Intellectuals and the American Presidency: Philosophers, Jesters, or Technicians?

Rating:
Summary: A tad obvious & boring, but contains some interesting detail
Review: Although this is apparently the first book to explicitly track the interplay between Presidents and intellectuals, there is no great or deep insights to be found here. As Troy works in public policy (according to his bio), one can assume that his book really just maps out his own career aspirations to become a "public" intellectual and be recognized as such by a president. Given the quality of what passes for intellectualism in our national public life, Troy will probably have no problems in this -- he seems a far more sensible and clearer thinker and writer than most academics and assorted brainiacs. The general thrust of all this remains troubling, however, as the book takes for granted the unproven notion that Intellectuals are good for Presidents and public alike.

Still, even assuming that intellectuals can do more good than harm, the book overplays the importance of intellectuals rather dramatically. As his own study of President Clinton makes clear, the professional peddlers of "Ideas" can be as easily manipulated and suckered in as anyone else. Also, the author quickly seems to fall into the trap of assuming a president was good or bad based on how deftly that president brought intellectuals to his cause or gained their respect.

These deficiencies aside, the book does map all this out in a very clear and coherent fashion, and brings forward lots of interesting details and unearths all sorts of telling and often amusing anecdotes. Although occasionally boring, the book flows easily enough. If you are into study of the presidency or the role of intellectuals in popular culture, the book should prove interesting enough to justify buying it used/secondhand.

Rating:
Summary: Better than I expected
Review: Hats off to author Tevi Troy, who has offered a surprisingly interesting and enjoyable read about how White House administrations joined intellectualism and politics. Instead of being a boring, blow-by-blow account of just one aspect of presidential goings on, "Intellectuals and the American Presidency" provided an educational angle that taught me how presidents utilize specialized personnel to provide political advice, manage ideas, court the intellectual community, and even act as a political lighting rod. No matter how much you know about the administrations from JFK to George W., I would recommend this book to add another layer to anyone's understanding of recent presidential history.

Although I wouldn't categorize this book as a "page turner," I still found myself sticking with it a lot longer in an attempt to retain continuity within chapters. In addition to providing lots of insight into some very interesting political thinkers, Mr. Troy also compares the differences in how intellectual roles were modeled from one administration to the next. One example: after Lyndon Johnson's administration, a shift occurred whereby the intellectual community began to garner representation from the right (neo-conservatives); however, under Nixon, this representation came from one who was decidedly more liberal on numerous issues, namely, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

The author is very fair in his perception of those presidents who had effective relations with the intellectual community (e.g., Kennedy, Clinton), those who lacked intellectual guidance (e.g., Carter, Ford), and those who used intellectuals not to formulate policy, but to carry forth presidential viewpoints into the mainstream media and populace (e.g., Reagan, Bush II). Mr. Troy remains nonpartisan throughout, as he considers the motivation and style of each president, and relates these to both the successes and failures of policy and persona throughout each of the administrations. There's even an excellent chapter about the interaction between candidates Bush and Gore, and how their actions and speeches were interpreted by the media during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Due to the specialized focus of the subject matter, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book to everyone, but it would be an excellent read for students of political science, or perhaps those of us who want to reflect more about the memories of presidential administrations from the 60's to the 90's.


Rating:
Summary: Where Presidents and ideas meet
Review: Tevi Troy has written an interesting and highly engaging chronicle of the ever-increasing relevance of public intellectuals and think tank denizens on how the Presidents govern. Intellectuals and the American Presidency is also one of the most important books recently written about the Presidency, and its pages teach us that a key ingredient for Oval Office success is a coherence of ideas, the presence of which can multiply the perceived strength of any President.

Troy identifies Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., from the Kennedy era, as the first true "court intellectual" in the White House. Although there were surely precursors in FDR's administration, Schlesinger was the first to serve on the White House staff, and he was followed by men performing more or less similar functions in subsequent Administrations. The contemporaneous rise of two institutions made this new kind of behind-the-scenes influence possible. The G.I. Bill democratized higher education and conferred a newfound popular respect upon full-time academics. The growth of the institutional Presidency, with an expanding universe of aides performing ever-more specific tasks, made it possible for such an unconventional position to be created.

Initially, the intellectual's purpose in the White House was rather limited. Schlesinger and Eric Goldman (Schlesinger's immediate successor in the Johnson Administration) were regularly derided as "East Wing" aides, far away from the West Wing whirlwind. Both served in a capacity that was more public liaison than policy-oriented. Their job was to represent the President to an increasingly influential intellectual community, rather than to shape policy. Organizing White House events highlighting sundry items of concern to the educated classes - the arts, for instance - fell under their purview as well.

The first truly synergistic relationship between a President and an intellectual in this modern period came into being when Richard Nixon hired Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat, for the Labor Department, and later, in the White House. Nixon had always styled himself as a politician standing opposed to liberal shibboleths, and in Moynihan he found someone who could needle left-liberal excess, par excellence. Moynihan was also a policymaker more than an "ambassador," and was instrumental in crafting the Family Assistance Plan, Nixon's bid to replace a cumbersome social welfare state with direct payments to the needy. Here, Moynihan showed a knack for feeding off Nixon's animosity towards liberal interest groups, responding to a Nixon query about the fate of social workers under FAP with a jubilant "It will wipe them out!"

For a brief interregnum in the Reagan years, the intellectuals surrounding the White House seemed to go quiet. Indeed, Troy's chapter on Reagan is his shortest, and for good reason. In the early 1980s, ideas developed by conservative intellectuals were quietly embedded in the machinery of government. No single personality could exemplify them in the way a Schlesinger or a Moynihan could.

The 1970s had been a key turning point for conservatives in the battle of ideas. Thanks to seeds planted by Moynihan, Irving Kristol, Robert Goldwin, and others, conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation took root. These institutions emerged as powerful alternative to university faculties, and were single-mindedly focused on changing public policy. When Reagan came to power, he utilized these conservative intellectuals not as high-profile "ambassadors," but in conventional "line" positions in government agencies where they could directly influence policy. Ultimately, these scholars took their ideological bearings from a like-minded President. As Bob Novak and Rowland Evans put it, "Because Reagan came to office with a driving ideology that informed his every action, and which demanded compliance by his colleagues in government, his administration was uniquely different. Ronald Reagan was the administration." This intellectual and ideological focus, set in place by Reagan himself, helped him tremendously.

The experiences of Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush illustrate the dangers of the opposite strategy: ignoring ideas. In both Administrations, a lack of intellectual focus helped create a sense of drift. Jimmy Carter had no ideology to speak of, and his basic worldview combined elements of "southern populism, progressivism, the civil rights movement, and popular-culture moral sentiments absorbed through musicians like Bob Dylan." Few intellectuals understood where Carter was coming from, and unconventional ideas from Carter's twentysomething pollster Pat Caddell filled the vacuum, to disastrous effect in Carter's needlessly pessimistic "malaise" speech.

In an effort to distance itself from Reagan, the first Bush Administration almost consciously devalued ideas and intellectuals, casting the President as a savvy technocrat rather than as a dreamy-eyed visionary. The speechwriting office, normally a gathering place for serious thinkers, was drastically cut back, its remaining staff overburdened. The domestic policy staff was marginalized by Budget Director Richard Darman and Chief of Staff John Sununu, both pragmatists. All of this made it even harder for the first President Bush to articulate a coherent vision for the future, something which surely contributed to his ultimate defeat.

Using the rich framework Troy lays out, how should we think about intellectuals and the current Bush Administration? Thus far, Bush seems to be returning to the Reagan model, relying heavily on the work of think tanks and granting his chief policy development and speechwriting aides unprecedented status and access. Paul Wolfowitz (at the Pentagon), John Bolton (in the State Department), and Patricia Lynn Scarlett (in the Interior Department) are just a few of the identifiable conservative intellectuals directly implementing policy today. Though he disavows intellectual pretenses, Bush knows what he believes and values consistency in thought (if not always in his particular methods) - witness the "moral clarity" that's served as beacon in the war on terror. As such, I'm betting that Bush will be the subject of the most interesting chapter in any revised version of Intellectuals and the American Presidency.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Tevi Troy has written what is clearly the definitive book on the role of intellectuals in the White House. It is a thorough, readable, non-partisan, witty and intelligent book that is both a look back at recent history (Moynihan, Schlesinger, etc.) and an analysis of how a contemporary White House can and should look forward. This is required reading for those interested in politics, the presidency, and American history generally.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Tevi Troy has written what is clearly the definitive book on the role of intellectuals in the White House. It is a thorough, readable, non-partisan, witty and intelligent book that is both a look back at recent history (Moynihan, Schlesinger, etc.) and an analysis of how a contemporary White House can and should look forward. This is required reading for those interested in politics, the presidency, and American history generally.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent journey down the corridors of power...
Review: This is a fascinating book that tells an eight-part saga about American intellectuals and their struggle for influence in the most powerful institution in the world.

Starting with Arthur Schelsinger Jr., Troy gives the reader an intimate look at the vanity and egos of scholars, academics, and pointy-heads who want to stroke and be stroked.

Troy writes with engaging verve, taking what could have been a dry scholarly dissertation about self-involved intellectuals and effortlessly adding humorous anecdotes as well as thoughtful observations.

This book is different from so many political works because it explores failure as readily as success and puts the reader in the historical moment of each presidency by tapping primary sources, memos and interviews.

Woven through the biographical sketches is the story of ideas and their conflict with the political status quo.

From Eric Goldman's humiliating service to LBJ (in which he wrote speeches for LBJ's teenage daughters) to the political courage of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the story runs the gamut of how White House intellectuals have aided, abetted, and occasionally crippled the presidency.

Readers who invest in this book will get more than just their money's worth. They will get a unique book that melds politics with philosophy, idealism with cynical calculation, and shows the cost to a presidency when the occupant has no ideological commitment outside the next election.

Whether you are a reader on the right or the left, it is an solid contribution to scholarship and contains important lessons for viewing the current political climate.