ABSTRACT
The Congress is one of the few legislatures that can regularly say no to a popularly elected president and make it stick. Presidential success in the Congress is measured annually by the percentage of the votes on which the president’s position prevailed. The measure also misses the fact that what presidents propose can be affected by their assessment of what the Congress is likely to pass. The president may alter or delete elements of his program before they are announced because, on the basis of preliminary consultations, he anticipates strong congressional opposition. Partisan considerations aside, the president’s ability to move the Congress is usually greater at the beginning than at the end of his administration. The multiplicity of interest groups, the narrowing of their issue concerns, and the intensified level of conflict among them bespeaks a more deeply rooted cause of stalemate: the weakening of the national consensus about the goals of public policy.
