating the 1960s. The evidence here is suggestive. It is only natural that governing parties would experience frustration with the presence of opposition presidents. This is certainly true if the opposition president spends his time attacking the reigning governing philosophy, but it is also true if he pursues a more moderate course, thus taking credit for accomplishments coveted by others. In a sense, governing parties and their presidents are tempted to “make up for lost time” once they retake control of the executive branch, and they over-extend themselves. The governing party over-compensates and takes action (or does not take action, as the case may be) that leads to its own repudiation. The obvious conclusion is that governing parties and their presidents must be as mindful of their historical context, and the dangers associated with that context, as any opposition president, particularly when they recapture the office from the opposition party. History demonstrates that a crisis point confronts the governing party less than a decade after it resumes control of the executive branch. The threat of this dynamic in the Reagan era, now over twenty years old, lies with President George W. Bush and the GOP. The Republican party should be especially aware of the counsel to be cautious of overreaction and overextension with the passing of the Clinton years.
5. Conclusion Nelson (Nelson, 2000) makes mention of a “Samson model” of the presidency in which the president we hope is powerful proves himself weak (2000, p. 7). It is certainly true that partisans hope that victory in a presidential election will bring greater gains at lower levels. For the opposition party, the opposite appears to be true. Counter to expectations, opposition presidents are fairly strong as individual candidates, but they prove to be weak in their task as party leaders. However personally successful they are in attaining power, they appear to be failures when it comes to strengthening their parties. Perhaps the reason for this phenomenon lies in the broader context of this type of presidency. Opposition presidents take power at a time in which their opponents—the governing party—retain the power to define the terms of
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political debate. The broader political and historical context favors the governing party, not the opposition party. It may be only natural, then, for opposition party victory in the executive branch to be more personal than partisan, and for that victor to be incapable of transferring victory to his partisan team. The very context of opposition leadership forces such presidents to be weaker party leaders. The conditions under which they win election, and the type of leadership necessary for personal success, requires someone who is not a strong party leader. The Henry Clays of the world need not apply. The problem is that the very thing that leads to success for the opposition president—through moderation or some sort of tempered agenda—works against success for his own party. From this perspective, an ambitious member of the opposition party in Congress should hope for defeat at the presidential level, for that may be his only hope for controlling Congress. Thus, with the possible exception of Wilson—and even he ultimately failed in his greatest crisis— none of the opposition presidents can be considered strong party leaders. Notes 1. There is a lot of “devil in the details” argument about realignment, particularly concerning where the lines should be drawn. Skowronek’s work tracks very closely with realignment theory and the standard classification of electoral eras in American politics. The conflicts are relatively minor, and easily accounted for by bearing in mind the different emphases between realignment and regime cycles. For example, Skowronek ignores the realignment of 1896, describing instead a long Republican era that lasted from 1860 to 1932. Although the governing philosophy of the GOP did not remain constant throughout that time, the GOP took advantage of the breakup of the 1890s to effect a transformation that allowed the party to claim the power to define politics for yet another generation. The fact that the substance of that definition changed over time does not take away from the fact that the GOP remained the dominant party. Similarly, instead of 1968, Skowronek points to 1980 and the Reagan revolution as a major change in political eras. Again, this does not conflict with the scholarly work that demonstrates that a new electoral era began in the late 1960s, one characterized by candidate-centered politics and divided government. Skowronek himself discusses the dawning of a new “plebiscitary” system at this time. However, considering Nixon’s actions, it seems difficult to conclude that there was a sharp change in governing philosophy. Both parties continued to see themselves in New Deal terms until 1980, when Reagan crystallized the transformation taking place in the GOP and redefined the terms of political debate. Thus, Skowronek stands on firm ground when he speaks of both a “plebiscitary” era that began in 1968–1972, and a “Reagan era” that began in 1980 (Aldrich, 1995; Aldrich & Niemi, 1996; Skowronek, 1993, pp. 53–55; Wattenberg, 1990). 2. Of course, any such chart grossly oversimplifies American political history. Realignments do not usher in wholly stable systems that remain unchanged until the next realignment. Clearly, the advantaged party in a specific era tends to experience much greater success early in the era. As the era proceeds, the issues that brought success to the governing party evolve and change, making consistent control of institutions far more problematical. In
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fact, the advent and success of opposition presidents is one indication that the governing party is not as powerful as it was at the beginning of an era. 3. Nixon won in 1968, but not in his initial 1960 effort. He first had to put eight years between himself and Eisenhower. 4. Because it is unclassifiable, I ignore the midterm election of 1866. Lincoln was the winner of the presidential election in 1864, which should have made the GOP the presidential party in the midterm election of 1866. However, Democrat Andrew Johnson was actually president in 1866, giving that party a claim to being the presidential party. All of this is despite the fact that the Lincoln–Johnson ticket was nominally from neither party, but a “Union” party ticket.
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