Presidential Command. Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush
Who makes decisions in the White House?
Presidential Command. Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush
By Peter Rodman
Peter Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs in the Bush Jr. administration has been preoccupied with the Presidential decision-making since he started his career in the US administration in 1964 as an assistant to Henry Kissinger, the National Security Advisor to President Nixon. He held this position until his retirement from public service at the beginning of 2007, after Donald Rumsfeld resigned from his post as Minister of Defence.
Rodman collected his observations in his book titled: “Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush”. The book includes an introduction by Henry Kissinger, and was published posthumously, a few months after the author’s decease.
The book is important because it follows the steps of seven American presidents and examines their approach to foreign policy, particularly the ability of each of them to take the right decision in the right time.
Those seven presidents include five Republicans: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr., and two Democrats: Carter and Clinton.
Rodman sees that president Nixon deserves the title of the “decider” (The president and leader who makes bold decisions and has the final word). President Bush Sr. comes next to him, by virtue of his successful foreign policy at a very critical stage. The writer also gives the title of “decider’ to President Bush Jr., for his “bold decisions during the Iraq War”. However, Rodman, points out that president Bush Jr. frequently feared to “ask his senior aides to give their opinion about his decisions”. Rodman criticizes the role of the U.S. State Department during the Iraq War. But he does not mention anything about the marginalization of the U.S. State Department in favour of the U.S. Department of Defence led by Rumsfeld. Rodman thinks that the “leader-president” is the one who always seeks to keep America great. He should also have the ability to mange, through his daily decisions, the large, flabby, sometimes contradictory U.S. administrative system. But is every president qualified enough to be a leader? Henry Kissinger answers this question by saying: “The Oval office binds a US president to take decisions, but does not teach him how to make them. It consumes already-existing intellectual power but does not create it out of nothing”.
In his book, Rodman, who served in the Republican administration, does not present a critical view of the experience of his “neo-conservative” partisan members in the administration of Bush Jr. Those were so powerful that they could appoint their staff and consultants in all the systems of the U.S. administration, and give them unlimited powers that enabled them to take control of that administration. All of us could remember Dorcarl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Jean Bolton, Douglas Feith and other members of the “surrogate Administration”, which was founded and led by Richard (Dick) Cheney, the Vice-President.
Several critical reviews of George. W. Bush administration are expected to be issued soon. This is normal in the US political and administrative experience where senior officials or advisors present their evaluation of the former US administration with which they were working. A recent example has been a book by Richard Has about the war in Iraq. Has is currently head of the US foreign relations council and held a senior position in the State Department at the early period of George W.Bush Administration.
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