False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age

A provocative new perspective on presidential power.

Border walls, school bathrooms, student loans, gun control, diversity, abortion, climate change--today, nothing seems out of reach for the president’s pen. But after all the press releases, ceremonies, and speeches, shockingly little gets done. The American presidency promises to solve America’s problems, but presidents’ unilateral solutions are often weak, even empty.

Kenneth Lowande argues this is no accident. The US political system is not set up to allow presidents to solve major policy problems, yet it lays these problems at their doorstep, and there is no other elected official better positioned to attract attention by appearing to govern. Like any politician, presidents are strategic actors who seek symbolic wins. They pursue executive actions, even when they know that these will fail, because doing so allows them to put on a compelling show for key constituencies. But these empty presidential actions are not without their costs: they divert energy from effective government--and, over time, undermine public trust. Drawing on thousands of executive actions, news coverage, interviews, and presidential archives, False Front shows that the real root of presidential power is in what presidents can get away with not doing.

Kenneth Lowande is associate professor of political science and public policy at the University of Michigan, where he is also a faculty associate in the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research.