ABSTRACT
Many people have ideas, but only a few are people of ideas. These people of ideas form a particular subset, presumably just one of many subsets of people active at an elite level of national politics. Such men and women have been present, and the object of much comment, in the three presidencies under study here—Franklin Roosevelt’s, Lyndon Johnson’s, and Ronald Reagan’s. Many observers have noticed that in these administrations (not exclusively, of course), significant numbers of people surrounding the president stood apart for their absorption with ideas, especially for their devotion to comprehensive theories about what ails America and how to set things right. But what exactly distinguishes individuals such as Rexford Tugwell and Adolf Berle from Daniel Roper and Harold Ickes, or Eric Goldman and Bill Moyers from Joseph Califano and H. Barefoot Sanders, Jr., or William Bennett and David Stockman from Terrel Bell and Donald Regan? It is not expertise: everyone named here was an “expert,” certainly, in his respective field. Nor does education distinguish them. How, then, can the differences between these elusive though notable “idea men” and their nonideological colleagues be studied?
