ABSTRACT
‘Poor Ike’, Harry S Truman is supposed to have said as he prepared to leave the White House to his successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in early 1953. ‘He’ll sit here, and he’ll say “Do this!, Do that!,” And nothing will happen … It won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.’ 1 As Truman knew well, in the United States, presidents are rarely in control of public policy. Instead, their ability to lead the country is constrained by, among other things, a separate, powerful legislative branch – the United States Congress. Likewise, presidents are constrained in their ability to lead the Congress. These constraints are imposed by the US Constitution, acts of Congress and the federal judiciary, and by decades of historical precedents governing presidential behaviour. Nevertheless, in both the United States and the international community, the President of the United States is frequently – and wrongly – assumed to be the leader of the American political system. This is in stark contrast with the humble beginnings of the presidency and even with executive–legislative relations during Harry Truman’s presidency, which ended in January 1953. This image of the president as governmental head is also misleading, since presidents lack many of the most essential tools of executive leadership, such as the ability to select their own subordinates, the ability to act autonomously, and the ability quickly to change course when a programme or policy seems to be failing. In many cases, these powers are shared with the legislative branch.
