ABSTRACT
In Doctor Doolittle’s menagerie there was a two-headed creature, the “Push-Me-Pull-You,” that suffered from the same sort of contradictions that have only gradually and partially been overcome in the recruitment of people of ideas to service in presidencies of achievement. The contradictions between the president’s fulfillment of nonideological responsibilities and the payment of his debts to people of ideas, between, in a larger sense, the pull of the weakly ideological past and the push toward the more ideological future, have beset each of the three presidents of achievement since the 1930s. But with each of these administrations, one side in this struggle has grown stronger, culminating in the systematic ideologization of presidential politics under Ronald Reagan. This chapter establishes the increasing affinities between particular groups of people of ideas and the campaign advisory structures and personnel recruitment and management strategies adopted by the Roosevelt, Johnson, and Reagan administrations during their crucial transitions to and early experiences in power.
