Intellectuals and the American Presidency: Philosophers, Jesters, or Technicians?

By Tevi Troi

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2002 Paperback Buy here

Book Review
Reviewed by Colleen Shogan

Finally, there is a justification for all of us who spent years in graduate school while our college buddies were making money on the stock market. A PhD might not only get you a tenure-track position at a university, but a job in the White House and the ear of a president. The most heartening revelation is that these jobs aren’t mere window-dressing; presidents often listen to intellectuals and use their ideas to enhance their authority and prestige.

Tevi Troy’s recent book Intellectuals and the American Presidency provides a comprehensive account of how modern presidents have used public intellectuals as political and policy advisers. The bottom line is that intellectuals make a difference in the White House because they influence how presidents are perceived publicly, both in the near and distant future. In sequential chapters, Troy describes how presidents from John F. Kennedy through Bill Clinton established working relationships with intellectuals and how these relationships altered the effectiveness of administrations. Presidents who avoid intellectual advisers altogether (Carter and Bush I) suffer adverse consequences while chief executives who are aware of the power of intellectuals (Kennedy and Clinton) benefit considerably.

Troy’s book is a stimulating read because it combines the virtues of political science scholarship with the study of ideas. Political scientists will be interested in it because its underlying point corroborates Richard Neustadt’s observation in Presidential Power that a president’s authority rests, in part, on his ability to persuade the political “insider community” to go along with his policies. Neustadt concentrates more on the president’s ability to persuade beltway professionals, but Troy makes a good argument for paying attention to how presidents form relationships with the nation’s intellectual community.

As Troy describes it, the intellectual community does not merely consist of the elite who pen articles for The New Republic, The New Yorker and Reason. Likewise, the intellectual community is not simply the professoriate. Instead, the book argues that by employing intellectuals, presidents attempt to forge ties with everyday Americans who engage in intellectual pursuits. In this sense, presidents are concerned with their public intellectual reputation. Even though Americans are typically thought of as an anti-intellectual citizenry, the “intellectually curious” constitute a considerable population in contemporary society. If you doubt this observation, try to find a seat in a cafe at your local Barnes & Noble on a weeknight. Americans bought David McCullough’s recent biography of John Adams in record numbers, and Edmund Morris’ biography of Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, was not far behind. Because level of education is one of the best predictors of whether or not an individual will vote, presidents have a strategic interest in appealing to the nation’s degree collectors. Public intellectuals have the power to influence educated citizens—we listen to what intellectuals say on television talk shows, and we read their books and quick-witted commentaries in record numbers. Consequently, presidents must concern themselves with the general intellectual mood of the country and how the highest echelons of the American intelligentsia perceive their administrations. 

The book is also refreshing to presidency scholars who study ideas rather than quantifiable executive behavior. Yes, it is important that we study and model presidential behavior, and raw numbers are always helpful to illustrate or prove an argument. But presidential studies has moved away from tackling the interesting questions about conceptual leadership in order to examine phenomena we can readily quantify and display in nifty models, tables, and graphs. Since Troy was not trained as a political scientist, he does not shy away from tackling a project that is largely descriptive in nature. Because he is not hindered by the specter of collecting reams of data, he is able to narrate the story effectively and also make several insightful observations about intellectual life and its role in presidential leadership. Furthermore, the book boosts the perception of the contemporary presidency. For the most part, chief executives are not portrayed as intellectually bereft. Troy depicts several recent presidents as genuinely stimulated by intellectual ideas and concepts. Presidents are not intellectuals and, according to the author, they should not strive to be intellectuals, but they do take idea-driven people seriously. 

Intellectuals and the American Presidency is not merely a history of the role of public intellectuals in the White House. It describes the strategies presidents employ to deal with the American intellectual community. The achievement of this approach is that Troy is able to argue convincingly that these strategic decisions about intellectuals have real consequences for the president’s leadership and political authority. The most compelling case study in this regard is Troy’s discussion of George Bush, Sr.’s presidency. The most common criticism of Bush’s leadership was that he lacked the “vision thing.” If Bush had included an intellectual on his staff, he might have avoided this criticism, or, at the very least, mitigated its effects. Instead, Bush’s chief of staff John Sununu and Office of Management and Budget director Dick Darman often squelched any discussion of “big ideas” and Bush himself avoided ideological discussions altogether. This hard-nosed, pragmatic policy approach ultimately came back to haunt Bush, who looked desperately bereft of any overarching ideology in comparison to the intellectually savvy Bill Clinton. Bush’s entire administration opposed the inclusion of an intellectual element, and ultimately paid a price for it. In this sense, Troy observes something about the metamorphosis of the institution itself—the modern presidency cannot ignore the formulation of a wide-ranging vision. The modern president is the nation’s chief legislator, but he must not forget that policy pursuits must be crafted into a coherent and well-articulated message.

The presidents who utilized intellectuals most effectively were John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Even though they were both successful, Kennedy and Reagan approached the staffing of intellectuals very differently. During Kennedy’s administration, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. played the classic “egghead” role by strengthening the President’s ties to the newly burgeoning artistic and intellectual community. Schlesinger set the standard for the intellectual’s role in the White House, and many of Kennedy’s successors have tried to duplicate the role that Schlesinger played. However, Reagan did not need intellectuals to tell him where he stood ideologically (he knew that already) and did not want to appeal aggressively to mainstream university academics, who dismissed him as lazy and anti-intellectual. Despite these limitations, Reagan liked conservative intellectuals and knew they could serve a strategic purpose in his administration. He took advantage of the new wellspring of conservative thinkers who had found refuge from academia in think tanks. Reagan employed like-minded intellectuals who understood the fine details of policy and could help implement his ideas. The economist Martin Anderson put together an impressive cadre of think-tank neoconservatives to advise Reagan on the formulation of his domestic agenda.

Bill Clinton wins the prize for perhaps the most cunning political strategy concerning public intellectuals. As president, Clinton often invited academics to dinner to discuss ideas and solicit advice. In effect, Clinton courted the liberal intellectual establishment, and after twelve years of Republican administrations, they were hungry for attention. Even after Clinton moved to the right after the devastating 1994 mid-term elections, the President found that he had the support of liberal academics when his presidency became threatened with impeachment and removal from office. On October 30, 1998, a group of 412 historians placed a full-page ad in the New York Times that defended Clinton and argued that the charges against him were not grounds for impeachment. As Troy reports, many of the 412 signers had been to dinner at the Clinton White House. The president snapped his fingers, and the intellectual elite came running. Much to Clinton’s delight, the “critical aid” provided by academics “came quite cheaply.”

This last observation brings us to the subtle message of the book. The employment of intellectuals in the White House is, above all, a strategic consideration. Presidents seek advice from individuals that can help them enhance their public persona and professional reputation. For the past forty years, intellectuals have been part of the mix. Just because intellectuals concern themselves with ideas rather than opinion polls does not mean that they are immune from manipulation. According to Troy, intellectuals have become more ambitious in recent years. They want presidents to listen to their ideas, and seek validation for their research and thoughtfulness. While the intellectual’s search for efficacy and meaning is understandable, there are drawbacks. Both conservative and liberal intellectuals now conform more readily to the “party line” and almost cease to exist as independent thinkers. To find out what they’re getting themselves into, up-and-coming academics should read this book before embarking upon a career in the White House, especially if they hope to return to intellectual life after their stint on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The only shortcoming of the book is that one is left wondering whether or not the presence of intellectuals in the White House actually improved the development of policy or agenda-setting. While it was clear that intellectuals mattered in a strategic sense and that presidents often listened to them, is there any normative justification for the role of the intellectual? The intellectual can help establish ties to the broader educated community; he can also serve the president by shaping a coherent ideological message. But both of these duties elevate the image of the president, as Troy observes. The author does not conclude whether or not these individuals generally served a concrete, substantive purpose besides the cultivation of an “intellectual spectacle.” There were a few examples in the book offering evidence that intellectuals had made significant impacts on presidential decision-making. Anderson affected the staffing of the Reagan administration, but did not offer any creative input in the development of policy. Probably the most influential, Pat Moynihan assumed a significant policy role in the Nixon White House. However, throughout most of the book, the real influence of other presidential intellectuals was less tangible in nature. Naomi Wolf’s pathetic role in the Gore campaign is a case in point, and even the intellectual model, Arthur Schlesinger, did not seem to do much heavy lifting in the Kennedy administration.

In this sense, Troy’s conclusions might have been even stronger and bolder. The relationship between presidents and intellectuals might not be symbiotic, but parasitic. It is unclear what intellectuals get out of the relationship, except a dose of prestige and flattery. Even though presidents listen to intellectuals and often take their advice seriously, has the presence of intellectuals in the White House since 1960 significantly improved policy development or political leadership? Presidents are interested in complex intellectual ideas, but are these ideas routinely implemented into effective policies? Perhaps this question is the subject of another book, but it deserves an answer. Meanwhile, I think that the real audience of this book is intellectuals, who should read it to gain a more robust sense of why presidents are interested in their ideas in the first place.