Bush's Stealth Presidency: Less Is More?

By GIL TROY

The Forward, AUGUST 17, 2001

So far, George W. Bush's stealth presidency seems to be working. President Bush consolidated power and established his legitimacy smoothly and speedily. He passed his legislative priority, the tax cut, effortlessly. So far, he has shrewdly avoided the controversies and follies of Bill Clinton's rookie year: There have been no gays-in-the-military brouhahas or fancy hair cuts to snarl Los Angeles air traffic.

The people and the pundits have rewarded Mr. Bush by ignoring him, relatively speaking. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton took the country by storm, generating headlines, magazine covers, best-selling books and hate mail by the bushel. Love 'em or hate 'em, you couldn't ignore 'em. Eight exhausting years later, Mr. Bush is benefiting from the belated arrival of Clinton fatigue. Dubya's Democratic critics don't have half the fun needling him that Republican critics had doing the same to President Clinton. Whereas Mr. Clinton disappointed many ideological allies, Mr. Bush has kept expectations low and conservative critics more or less in line.

As a result, Mr. Bush has had more latitude than his predecessor did while settling in to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Dubya's zone of privacy is relatively expansive. Life in the White House is no longer the hot popular culture item it once was. While future books about the Bush twins might become best sellers — for all the wrong reasons — it is hard to believe anyone will pen a bestseller about their mother. She just may end up being called "low-key Laura."

Yet the Bushies should beware what they wish for. The stealth strategy may work in the short term, but it is doomed in the long term. Modern Americans do not elect presidents in order to ignore them.

It was not always so. In the 19th century, the public conceived of the president as a kind of "chief magistrate" who was supposed to follow the political equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath: "first do no harm." Jealous of their own power, party bosses and congressional leaders sought out nominees for their pliability, reliability and, the most important "ability" of them all, their availability, meaning their popularity. At the time, "popularity" was reckoned according to the limited number of influential enemies one had rather than the adulation one gained. Thus, for example, the Republicans in 1860 spurned their natural but controversial leader, William Henry Seward, and nominated a neophyte, Abraham Lincoln.

At the time, government itself was also more limited. Americans knew their bible as well as they knew their classics. They believed the warnings in Samuel 1, Chapter 8 about grasping chief executives, remembering that God warned that a King will "take your sons.... He will take your daughters.... He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards.... He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves."

Yet since Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced half the world that he single-handedly saved the United States from the Great Depression, Americans have wanted supermen in the Oval Office. This recipe for presidential success worked well when government was expanding, when Americans trusted the government.

Today, Americans convey a mixed message. Most still agree with Mr. Bush and their 19th century predecessors that the government that governs least governs best, except, of course, when it comes to government programs that benefit them directly. Yet most Americans still expect the president to lead dramatically, affirmatively and authoritatively.

On the whole, the American Jewish community experienced a parallel historical trajectory. Traditionally, Jews heeded the warnings in Samuel I, especially about other people's kings. Despite the occasional court Jew, from medieval Spain to Enlightenment Germany, Jews preferred weak governments that left them alone. For centuries, the Polish Jewish community's central source of strength was the autonomy each kehillah, or community, enjoyed.

Today, the vast majority of the American Jewish community relishes activist government and engaged presidents. Franklin D. Roosevelt deserves much credit for this transformation, although it also testifies to the potency of American Jewish success. Our strength comes from engagement with the host society. Even Jewish conservatives would agree that here, for one of the only times in our history, government is our friend. With the American Jewish community still dramatically more liberal than the rest of the country, the mainstream Jewish message to government and presidents is not at all mixed: charge!

Even as they disdain activist government, conservatives also need their president to take charge, to lead the nation. Otherwise, the Bush family may continue its parallelism with the John Adams/John Quincy Adams clan by producing two one-term wonders. Liberals — and most Jews — have a different dilemma: How do you call for an activist president when you abhor many of his policies? While needling Mr. Bush to become more engaged, his critics, like the conservatives in love with the stealth presidency, better beware what they wish for.

Mr. Troy is professor of history at McGill University and the author of "Mr. and Mrs. President: From the Trumans to the Clintons" (University Press of Kansas).