The Presidency

Abstract

President Clinton took office in 1993 after an election in which his predecessor, George Bush, gained a pathetically low share of the vote (35 percent) for an elected president seeking reelection. Within two years, Clinton himself was reduced to arguing that he was “not irrelevant” in Washington as his party lost control of the Senate and, more strikingly, the House of Representatives for the first time in forty-four years. Although President Clinton was able to bounce back in the 1996 elections, no one would have thought that his standing in Washington thereafter was comparable to that of Lyndon Johnson in 1965 or Ronald Reagan in 1985. The president himself remained embroiled in investigations of his past business dealings (Whitewater) and more recent activities in raising campaign contributions. As it is never possible to separate fully the president from the presidency, Clinton’s difficulties often prompted suggestions that the presidency itself had declined. It was easy to suggest reasons why the presidency had been diminished. In particular, the end of the Cold War brought to an end the long and unusual era starting in 1939 during which the president had been Commander in Chief of a nation actually or potentially involved in world war.