Ronald Reagan Building Coalition Leaders Summary

The key to a modern presidents’ success and power, often relies on his relationship with Congress and his ability to influence them. Modern presidents have a much more direct effect on legislation, far from the days of George Washington. Many modern presidents have lacked the true opportunity to maximize their power due to facing congressional grid lock for some period of their term. However, President Trump faces a Republican majority in both houses and the unique opportunity to advance both his and his party’s agenda. Being a wildcard, Trump faces many challenges, some of his own party lawmakers have threaten to defect from his agenda purely due to his relationship with them which was severely hurt during Trumps’ campaign. Taking a look …show more content…
The author examines the relationship between the presidency and the challenges it faces in coalition building and whether it is actually necessary for the president to do so. First, the author analyzes Ronald Reagan and his ability to build coalitions. Reagan found success in using his ability to be recognized as “The Great Communicator” to shift public opinion and place pressure on Congress. Systematic data shows that there was already a movement in place before Reagan took office that allowed him to be the strong leader that he is known to be. The author concludes that Ronald Reagan was not as great of a leader as people tend to remember but that he took office in an opportune time. The author follows up with a distinct example in Bill Clinton, he had similar characteristics in his ability to be a strong appearing leader, but he was unable to obtain public support in the same way that Reagan could. What the author found was that the public was that a presidents’ characteristics may not influence the amount of public support he receives. It is critical that we understand how presidents can influence public opinion in analyzing the president’s relationship with the Legislative branch, since constituents …show more content…
Neustadt has influenced many modern research on presidential power. Edwards proved his hypothesis empirically that presidents must be willing to bargain with Congress to be successful, “Presidential Power and Political Science” revisits Neustadt’s theory of presidential power and asks how it has influenced presidential scholarship since its publication (Hargrove ,2001). The article covers four main points on how modern research has either modified or added on to Neustadt original research; The political resources for leadership, the relative importance of individual presidents in broad political leadership, presidential management of policy making, and the relation of the search for personal presidential power to constitutional norms (Hargrove, 2001). The author argues that Neustadt’s theory has been “beaten but it’s not broken”, meaning it is still valid today and can be applied to the modern president because we now have a better understanding on presidential leadership. There will be times presidential leadership will be weak and times it will be strong, and in these situations, it could be out of the presidents control. It is crucial to analyze Neustadt’s theory and the research that has added on to it to fully understand what a modern president must do in order to maximize his political capital, because it will determine a president’s success in passing legislation (Hargrove,