Media and The Presidency

The Presidency and The Media 1
Pluralism in the Presidency and the Media
Gary Larsen
PAP 620
Final Examination
Dr. Rose
December 7, 2003
Abstract
This examination of the presidency and the media, using the theory of pluralism, taken together
with empirical predictions and normative expectations from both pluralists and non-pluralists
alike, shows that: (1) The presidency fulfills its functions as a political institution but has
problems with conflicts of interest, abdication of public decision-making responsibilities to non-
public interests, and a failure to foster core democratic values in citizens; and (2) The media is
extremely successful as a business, however, as a political institution, it has a long way to go—
its democratic functions are nascent, fragmentary, and ill formed. The challenge is clear:
Citizens and scholars alike need to forge democracy anew in this, our third, century of the
republic.
Pluralism in the Presidency and the Media
The question at hand is an examination of the presidency and the media, from the
perspective of pluralism and pluralism's critics. Do these institutions function as pluralists predict
empirically and as they hope normatively? And why, or why not? Elkin & Soltan (1993) theorize
that the functions of political systems are to (a) limit exercise of political power, (b) conduct the
business for which they were created, (c) provide the means to make policy—solve social
problems, and (d) help form the character of citizens. They define the terrain of theory for
political constitution of a constitutional regime to lie “somewhere between an attempt to answer

two questions—What is the best political way of life? And how may we know this?—and the
empirical analysis of how political systems operate” (p. 139-140). My thesis is twofold: (a) first,
in the face of impossibly high public expectations, preservation of democracy requires the
continuing foil of limited government to prevent runaway governmental growth and concomitant
loss of liberty and freedom; and (b) second, government may no longer have requisite power to
regulate commerce for the public weal.
Method
This article examines the presidency and the media as political institutions using
theoretical, empirical, and normative analysis. The analysis uses an expository method to elicit
speculative inquiry on the meaning and possible future developments of pluralism and
democracy in American. I analyze the presidency and the media with regard to structure and
function, using the functions of political institutions theorized by Elkin & Soltan above, and the
theoretical, empirical, and normative constructs developed from the discussion of pluralism and
group theory below. This latter piece develops criteria on (a) empirical predictions of pluralism,
considering both classical and dynamic aspects; (b) normative expectations of pluralism; and (c)
efficacy of the two institutions drawing from views of critics of pluralism. The section on
integration and conclusion draws together the main elements of the analysis and points to the
constitutive work before us to better harness the engines of commerce for the public weal, most
particularly the media.

Context
I frame this article with two paradoxes. The first is that the institutional fragmentation the
founding fathers instituted to limit government has dramatically increased public expectations of
what government should provide, thus creating a powerful driver for bigger government. The
second paradox is that while government created conditions for American commerce to prosper,
government may no longer have sufficient requisite power to regulate it for the public good.
Debate about the proper relationships and balance of power between individuals, factions, and
sovereigns is much older than our country. McKay (2000) ascertains that “institutional
fragmentation was deliberately instituted by the founding fathers to limit government, not to
increase public expectations of what it can do” (p. 389). Hyperpluralism, borne of many factions
having prolific points of access to political institutions, has resulted in public expectations so
high that they cannot possibly be met. McKay observes that the philosophy of limited
government continues “inexplicably” to this day. My thesis is that, rather than being
inexplicable, the preservation of democracy and democratic values actually requires the
continuing foil of limited government to prevent runaway growth of government and
concomitant loss of liberty and freedom. While my thesis is too large to prove or disprove in this
short essay, careful selection of criteria for a critical review of the presidency and the media may
serve to inform the utility of the thesis, if not its ultimate answer. My intent for framing the thesis
is to set a suitable stage for exploring the political institutions of the President and the media.
The second paradox provides a window to reflect on where democracy—democratic
processes and democratic values—might emerge, grow, and prosper in our republic’s third
century, particularly considering the possibility that our current course on pluralism may not be
sustainable. Our founding fathers acknowledged the need for a strong federal government for
two purposes: “to defend the young republic against a hostile outside world and to provide an
open and orderly market for the free exchange of goods and services within the borders of the
new nation-state” (McKay, 2000, p. 76). Turning attention to only the latter point, our republic
has spawned the most powerful economic engines on the face of the planet. Although there are
some distributional difficulties, our economic prosperity is unparalleled in history. The second
paradox is that while government created the conditions that allowed development of awesome
economic power and the mega-companies that drive them, government may no longer have
sufficient requisite power to regulate them for the public weal.
The influence by corporations and the economy on both private and public aspects of
citizens’ lives can be profound. The power elites who run corporate America are not publicly
accountable to citizens, nor is their power legitimized in the way power of many other political
institutions is legitimized. Citizens influence power elites through economic choices they make
in the market place, and through ownership of companies as shareholders. The only formal
accountability of corporate power elites is to their boards, their shareholders, and their
performance in the marketplace. My second thesis is that viewing corporate America rigorously
as just another (albeit huge and powerful) political institution will spawn theoretical, practical,
and innovative ways to honor democratic principles, processes and values, including citizen
engagement. Having accorded to corporations the status of individuals under the law1, with the
full panoply of appurtenant rights, viewing corporations as political institutions may be the next
logical extension of academic thought and subsequent political action.
Pluralism and Group Theory
Pluralism is an inherent and fundamental part of our notions about the workings of
American democracy. Baskin (1970) goes so far as to make an allegation of “an almost
conspiratorial symbiotic relation between the pluralist model and the corresponding reality. …
The model itself teaches political vocabularies and role orientations resulting in forms of
behavior that confirm the appropriateness of its own categories” (p. 72). Conn (1973) observes,
“One of the problems plaguing any discussion of pluralism is that it is a multi-faceted concept.
He defines four distinct senses of pluralism: (a) pluralism of values referring to the multiplicity
of competing value systems; (b) cultural pluralism referring to multiple cultural groups within
society; (c) structural pluralism referring to the structures of government, its inherent
decentralization and its embedded checks and balances within and between structures; and (d)
social pluralism (hereinafter referred to as political pluralism) which addresses the diversity of
interests that organize and compete for policies to fulfill their interests. These considerations
provide a basic framework for analyzing pluralism in the political institutions for this paper.
Figure 1 shows a systems framework for political pluralism. For definitional purposes to inform
subsequent discussions, the figure shows interactions of a political institution, such as the
Congress, taking action that (a) directly affects citizens, (b) citizens forming an interest group
around common interests, (c) which in turn directly influences the political institution in
question, and (d) lastly the interaction of a citizen directly with the political institution. Note that
in this latter case the arrow is shown with a dashed outline to represent the generally weak
influence of individual action against political institutions. Kernell (1993) supports this view by
describing that direct “Public pressure has little place in the community I described” (p. 17),
referring to the community of active special interest groups. To analyze a little more closely,
Bentley (1935) identifies three important factors of dominance for interest groups in their efforts
to influence policy: (a) number of citizens involved, (b) the intensity with which they pursue
their interests, and (c) the techniques they employ.
Figure 1
Interactions Between Political Institutions, Citizens, and Organized Interest Groups
C Political
Institution
Organized A
Interest D
Group
B Citizen
Empirical Predictions of Pluralism
Empirical predictions of pluralism can be viewed from either a static or dynamic
perspective. From a static or classical perspective, one would ask what structure and function
pluralism would predict for aggregation of interests in a particular domain of policy or function
of government. A dynamic perspective would inquire about changes in structure and function of
governance and its plural interests in reaction to compelling vectors of change. From both views
one needs to start with theory, project its structure and function, and then predict outcomes.
Classical Perspective of Pluralism. Dahl (1967), in characterizing the basic theory and
practice of American pluralism, sets forth its basic tenet “Instead of a single center of sovereign
power, there must be multiple centers of power, none of which is or can be wholly sovereign. . . .
to tame power, to secure the consent of all, and to settle conflicts peacefully” (p. 24). Dahl
predicts:
1. Because one center of power is set against another, power itself will be tamed, civilized,
controlled, and limited to decent human purposes, while coercion, the most evil form of
power, will be reduced to a minimum.
2. Because even minorities are provided with opportunities to veto solutions they strongly
object to, the consent of all will be won in the long run.
3. Because constant negotiations among different centers of power are necessary tin order to
make decisions, citizens and leaders will perfect the precious art of dealing peacefully
with their conflicts, and not merely to the benefit of one partisan but to the mutual benefit
of all the parties to a conflict. (p. 24)

Dynamic Perspective of Pluralism. Dynamic change presents more of a challenge for
making predictions based on pluralism. We will take a moment to examine the process of
political change itself. Levi (1949) traces the simple measured process of change for legal
concepts that arise from law in three stages (a) creation of the legal concept, (b) period when the
concept is fixed and cases are determined case-by-case through rigorous reasoning by example,
and lastly (c) breakdown of the concept when reasoning by example has moved ahead of the
concept and a new concept emerges. Evolution of law as a whole, according to Levi, is driven by
changes in social theories or society which are in turn tempered in a step-wise fashion by the
process of legal reasoning, giving meaning to ambiguity and testing this meaning, case by case,
against the social backdrop. This process also demonstrates the ultimate source of legitimacy to
be society and the accountability, however measured, that the law has toward those who are
ruled by it.
This model of measured change, while useful in illuminating the basic elements of
change to be (a) genesis, (b) stasis, and (c) breakdown, is not sufficiently robust to deal with the
fierce competition in the marketplace of issues crying out for change that Carmines & Stimson
(1989) characterize as one where “large numbers of potential issues compete with one another
for the highly limited attention of the public in an ever changing political environment” (p. 4).
Sundquist (1983) examines several models for issue evolution and the alignment and realignment
of parties around issues, and suggests a refinement of the basic elements of change to (a)
causation, (b) process, and (c) consequence. His analytical technique is to array one set of (polar)
interests against another for an issue and then define changes in cleavage as issues evolve or are
displaced with new issues. This more detailed analysis then sets the stage for an examination of
the life cycle of issues.
Carmines & Stimson propose a “dynamic growth” model of political change. In their
model, change is marked by a “critical moment” where change is large enough to be visible.
Change then, does not end with the critical moment, but continues in a dynamic fashion over an
extended period. The continued change after the initial shock defines an evolutionary model of
change that is fully consistent with Baskin’s observations of “a multiplicity of groups coming
into and leaving policy politics at varying rates of frequency and intensity” (p. 75). For purposes
of dealing with change then, the model that will be employed here for pluralism’s prediction of
dynamic change will be a dynamic growth model of change marked by an initial perturbation
and subsequent dynamic realignment of the plural interests.
The Normative Expectations of Pluralism

There is an inherent problem in discussing normative expectations of pluralism because,
as was noted above, Conn points out that pluralism in one sense embodies a multiplicity of
competing value systems. Manley observes that pluralism itself “lacks a clear principle or theory
for assessing just and unjust distributions of wealth, income, and property. It lacks a theory of
value” (p. 376). The difficulty is further compounded because in the strictest sense pluralists
reject the notion of public interest. Baskin asserts “social interest can be little more than the sum,
often conflicting, of these group-desired outcomes. There is no absolute public with its own
static interest” (p. 77). Despite these difficulties, Baskin, asserts that there is the paradigmatic
value of “consensus” associated with pluralism: “it is consensus, according to group theory, that
sustains the orderliness and stability both of pluralist politics and of the public domain” (p. 82).
Inferred pluralist values can be deduced from the shortcomings of pluralism articulated
by pluralists. The positive value can be constructed from the inverse of the areas of harm that
pluralists would normatively want to be protected. Dahl (1982) ascertains four harmful defects of
pluralist systems in the areas of (a) injustices and inequalities, (b) deformation of civic
consciousness, (c) distortion of the public agenda, and (d) wrongful appropriation of public
functions. Dahl & Lindblom (1976) declare that “more money, energy, and organizational
strength is thrown into obstructing equality than into achieving it, more into constraining our
liberties than into enlarging them, and more into maintaining the corporate domain as a private
preserve than into making its public acts public” (p. xi). The inverse of the harms identified
above are no less than many of the basic principles the founding fathers strove so mightily to
achieve in the framing of the Constitution. To the growing list of inferred normative values, one
would have to add welfare, drawing for support on Sundquist’s (1992) observation that “During
the Reagan administration, the national commitment to some programs in these [social welfare]
areas was scaled back but few were eliminated; the structure of the welfare state that remains in
place reflects a genuine national consensus” (p. 7). While there certainly may be more, here is a
summary of the inferred pluralist normative values discussed to this point: (a) consensus, (b)
political equality, (c) a certain economic equality, (d) liberty, (e) transparency when public
interest is involved, and (f) social welfare.
Critics of Pluralism
Pluralism has no shortage of critics; they come from the left, they come from the right,
and they come from within. Pluralism’s old antagonist, according to Manley, is elitism. The
basic argument of elitism is that such an important and fundamental job as governance needs to
be conducted by the best leadership available because such superior skills are crucial to its
success. Such people, according to Dahl (1967), are people who are skillful, wise, and virtuous.
Posner (2003) makes the empirical argument that “despite many legal and institutional changes
since 1787, the American political system still is better described as elite democracy than as
either deliberative or populist democracy” (p. 150). He asserts that power has shifted from
elected officials to appointed officials and career civil servants. He observes that global
competition has shifted power over the economy from voters to markets, international treaties
and organizations. Corporations then, of course, are masters of the domain of markets thus
concentrating power to the corporate elites. Posner observes, “successful political candidates are
not random draws from the public at large. They are smarter, better educated, more ambitious,
and wealthier than the average person” (p. 154). Criteria for evaluation of political institutions
arising from these critics of pluralism would thus be efficiency of policy deliberations, efficiency
of operations for implementation of policy, and the skills of people who ascend to positions of
political and agency leadership.
Browne (1990) finds that the proliferation of organized plural interests has not led to
competition between interest groups for policy attention, but rather has led to the cultivation of
specific and recognizable exclusive niches. He observes that most interests accommodate one
another by concentrating on narrow issues. Posner and Browne would be eagerly joined by Lowi
(1969) who describes the breakdown of pluralism and rise of an oligarchy of special interests
culminating in what he characterizes by means of a quote from Walter Lippmann as a
“derangement of power” (p. 86). Lowi’s evolution is driven by the headlong rush of Congress to
give away its law-making discretion to agencies and narrow self-interests. He says, “Besides
making conflict-of-interest a principle of government rather than a criminal act, participatory
programs shut out the public” (p. 86). All of this, according to Lowi, results in (a) weakening of
popular government, (b) creation and support of privilege, (c) the simple conservatism of
resistance to change, and (d) the extreme conservatism of sharing governmental power with
private organizations. He concludes that because of the aforementioned tendencies, access and
power is heavily weighted toward established interests. Parenti (1970) frames the argument that
anti-pluralist critics believe political and administrative officers operate as servants of important
interest groups rather than guardians of the unorganized majorities resulting in “many instances
[where] public decision-making authority has been parceled out to private interests on a highly
inegalitarian basis” (p. 503). From this discussion would arise the critic’s criteria of (a) the
degree to which greater public interests are part of the policy dialogue, (b) the degree that policy
is formulated amidst conflicts of interest, (c) the degree to which public decision-making
authority is abdicated (or freely given) to private interests, and (c) the degree to which change is
embraced, rather than resisted, when the situation calls for change.
With regard to the macro system view of pluralism, Manley describes that Dahl and
Lindblom “have been so disturbed by the system’s [pluralism’s] performance that they have
issued radical-sounding calls for major structural reforms and redistribution of wealth and
income, and have even questioned the capitalist system itself” (p. 369). Conn points to the more
theoretical problem of scientific inadequacy of the pluralist literature. He supports his argument
that the foundational formulations of pluralism linking it to democracy have (a) faulty and
unfounded assumptions about relationships, and (b) the basic relationship between social
pluralism and democracy is not analytically clear and probably cannot be made so because of the
intertwined nature of their definitions. Conn notes that the arguments between the old antagonists
have actually diverted attention from these scientific deficiencies in pluralism. The collective
rationality of social choice theory, according to Miller (1983), stands in stark opposition to the
collective preferences of pluralism. Miller deduces and observes however, that the instability of
political choices that social choice theorists see in pluralism is the very thing that fosters and
ensures the stability of pluralist political systems over the long run. The two final criteria of
pluralism’s critics therefore are the “democratic-ness” of pluralism’s results and regime stability.
There undoubtedly are many more criteria for evaluating political institutions that would
arise from the many critics of pluralism who have not been included here. The process of
deduction and inference from the currently cited authors is subjective and could be interpreted
differently by other authors and other techniques. However, from this brief present discussion,
several useful criteria based on the views of critics of pluralism have been identified: (a)
efficiency of policy deliberations, (b) efficiency of operations for implementation of policy, (c)
the skills and professionalism of people who ascend to positions of political institution
leadership, (d) the degree to which greater public interests are incorporated in the policy
dialogue, (e) the degree that policy is formulated amidst conflicts of interest, (f) the degree to
which public decision-making authority is abdicated (or freely given) to private interests, (g) the
degree to which change is embraced, rather than resisted, when the situation compels it, (h) the
degree to which core democratic values are fostered in policy dialogue and outcomes, and (i)
regime stability.
The Presidency
What is the Structure of the Presidency?
Jones (1994) characterizes the presidency as a minigovernment of approximately 1,500
professionals. They are located in the White House itself, the Old Executive Office Building, the
New Executive Office Building, and a series of townhouses immediately North of the White
House. Jones quotes Nelson W. Polsby to describe the “presidential branch” of government
“Perhaps the most interesting development of the fifty-year period is the emergence of a
presidential branch of government separate and apart from the executive branch. It is the
presidential branch that sits across the table from the executive branch at budgetary hearings . . .”
(p. 56). For the purposes of this paper, the discussion of the presidency will include the
President, the Executive Office of the President, and his cabinet, but will not include agencies of
the executive branch, or the pre-election aspects of a president-to-be running for the primaries
and running for office prior to being elected. The discussion will also generally focus on the
office of the presidency as a whole, exploring the aspects of the Presidents individually or
personally only when germane to understanding the functions of the office or when responding
to the criteria developed in this paper for assessing various aspects of the presidency
What are the parts, and how are they organized? The presidency is comprised of the
Executive Office of the President; see Figure 2 from McKay (2000, p. 237), and his cabinet
composed mainly of heads of executive branch agencies. Of particular interest is the White
House staff which includes the president’s chief of staff and his deputy, as well as other key
advisors. Because the issues are so many, the pressure often so high, and the people who want an
audience with the president so many and so persistent, the president’s close aides play a most
necessary and unpopular task of being gatekeepers for metering out the president’s precious
time. McKay observes that these close aides have engendered controversy and criticism since the
1980s. Some presidents rely on their close aides more than others do. McKay relates the story of
Nixon aides Ehrlichman, Haldeman, and Ziegler who became so effective in speaking for the
president that they earned the title of “The Berlin Wall” (p. 237). In my own experience,
president’s chiefs and deputy chiefs of staff hold what for most bureaucrats is ultimate power.
When John Sununu, for example, President Bush Sr.’s Chief of Staff said it was so—it was, in
fact, so. (I was seconded to the State Department for one and a half years and was the lead U.S.
negotiator for forestry issues leading up to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. As the
final negotiations in Rio neared, the State Department started backing away from administration
positions on forestry issues. It was due to John Sununu’s personal interest that, in response to my
request for help, he personally delivered five people from the White House, to be part of our 50
person delegation, with the sole job of corralling the State Department in Rio to make sure they
toed the right line on forestry issues).
Figure 2
Organization of the Executive Office of the President
Office of the
The President
Vice President
White House
Office
National Office of Council of

Office of Policy U.S. Trade
Security Management Economic Representative
Development
Council And Budget Advisors
Office of Science Council on Office of

Office of
And Technology Environmental National Drug
Policy Administration
Quality Control Policy
While the organizational model portrayed above is useful, reality is not so tidy. Jones points out
the White House staff is not a standard bureaucracy and that each president shapes it according
to his needs and styles of working. He also points out that some presidents are better than others
at effectively organizing and deploying presidential staff.
How does the presidency exert influence on citizens? Kernell (1993) documents a modern
presidency that is comfortable with and fully exploits continuous technological advances in
transportation and mass communication. He notes that going public violates and threatens to
displace historically honored bargaining. Going directly public leaves other vital policy players
out in the cold giving them the meager choices of just standing by, offering a faint “me too,” or
being punished for not agreeing with the high road outlined by the president.
How do citizens organize to influence the presidency? “Contacts” are reported by Berry
to be more important for White House lobbyists than for any other type of interest group because
the president’s aides are strategically selective about whom they choose to meet. High-ranking
officials who leave before a president’s tenure is up are reported to be an especially attractive
commodity for White House lobbyists. Lobbyists are at the mercy of the presidency, but when
they are not used at all, such as during development of the Clinton health care proposal, as
reported by Berry, the policy is likely doomed to failure.
How do interest groups influence the presidency? Berry observes that “more and more
interest groups find themselves needing access to the inner circle at the White House” (p. 173)
because a large White House staff has given the president resources to control an expanding
number of policy decisions. Berry points out that the presidency is typically very strategic in
their interactions with lobbyists, using them effectively to build support for the president’s
policies. The Office of Public Liaison was first established in 1970 to reach out to various
constituencies to build a good relationship with them. Additionally, many officials of the
presidency create and continue their own relations with constituents. In addition, some
presidencies have granted selective access to favored interests. Berry cites the example of
President Bush Sr.’s Council on Competitiveness chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle to
provide recourse for those business interest groups that did not get their way with an agency. The
presidency intervened with the Environmental Protection Agency to force a rollback of
regulations on numerous occasions. The presidency has an unusual relationship with interest
groups in that often, rather than attempting to exert influence directly on the President, interest
groups will work on the fulcrum point where the President is trying to achieve forward
movement. For example, in the case of President Bush Sr.’s nomination of Clarence Thomas to
the Supreme Court, one interest group, Citizens United, sent 2 million pieces of direct mail in
support of Thomas and called each of its 112,000 members to ask them to call their Senators.
Thomas was confirmed in a close vote (Berry, 1997).
How do citizens directly exert influence on the presidency? Public opinion polls are the
primary way citizens directly influence the presidency. Kernell finds that the president’s
popularity in the polls is more directly related to current events for which people mistakenly hold
the president accountable than for things over which the president actually has control. Jones
expands on Kernell’s themes, finding that the public judges presidential actions by the “pictures
in our heads” which do not necessarily bear any resemblance to reality. Sundquist (1992) offers
the example that “A president is expected to lead the Congress, but its two houses are
independent institutions and, most of the time of late, one or both are controlled by his political
opposition” (p. 10).
What are the Functions of the Presidency?
The functions of the presidency (McKay) are assigned by the Constitution to be roles of
chief executive, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, chief diplomat, chief recruiting officer
to the executive and courts, legislator by making recommendations to Congress, and by
exercising the veto power. McKay adds that the framers of the Constitution did not expect the
President to become the chief legislator, but argues that over the past century, the president has
assumed this critical function. Finally, the president is head of state. In addition to enumerated
powers, the President has accrued significant informal powers that include party leader, national
agenda setter, national leader, and world leader. McKay notes also that citizens expect the
president to “embody the spirit of the nation” (p. 211)—to be the voice of the people
What is the basic business of the presidency? From the broadest view, the president, as
chief executive and commander-in-chief, is responsible for running the executive branch of
government including the military and the civilian agencies. From an administrative standpoint,
it is the duty of the President (office of the presidency) to assemble a package of programs every
year together with detailed budget requests for the entirety of all the agencies in the executive
branch of government, reflecting the totality of the President’s priorities, promises,
commitments, and executive branch functions. The president is responsible for representing,
advancing, and protecting national interests in an international arena. McKay points out that
presidents portray themselves as defenders of the national interest, it is the president alone who
claims to see foreign policy in terms of what is in the interest of the whole country. Congress has
the authority to declare war, but it is the president who has been responsible for its initiation.
Although he does not have enumerated powers to do so, the president is seen as the one person
who is responsible for the nation’s economy, every one else being players or actors. McKay
points out that, in addition to the Supreme Court in rare circumstances, the president can be the
sole unifying and centralizing influence in a sometimes badly fragmented body politic.
How does the presidency make policy? Jones, from extensive analysis of presidential
governing strategies, deduced that the strategies reasonably followed the balance of advantages
and disadvantages that the president brought into office from his election. These strategies were
typified as (a) assertive, (b) compensatory, (c) custodial, (d) guardian (guarding gains made in a
first administration), and (e) restorative. One set of agents for policy making is the president’s
cabinet officers who can, if properly oriented and motivated, accomplish significant policy,
administrative, and legislative tasks. Drawing on personal experience with the Departments of
Agriculture and Interior, Secretaries are keen to respond to presidential priorities. The limiting
factor is the flow of information. Secretaries (or Undersecretaries, or Assistant Secretaries, or
agency heads) who take the initiative to assemble their own liaisons with meaningful White
House contacts fare better in ascertaining and gaining recognition for meeting presidential
priorities than those who do not. Each of the offices identified in Figure 2 above, with the
exception of the vice presidency, have a substantial institutional capacity to create, develop, vet,
negotiate, promote, and lobby for policy and legislation within their respective domains.
How is the power of the presidency limited? From an historical perspective, the founding
fathers, as noted by McKay, were leery of despotic rule and very careful crafted a system of
governance based on separation of authority with checks and balances among and between
branches of government to limit power. Congress has exercised its role of checking the power of
the president on numerous occasions over our history. McKay provides a particularly good
example during the Nixon presidency. Nixon wielded power, according to McKay, “in such a
way that raised very serious questions on where, exactly, presidential power began and ended”
(p. 229): (a) Nixon impounded funds appropriated by Congress for programs he disliked; (b) He
exercised the veto power extensively; (c) He invoked executive privilege to withhold information
from Congressional investigative committees; and (d) He nominated a number of men to official
offices who were unqualified or unsuitable. Congress responded with the legislation that
constrained the president’s powers in making treaties, to impound budgets, required that Office
of Management and Budget senior officials be subject to Senate confirmation, and the War
Powers Act which limited the president’s ability to commit troops overseas. The Supreme Court
has also similarly limited the president’s powers. A good example of this cited by McKay would
be president Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” “In Roosevelt’s case, the Court had repeatedly
struck down new Deal legislation on the grounds that it was an unconstitutional exercise of the
interstate Commerce Clause and violated ‘substantive’ due process under the Fourteenth
Amendment” (p. 314).
A first limitation that a new president brings to office is the strength of his mandate as
referenced by Jones above. A second limitation flows from how his party fared in Congressional
elections. A president with a strong party majority in both houses faces a substantially different
range of opportunities than does a president whose party is in disarray after an unexpected defeat
in both houses of Congress. A third limitation might emanate from the situation inherited from
his predecessor. A president with a mandate from the voters to clean up a mess will likely have
much more opportunity than a president who inherits a mess (like a wrecked economy or a huge
budget deficit) that is not particularly susceptible to obvious solutions with promise of quick
results. A president’s power upon taking office is also dependent upon his or her ability to secure
license from citizens—Jones notes that it is incumbent upon each new president to secure his or
her own legitimacy to lead. Beyond situational limitations, all presidents have argued that while
Congress has only those specific powers enumerated and granted by the Constitution, the
Constitution vested very broad powers in the executive with the dictum that the “executive
power shall be vested in a president” (Article 2, Section 1).
How does the presidency limit the power of other political institutions? In addition to the
formal powers of the veto, the president has historically exercised much discretion to limit and
influence other branches of government through a variety of means ranging from the
conventional such as the threat of a veto to some remarkably creative means. McKay offers a
number of examples of Presidential action to limit political power in other branches including the
following. President Roosevelt, in the case of a recalcitrant Supreme Court that was holding his
New Deal Hostage, threatened to pack the Supreme Court with additional justices to
counterbalance the so-called Four Horseman of Conservatism on the Court. President
Eisenhower sent U.S. troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 to enforce desegregation at
Central High School. President Lincoln waged civil war. Modern presidents, starting with Nixon,
have systematically taken actions to rein in their own executive agencies through a variety of
means including increasing procedural and substantive control on promulgation of regulations
and strategic assignment of political heads with philosophies counter to the mission of the
agency which they head—Secretary of the Interior James Watt comes to mind. A more subtle
limitation of other political actors’ power can be found in the increasing trend of presidents to
“go public” effectively circumventing or reducing the need to bargain and include opposing
interests in making “the deal.”
How does the presidency foster citizenship? Reflecting on the differences between
Posner’s Concept 1 democracy that brings citizens together to seek the greater common good
through civil discourse, in opposition to his Concept 2 democracy where citizens and all political
actors seek any political venue to advance their own self interest, the author can find little
evidence where the presidency seeks to foster citizenship for its own sake as in Concept 1. The
presidency however does engage citizens and interest groups with great strategic intent for its
own ends. The president and the presidency foster citizenship in the Concept 2 sense of
democratic citizenship in vigorous pursuit of particular presidential interests. Citizens and
interest groups of like mind are enlisted to support the cause whenever there is strategic benefit
for the presidency to do so.
Broad Pluralism in the Presidency
Structural pluralism—decentralization, checks and balances within and between. The
presidency oversees perhaps the single broadest and most structurally pluralist organization on
the planet—the American federal bureaucracy. Each agency and bureau has its own authorizing
committees in Congress, a constituency it serves, interest groups who have organized to

influence it, a legislative agenda, judges who for the most part love to hate it because of
perceived abuses of discretion, and many even have quasi-public entities (like the National
Forest Foundation created by Congress to work with/for the Forest Service) who can lobby and
handle money in ways the agencies cannot. Although the agencies of the executive branch are
outside the scope of this paper, they are an important point of reference because so much energy
of the modern presidency is devoted to trying to straighten out agencies in their perceived time of
need. The pluralism of agencies causes no end of frustration as presidents seek, often in vain, to
find just the right pressure point to obtain desired results. One case in point was the
reorganization of the executive branch undertaken by President Carter. While many interagency
task forces were convened across the federal government to find ways to simplify, streamline,
and consolidate, it was a tongue-in-cheek effort for most because they knew such a plan would
never win the necessary Congressional endorsement. The agencies of the Executive Office of the
President are not so pluralistic. They are more like a private closely held corporation. Although
each has its own unique purpose, institutional capacity, institutional legacy, and interest groups,
each is singularly responsive to presidential fiat because the president exercises direct control
over them.
Pluralism of values within the presidency. The same phenomena described for structural
pluralism exists for pluralism of values. The agencies have many and varied values, some based
on purpose as in a regulatory agency, others fixed both by purpose and time such as the Rural
Electrification Agency whose job it was to spread electricity across the land. The branches of the
Executive Office of the President have far less pluralism of values. While each has a set of
values befitting its mission as does the U.S. Trade Representative, others respond completely to
changing ideologies of Presidencies as they come and go, for example, the Office of
Management and Budget or the President’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Pluralism of Culture within the Presidency. Presidencies have a mixed historical record
on cultural pluralism. Modern Presidencies are increasingly looking more like the diverse
America they serve. While it might be argued that some presidents do it because of deeply held
values honoring cultural diversity, it would be a safe bet to say that presidents increasingly find
competitive advantage for incorporating a wide range of cultures within the ranks of the
presidency. Politically weak groups are not as well represented within the walls of the White
House. While women and African Americans, as well as many other racial and ethnic groups are
in great evidence, one does not see many poor people, or representatives of people struggling at
the fringes of society like children of drug dependent mothers or illegal immigrants.
Empirical Predictions of Pluralism for the Presidency
Predictions from a classical view of pluralism. Dahl makes three propositions, as noted
above, that constitute the expected results of pluralism: (a) exercise of power will be civilized,
controlled, and limited to decent purposes, while coercion will be reduced to a minimum; (b)
minorities will be provided opportunities to veto solutions they strongly object to, thus providing
an opportunity for a later consensus to emerge; and (c) peaceful interest-based solutions to
conflict are pursued by citizens and leaders to the mutual benefit of all parties. By the first
standard relating to the exercise of power, the presidency has displayed highly mixed results,
seemingly depending more on the person, and perhaps the times, than the office. With regard to
civility, Nixon’s criminal Watergate activities and blatant exercise of presidential power in other
areas, along with the rather prompt response by Congress comes to mind. With regard to use of
power for decent purposes, Eisenhower sending troops to Little Rock comes to mind. With
regard to controlled use of power, the dignity with which Clinton continued to execute the
responsibilities of the presidency stands in stark contrast to the behavior of the Republican
controlled house.
The standard related to minorities is difficult to trace for the presidency. Neither
reflection on the readings, nor search of the literature has produced satisfactory information for
evaluating the presidency on this particular point. While the standard seems appropriate, its
construction may be too narrow to be supported with empirical evidence. There is, however, one
area that the current Bush administration brings into focus that may provide at least a glimpse
into the subject for the presidency. On November 5, 2003, at 1:40 p.m. Eastern Standard Time,
according to the White House web site (The White House, 2003), President Bush signed the
Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The President’s opening remarks as reported on the
website were:
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I'm pleased that all of you
have joined us as the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 becomes the law of the land.
(Applause.) For years, a terrible form of violence has been directed against children who
are inches from birth, while the law looked the other way. Today, at last, the American
people and our government have confronted the violence and come to the defense of the
innocent child. (Applause.) . . .
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you, Mr. President. (Applause.)
Figure 3 below shows cabinet members and members of Congress, including the Speaker of the
House, surrounding the President as he signs the Bill. Note that they are all men, and they are all
smiling. A great victory has been won. Although there is no mention of it in the press release,
one could guess that no minority view was sought, nor was any opportunity given to delay the
presidency moving ahead on this bill so that a broader consensus could be built. This then is an
example of, and establishes the notion that the Republican Party penchant for legislation of
morality does not provide an opportunity for minority veto on a topic which a minority might
feel strongly. Deliberately confounding such an opportunity verily defines the politics of
legislating morality. A Democratic Party corollary is not apparent.
Figure 3
President Bush Signs Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003

For the third pluralistic criteria regarding consensus building, an example is drawn from
President Clinton’s Democratic presidency. Berry reports that the “White House task force that
developed the Clinton health proposal . . . tried to develop its far-reaching proposal without
significant participation by health groups” (p. 174). Berry cites one of the reasons for the defeat
of the proposal to be the failure of the Clinton’s presidency to even attempt to build a coalition to
support the plan. While this one example does not represent all presidencies, or even Clinton’s
predominant modus operendi, it does point out, even for a President who is expert in building
coalitions, as evidenced by his presidential campaign, and even for a party that purports to be the
people’s party, and even when it could have significantly increased the odds of passage of a bill,
tactical considerations were weighed as more significant than the importance of building
consensus.
Predictions from a dynamic view of pluralism. Pluralism’s prediction of dynamic change
marked by an initial perturbation and subsequent dynamic realignment of the plural interests, is
one sense, merely a proposition about how the world works, and in its simplest form is merely
perturbation and response model, measuring groups as the locus of action. Such a view of the
world is implicit to Jones’ entire work on the presidency in a Separated System. Oversimplified,
Jones’ view is, presidents come, presidents go. The ones who are effective size up the world
upon assuming office, determine where in the cycle of change the body politic is, size up
themselves, and decide where they figure into it. The ones who get it right and deploy their
resources well are effective. Those who do not are not. The various strategies that Jones assigns
to times and presidents reflect, in hindsight, the state of change characterized in the dynamic
growth model. Jones says “To exercise influence, presidents must learn the wetting within which
it has bearing” (p. 1). Jones concludes in his last chapter, “Effective presidents are those who
know and understand their potential and variable role in the permanent and continuing
government” (p. 281). He further observes, “Organizing a presidency is an adaptive process
associated with the circumstances of how a president enters the White House and the set of
problems he then encounters in doing the job” (p. 283).
Expectations of the Presidency from a Normative View of Pluralism.
From a methodological viewpoint, an entire chapter or book could be written, and many
have been, on each of the following expectations arising from the normative view and a critical
view of pluralism as framed earlier in the paper. For the purposes of this inquiry, the evaluation
associated with each will be limited to a short sentence or two—just enough perhaps to provide
grist to draw modest conclusions from the mill.
1. Consensus. Building consensus is the primary stuff of the presidency. McKay
identifies “the central dilemma of the modern presidency: In the American political
system, the president is the only national unifying force” (p. 206). If “unify” is the
verb, then “consensus” is the only possible object.
2. Political equality. As discussed by Jones, presidents take stock of their times and
themselves; and from there they form their agendas. Some presidents have an agenda
that embodies political equality, some do not. In this sense, the presidency is a vessel
for the president. From an historical perspective, many gains have been made in
political equality, and the single most hard fought battle in political equality was
waged as a real battle by President Lincoln. Other presidents have also made great
contributions to equality.
3. A certain economic equality. Jones argument from criterion two applies here. Some
presidents have an agenda that embodies a certain economic equality, some do not,
and for those who do they differ about the best ways to achieve the ends—some
through the economy, some through direct social action. But also, like criterion two,
progress, from an historical perspective has been steady.
4. Liberty. While entire courses are taught on liberty, and entire lives have been
dedicated to it, a review of the presidents and the Presidencies leaves one with the
feeling that liberty is what is left over after all the plural interests and, in this case, all
the president’s agendas have had their way. Many argue that as the central
government grows in scope and power, liberty diminishes in equal measure. No one
argues the bigger the government, the more the liberty.
5. Transparency when public interest is involved. Here the results are truly mixed. In
one sense, the emergence of the bureaucratic state and appurtenant notice and
comment form of rule-making has made government as a whole, including the
presidency, much more accountable. In another sense, presidents increasingly appeal
directly to the public making, at least for the issues the president chooses, citizens
much more aware of the goings on of the presidency. In yet another sense, all
presidents have seemed to make transparency a choice, another tool in the arsenal to
use or not use strategically as it serves their interests.
6. Social welfare. The one thing that seems constant over the history of our republic is
that an ever-increasing proportion of the national budget is spent on social welfare.
Some presidents have been merely complicit, others have been full participants, and
others yet have led the charge. Only President Reagan bucked the trend, and at the
end of the day, all he achieved was reducing the rate of increase.
Expectation of the Presidency from a Critical View of Pluralism.
1. Efficiency of operations for policy implementation. Even while the
surrounding world has become more fragmented, maybe even because it has become
more fragmented, the presidency has improved efficiency of operations from an
historical perspective. One of the most significant points was the establishment of the
Office of Management and Budget in 1921, and the assemblage of other agencies of
the presidency that have since been created into the Executive Office of the President.
The countervailing point is the sheer size and complexity of all the agencies of the
executive branch en mass.
2. Skills and professionalism of people who ascend to positions of political
institution leadership. Although there have been historical low points, the many
reforms have taken their toll. The people who constitute today’s political leadership
are, in the experience of the author, generally of high character and good skills.
McKay makes a different judgment of the today’s presidents and the process of
selecting them: “such a system encourages the candidacy of a breed of politicians—
the “unemployed,” ambitious, and instrumental (and often wealthy)—who are much
less likely to make good presidents than those tested by peer-group pressures and the
rigors of many year’s experience in high office” (p. 223).
3. Incorporation of the greater public interest in policy dialogue. The
president is the one person elected by all the citizens of the country, and in that sense
is expected to be the voice of the people. From an observational viewpoint, many
modern presidents are far closer to the center of the ideological continuum than their
parties or constituents because it is in the middle ground where the deals can be
struck. But in the end, presidents pursue their own agendas first.
4. Conflicts of interest in policy formulation. On this count, the presidency
does not do as well as in other areas. On the right, one finds President Bush Sr.’s
Council on Competitiveness chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle to provide
recourse for those business interest groups that did not get their way with an agency.
On the left, in the Clinton administration, one finds the true national health care plan
believers locking out the very interests who need to be brought along in order to
secure a national health plan deal. On the right, you have the moral majority telling
women what they can and cannot do with their bodies, and on the left, you have the
“green mafia” of the Clinton administration clogging the administrative
decisionmaking process with green poison pills for the next administration.
5. Abdication of public decision-making responsibility to nonpublic interests.
On this count, Lowi will carry the charge with his assertion that “Besides making
conflict-of-interest a principle of government rather than a criminal act, participatory
programs shut out the public” (p. 86).
6. Resistance to change. Lowi also asserts that today’s breakdown of
pluralism results in the simple conservatism of resistance to change.
7. Fostering of core democratic values in policy dialogue and outcomes.
While almost all interest groups argue on behalf of the greater public interest in their
public discourse, the results are indeterminate. Core democratic values must be in the
eye of the beholder because Lowi finds that liberalism is dead, while Posner finds it
alive and well in Concept 2 democracy.
8. Regime stability. In this measure, the presidency succeeds. Although we
are one of the youngest nations in the world, we are one of the oldest continuing
governments. And the presidency has played an important role, of course, in checks
and balances with other branches of government.
The Presidency in Conclusion

From a classic view of pluralism, the presidency has (a) highly mixed results on the
exercise of power—depending on the president, it has ranged from civilized to base, from noble
to criminal, (b) indeterminate and abysmal results with regard to accommodating minority views
—indeterminate because of the difficulty of measure, and abysmal when the presidency turns to
legislating morality, and (c) agnostic results with regard to the pursuit of peaceful interest-based
solutions for the mutual benefit of all. From a dynamic view of pluralism, the presidency seems
to embody its very essence, but caution however, must be observed. Conn, as referenced above
in the discussion around critics of pluralism points to faulty and unfounded assumptions about
relationships and the theoretical problem of pluralism that the basic relationship between social
pluralism and democracy can probably never be made clear because of the intertwined nature of
their definitions.
From a normative view of pluralism, the presidency fares well in consensus, political
equality, a certain economic equality, and social welfare. Liberty and transparency, however, get
lost in the presidency’s instrumental quests. From a point of view critical of pluralism, the
presidency exceeds expectations in regime stability; meets expectations and is improving in
efficiency of operations and the skills and professionalism of the people it employs in positions
of leadership—with the possible significant exception of the president himself; improvement is
needed in the areas of incorporating the greater public interest in policy dialogue and in the area
of resistance to change—these areas need to be more than mere byproducts of other instrumental
goals; and the presidency is failing in the areas of incorporating conflicts of interests in policy
formulation and abdication of public decision-making responsibilities to non-public interest. The
performance of the presidency in fostering core democratic values in policy dialogues and
outcomes is indeterminate—it depends upon the theory of government to which one subscribes.
The presidency does not foster Posner’s Concept 1 enlightened democracy, but does foster
Posner’s Concept 2 democracy based only on pursuit of self-interest.
With regard to Elkin & Soltan’s functions of political systems introduced in the
beginning, it is clear that the presidency (a) limits exercise of political power, both in other
branches of government and within the executive branch; (b) conducts the business for which it
was created; (c) both provides the means to make policy, makes policy, implements policy and
works to solve social problems in accordance with the president’s agenda and interests, and (d)
either helps or does not help form the democratic character of citizens depending on one’s theory
of democracy. For citizens, the presidency does not enlighten citizen’s self-interest for the
greater good, merely for the partisan value good.
The Media
What is the Structure of the Media?
The media is first and foremost a commercial enterprise. But it is a commercial enterprise
with a difference. Among the many political institutions active in American governance, media
permeates all others. While freedom of the press is a much-venerated touchstone in our
democracy, the media, like our society, economy, and political processes is evolving. The media
is increasingly constrained by forces in the marketplace, the structure of media itself, and
technology.
McChesney (1999) makes a compelling argument that media has fundamentally changed
at the advent of the twenty-first century. He characterizes the changes as corporate concentration,
conglomeration, and hypercommercialism. Corporate concentration resulting from almost
staggering horizontal and vertical integration has resulted in a conglomeration of less than two
dozen mega corporations owning the vast majority of media enterprises. McChesney also notes
that there are strong interlocking interests between media moguls and industry with many of their
board positions being held by the same people.
What are the parts, and how are they organized? It is useful to consider the media as a
simple input-process-output system as outlined in figure 2, below. At its core is the process of
generating news. As a business entity, it has four parts: (a) the newsbeat where reporters ferret
out the stories and write about them, (b) marketing where advertising space is sold, (c)
production where stories are transformed from words on paper (electrons in memory?) and
brought together with advertising artwork to form copy in a newspaper, and (d) distribution
where the consumer buys the paper. From a business sense, citizens are customers and
advertisers are customers. The product citizens buy is the newspaper, the product advertisers buy
is consumer visibility. From a news generation sense, the reporters are customers. The products
that reporters “buy” are the story lines that interest groups (aggregations of citizens), elected
officials (representatives of citizens), and agency officials (providers of government benefits to
citizens) are trying to sell.
Figure 4
The Process of Generating News
Creation of
Feedback Meaning
Loop
Input Process Output
. . .
Government Officials Newsbeat
Interest Groups Production
Owners
Marketing
Distribution
News
How does the media exert

Elites influence on citizens? We citizens depend, more now than
Feedback
ever, on information to understand our Loops
increasingly complex Market
world.Share
Our governance, for similar
reasons, also depends on an increasing flow of information. Lawrence (2000) describes a strong
tendency for news to be presented in a less substantive way and more as “game-framing” (p. 93),
a contest among scheming political leaders. In game-framing, the role of journalist is reduced to
that of keeping score and evaluating tactics. The results of this trend toward degradation of news
away from substance and towards hypercommercialism are severalfold: (a) Political actors are
increasingly held hostage to reducing politics and their political interests to a lowest possible
denominator that will excite the masses, (b) Public cynicism is rising because of lack of
meaning, trivialization of issues, and relentless focus on conflicts, faults, and mistakes, (c)
Inhibition of dealing with real issues that might infringe on privilege of the social elites, and
most importantly (d) A growing pervasive sense of hopelessness on the part of ordinary people
about ever being able to make a difference.

How do citizens organize to influence the media? Citizens, as members of interest
groups, influence the media indirectly through the news stories they offer up “for sale.” Elected
officials (representing citizens) and government officials (providing government benefits to
citizens) also offer up story lines “for sale.” Citizens collectively, as consumers, have strong
influence on the media through direct purchase (or use) of news products, and indirect influence
by the success or lack thereof of advertising campaigns. Such a collective is not organized
activity as conceived in the methodological question, but is more activity en mass.
How do interest groups influence the media? Interest groups typically are not organized
around influencing the media and have precious little influence on the media. Interest groups of
course have strong desire in getting reporters to “buy” the stories they offer up “for sale” to
advance the group’s interest. Berry’s work, The Interest Group Society, discusses the media in
nine different locations, and each time makes reference to the desire of interest groups to secure
media coverage.
How do citizens directly exert influence on the media? Individually, citizens influence the
media in the marketplace directly only by the papers and magazines, they buy or shows they
watch. Indirectly citizens influence the media by the purchase of advertiser’s products.
What are the Functions of the Media?
The first function of the media is to make a profit for owners as a business enterprise.
However, it is also more than that; Cook (1954) characterizes the media as an intermediary
political institution. He identifies the basic definition of politics to be (a) framing of society’s
choices, (b) determining which choices are most authoritative, (c) determining what is valuable
and the distribution of such value, and in summary, (d) the embodiment of societal decision-
making processes. He establishes two foundational roles for media:
1. Reinforcing political power by providing resources to official actors to pursue their
agendas; and
2. Exerting influence about who is authoritative, what are the relevant values, and which
allocations should be made.

The role of the media can be seen then to cut to the heart of politics. However, media is both
more and less than a political institution. It is also a commercial venture—and a most powerful
one at that. Media’s function is to sell news so that people will buy it so that corporations will
buy advertisement space. In short, the primary function of media is to make money for its owners
and promote commerce.
What is the basic business of the media?
The humble journalist, when needing to put together a story by a deadline, is in recurring
negotiation between news sources and other newspersons striving to find something that is
newsworthy. She is also driven by her boss to put something together with pizzazz—something
that will sell news on the streets and in the living rooms of America, so that advertisers will by
space. The second basic business of the media is selling advertising space and create high yield
of consumer influence per advertising dollar invested. In pursuit of this aim, the media strives to
increase the number of news consumers, and increase the dollar yield of purchases the
consumers make either by growing product demand or growing higher yielding consumers.
News, in its most elemental form, is generated from the interplay between occurrences
and those who craft the story thereof. Cook (1954) deems as news those occurrences that are
both important and interesting. But even this most basic view of news is being driven by
exigency of media concentration, conglomeration, and hypercommercialism making news in
itself a commercial product for consumers (McChesney, 1999).
In a very important way however, the media is the glue that holds much of the system of
governance together—so much so, that this role needs to be ascribed as part of the function of its
basic business enterprise. The media, according to Cook (1954) has been “bequeathed a central
role in . . . political and social process[es], that of communication” (p. 165). Each branch makes
a special claim from the media: (a) the courts provide neutral prolific substance on the cases they
consider, but increasingly also enlist media support in maintaining legitimacy, (b) the office of
the President is singularly dependent on the media to frame issues and build support, both with
citizens and Congress, and (c) members of Congress are dependent on the media for reelection.
How does the media make policy? Media does not make policy. Media does not have the
authority to make policy. Media does not have the capacity to make policy. Media does not have
accountability or legitimacy to make policy. Yet, it plays a very vital role in the development of
policy. Among the significant changes that have occurred in our political system is the
devolution of the power of political parties from being a vital interface between citizens and their
incumbent elected representatives or their elected-officials-to-be. Patterson (1993) proclaims the
“United States as the only democracy that organizes its national election campaign around the
news media” (p. 28). He points out that this phenomenon stems from nominating process reforms
instigated by the Democratic Party in response to a bitter presidential campaign of 1968. The
reforms, which also affected the Republican Party, shifted power away from party elites to voters
more generally. Presidential candidates are therefore predominantly self-nominated, depending
on the media to create needed visibility with the voters. Patterson demonstrates that the media
lacks both the capacity and the motivation to perform their new role of organizing presidential
elections, and Cook (1954) adds that they lack accountability.
How is the power of the media limited? A close inspection of the simple system shown
above in Figure 4 shows the train of accountability for the media. The accountability from
market share or elites is, according to McChesney, both immediate and powerful. Note that the
public as citizen is remarkably absent from these two feedback loops. Only the public as
consumer is present. The only accountability is through voting in the marketplace by purchase
and consumption of products. The feedback loop that does involve the public as citizen is
through the creation of meaning—the establishment or assigning of values. The feedback to the
journalist and the system is here weak and once-removed because the association between
political actor and journalist is not a compelling association like that of employer/employee. It is
rather, a voluntary association with the choice being made by the journalist, not her news source.
How does the media limit the power of other political institutions? Media does not
strictly limit the power of other institutions. The media however can and does take purposeful
action that affects the exercise of power of other institutions. It can take positive actions of
investigative reporting. At its best, the media has originated pivotal turning points in our
democracy—think Watergate. The media can also limit or bias coverage. One wonders how
much news makes it past the copy desk that puts either the media’s owner or the media itself in a
bad light. One also wonders if the copy desk editor has two boxes for putting prospective news
stories in: (a) one labeled “good for business, print it,” and (b) the other labeled “bad for
business, hold it.”
That the media can and does make choices about what news to print or broadcast, and
that it can and does make its own choices about how to spin or bias the news it creates is beyond
question. What is not beyond question is how and why? Reporters, editors, and marketers have
no accountably to anyone other than their immediate supervisors, and ultimately the owners as to
what news they generate and how they spin it. The owners are only accountable to stockholders
and the bottom line. While the “how” part of this question can be determined by empirical
observation, the “why” part cannot be answered because, as a corporate entity that enjoys the
legal constitutional rights of a citizen, the news business has a right to privacy. There is an
inherent and most interesting question that arises at this point in the methodological query: How
can our time honored notions of the freedom of the press be harnessed in a way consistent with
core democratic values to the purposes of limiting the power of other political institutions?
How does the media foster citizenship? The media has no motive to foster citizenship. It
does have a motive to foster consumerism. The more news citizens buy, the more advertisement
companies buy, so that consumers will buy more products. In fact, McChesney describes “the
dominant mood in the United States is one of resignation and demoralization, not only about the
media but about other political issues as well” (p. 63). He blames this on the deterioration of
journalism.
Broad Pluralism in the Media
Structural pluralism—decentralization, checks and balances within and between. Media
is a commercial venture. Pluralism only has slight meaning in the context of the media. The
counterpart to pluralism in commercial activity is market competition. It would be a perversion

of meaning to characterize the hypercommercialism of the marketplace and the competitiveness
borne of extreme horizontal and vertical integration and concentration of power as being
equivalent to active pluralism. So, from a structural pluralism standpoint the answer is
indeterminate.
Pluralism of values within the media. There is a pluralism of values within the media, but
this meaning is blurred because it is seen through the lens of commercial activity. Any pluralism
of values exists only because it helps the bottom line, not because of any normative desire to
honor diverse values.
Pluralism of Culture within the media. Having no accountability to the public and no
transparency of purpose, all that can be said of pluralism of culture in the media is that it
probably reflects the pluralism of corporate America.
Empirical Predictions of Pluralism for the Media
Undaunted by the methodological problems caused by the media being a commercial
venture first and a political institution only in service of its business enterprise, and undaunted by
the lack of a body of literature analyzing the media as a political institution, the author will
plunge ahead with attempting a parallel evaluation to the one conducted for the presidency.
Predictions from a classical view of pluralism. There is a large methodological difficulty
with considering the media in the classical sense of pluralism because the first premise put
forward by Dahl is that power is tamed because one center of power is set against the other. In
the case of the media, there was no power “set” for it in the constitution. Setting this difficulty
aside, the next difficulty is the object to which power will be exercised. In Dahl’s construct,
limitations inherent in a balance of powers, would foster the exercise of power to “decent
purposes.” The only knowable purpose for exercise of media power is to further the aim of the
commercial enterprise. The only approximate corollary to Dahl’s notion of “coercion will be
reduced to a minimum” would be that “power would not be used for untoward ends.” Given all
these methodological difficulties, the answer to the first question has to be indeterminate.
Because media has no authority to formulate public policy, and because its only public function
is in the service of its business enterprise, the question of minorities being provided opportunities
to veto solutions they strongly object to is irrelevant. And lastly, for the third question, because
of the “no public function problem,” media’s role from the standpoint of classic pluralism can
only be understood in the sense of whether media activity fosters or inhibits citizen pursuit of
interest-based solutions. With rare exceptions, it probably does neither.
Predictions from a dynamic view of pluralism for the media. In evaluating the presidency,
it was noted that pluralism’s prediction of dynamic change marked by an initial perturbation and
subsequent dynamic realignment of the plural interests, becomes merely a proposition about how
the world works, and in its simplest form is merely a perturbation and response model,
measuring groups as the locus of action. The author’s oversimplified characterization of Jones’
view of the presidency was as follows: “Presidents come, presidents go. The ones who are
effective size up the world upon assuming office, determine where in the cycle of change the
body politic is, size up themselves, and decide where they figure into it. The ones who get it right
and deploy their resources well are effective. Those who do not are not.” If a similar proposition
were to be made for the media, it would be something like this: “Issues come and issues go, the
media companies that are successful are the ones who understand the cycle of change and can
predict where the news and the consumer’s desires will be. The companies that can best aim their
resources to the changing marketplace of ideas are those that will gain a competitive edge.” The
author concludes that the dynamic model of change also yields and indeterminate answer for the
media.
Expectations of the Media from a Normative View of Pluralism.
Continuing undaunted, from a methodological viewpoint, an entire school of thought or
body of literature could be created around the media as political institution, but unfortunately,
there has only been a beginning. For the purposes of this inquiry, the evaluation associated with
each criterion will be limited to a short sentence or two—again perhaps, just enough grist to
draw modest conclusions from the mill.

1. Consensus. The media does not work to build consensus. Its work is to build market
share. The media has created hypercommercialism, but not for the sake of consensus.
The media is not even particularly interested in consensus because it is normally not
newsworthy.
2. Political equality. It could be argued that newscasters or reporters have a personal
commitment to equality that comes through in their stories, but at least one author
believes the opposite is true. Valentino (1999) supports the hypothesis that “crime
news containing minority suspects primes racial attitudes, which are subsequently
brought to bear on evaluations of political candidates” (p. 293).
3. A certain economic equality. It could similarly be argued that egalitarian reporter
values might shine through, but a more likely outcome is catering to those who have
the most disposable income. This outcome could arguably lead to decreased self
image and alienation of those with meager economic means.
4. Liberty. Liberty, in the sense of protection of first amendment rights has historically
been a touchstone of American media. In another vein, private lives of public officials
are less private than they have ever been. Scandals sell news. The results are therefore
mixed.
5. Transparency when public interest is involved. The media scores high marks here for
a continuing tradition of investigative reporting and ferreting out wrongdoing, at least
when there could be a good story involved. It is also true that many media commit
significant resources to public service announcements and activities.
6. Social welfare. While the media would like to portray itself as caring about people,
the overall effect feels like tokenism for the purposes of enhancing public image.
Expectation of the Media from the View of Critics of Pluralism.
1. Efficiency of operations for policy implementation. The media is good at making
money. McChesney reports “NBC is renowned not so much for the quality of its
news as for its extraordinary success in squeezing profit from it” (p. 51). The media is
struggling with its role as a political institution.
2. Skills and professionalism of people who ascend to positions of political institution
leadership. The people who own the media must be very rich indeed, but they are not
very visible. They are good at their business enterprise. One wonders how often the
responsibility of the media as a political institution is discussed in the boardroom.
3. Incorporation of the greater public interest in policy dialogue. The media does not
make policy. The commercial enterprise of news has no necessary inherent interest in
the greater public interest, although arguably reporters do because “public interest” in
a more general sense is part of what makes news sell.
4. Conflicts of interest in policy formulation. The media does not make policy.
McChesney analyzes “the undemocratic and corrupt manner in which the core laws
and codes regulating communication, most notably the Telecommunications Act of
1996, have been enacted” (p. 15).
5. Abdication of public decision-making responsibility to nonpublic interests.
McChesney states that the media is “a system set up to serve the needs of a handful of
wealthy investors, corporate managers, and corporate advertisers. . . . The system
serves the general public to the extent that it strengthens and does not undermine
these primary relationships” (p. 77).
6. Resistance to change. The media has been very rapid in changing its structure as a
commercial activity, but in the sense meant by the criterion, it is difficult to fathom
meaning—it is therefore indeterminate.
7. Fostering of core democratic values in policy dialogue and outcomes. McChesney
concludes that “the implications for democracy of this concentrated, conglomerated,
and hypercommercialized media are entirely negative” (p. 77).

8. Regime stability. One could surmise that the media moguls would go to great lengths
to ensure survival of the goose that lays the golden eggs. And they have considerable
power to deploy.
The Media in Conclusion
Very significant methodological problems arise in analysis from a classic pluralism point
of view because of the media’s mixed business and political institution purposes. The analysis of
media from a classical pluralism view yields (a) indeterminate results on the exercise of power,
(b) no meaning with regard to accommodation of minority views, and (c) a dim view of media’s
pursuit of peaceful interest-based solutions for the mutual benefit of all. When attempting to use
the dynamic model of change for analyzing the media, it is confounded and transmogrified to a
mechanism for gaining commercial competitive commercial edge. The dynamic model therefore
also yields indeterminate results.
From a normative view of pluralism, the media gets high marks for transparency because
of its continuing tradition of investigative reporting and ferreting out wrongdoing. It has mixed
results on liberty, high marks for the proud tradition of freedom of the press, low marks for
exposing more of people’s private lives than many would ever want to know. Social welfare only
matters to the media to the extent token activities can be used to enhance its own image. The
media does not foster consensus, political equality, or a certain economic equality.
From a point of view critical of pluralism, the media excels in efficiency of operations
and skills and professionalism of people who ascend to positions of leadership, but only the
sense of the media as a business venture. It is not efficient at being a good political institution
and that role is irrelevant for its leaders. The media does not make policy, and to the extent it
gets involved in policy to protect its self-interest, it corrupts the process. The broader public
interest is notable only in its absence. The media experiences no conflict of interest, it serves
only the wealthy investors and power elites, any broader public purposes are merely incidental.
Media is highly responsive to change for competitive commercial purposes but is indeterminate
in its response to change for its political institution purposes. It does not foster core democratic
values. Regime stability is only a consideration for the media as it is now configured only in the
sense that the media would marshal significant resources and power if its ability to make money
was threatened by threats to the regime.
The media—in its pure business functions of selling news and selling advertising—has
systems of inputs, processes, outputs, and feedback loops for accountability that are as highly
developed and sophisticated as the best of the rest of the commercial activity that has been
spawned from our particular brand of democracy. The fundamental problem with the media—in
its political institution function of providing information so that our democracy can work—is
that its system of inputs, processes, outputs, and feedback loops for accountability for this
function are fragmentary and not well formed. As a political institution, the media has a long
way to go. As a democracy, because of the media’s awesome power, we cannot afford to wait
much longer before we start tending to the business of constituting this most important political
institution.
From an empirical standpoint, the fragmentary and ill formed nature of the media as a
political institution has spawned a situation where all the factions, governmental and non-
governmental alike, feed greedily at the media trough. But the media exacts a toll, both real and
metaphorical. Using Elkin & Soltan’s construct, constitutive work sorely needs to be done so the
media can better redeem its functions as a political system. Through democratic processes, we
citizens need to (a) define its role so that it can do a better job of limiting the exercise of political
power, (b) define its role so that it can better conduct the political institution aspects of its
business, (c) define its role in making policy and solving social problems, so it knows how to
engage, and (d) define its role so that it can use its manifold resources to help form our character
so we can be better citizens.
Integration and Conclusion
Application of the classic view of pluralism to analyze the presidency and the media has
yielded limited mixed, problematic, and largely indeterminate results. This result brings into
question the utility of classic pluralism as a tool to understand democracy today. The dynamic
change model of pluralism yielded good results when analyzing the presidency, but problems
with the theory of pluralism brought the result into question. The dynamic change model did not
work for examining the media. Whether these findings represent a problem with theory, method,
application, or all three, is a question for another day.
The empirical and normative analyses benefited from the juxtaposition of pluralist and
anti-pluralist viewpoints. Both yielded good, if not finally conclusive, information. The media
confounded the methodology, and perhaps the theories too, because of the nascent, fragmentary,
and ill-formed nature of the elements of the media as a political institution. Elkin & Soltan’s
construct involving functions of political systems proved most useful in making sense of the
results of the analyses. Pairing analysis of a mature well defined political institution with a
nascent political institution provided both methodological and theoretical challenges.
Reflecting on where democracy—democratic processes and democratic values—might
emerge, grow, and prosper in our republic’s third century, brings several points into focus. The
analysis of this paper supported the paradox that corporate power may exceed the ability of
government to regulate. McChesney’s assertions about the media corrupting the policy process
in the case of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, certainly points that direction. To tame such
power however, requires requisite power to reside in the government. In the case of the media, to
tame such power requires an understanding of to what ends the media’s power should be
harnessed; which in turn points out the necessity for a better understanding of the essential
elements of political institutions. This line of reasoning supports my second thesis that treating
corporate America as a political institution will lead to a resurgence of democracy.
The normative question of the fostering of core democratic values in policy dialogue and
outcomes led to differing answers for the presidency depending on the basic theory of democracy
employed, which points out that basic questions about democracy are still very much alive. It is
apparent that the recurring fundamental dialectical questions of democracy continue and remain
as the forge for testing theory, method, application, and student alike. This point taken with the
earlier point regarding the failure of pluralism as an analytical tool raises the possibility that
much fundamental theoretical and methodological work on democracy and political institutions
still needs to be done.
Finding ways to engage citizens in a public discussion of basic perennially unresolved
first principles may just reignite the flames of democracy and may also provide a sufficiently
robust anvil to temper the impossibly high public expectations raised by the first paradox. While
my analysis in this paper did not support my first thesis that limited government is needed for the
sake of democracy, the analysis shows that modern presidents have recognized the need to
prevent runaway government growth. The concluding point: there needs to be an academic and
public debate around the primary purposes of government. Such a debate cannot be mounted
without a parallel debate about the fundamental purposes of democracy. Maybe answering these
questions are the true business of the third century of our republic. We now have two centuries of
experiments in democracy under our belts. Let’s shake things up a bit.

References
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Author Note
1
Between 1870 and 1938, according to McKay (2000) the Supreme Court rebuffed
attempted federal government regulation of industrial and commercial life (notwithstanding
antimonopoly laws and taxes). In 1872, the Supreme Court (Slaughter-house Cases, 1872) in a
series of cases known as the Slaughter-house cases (named after the slaughter-houses that the
city of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana were trying to regulate) ruled that corporations
have the legal status of individuals, this bestowing upon them the rights that individuals enjoy
under the constitution. There is a certain irony that the first successful use in a Supreme Court
case of the Fourteenth Amendment which gave slaves civil rights, was this case which benefited
commercial activity.
References
Elkin, S. L., & Soltan, K. E. (1993). A new constitutionalism: Designing political institutions for
a good society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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The Presidency and The Media 1

Pluralism in the Presidency and the Media

problems with conflicts of interest, abdication of public decision-making responsibilities to non-

Pluralism in the Presidency and the Media

political constitution of a constitutional regime to lie “somewhere between an attempt to answer

regulate commerce for the public weal.

particularly the media.

continuing foil of limited government to prevent runaway growth of government and

The second paradox provides a window to reflect on where democracy—democratic

sufficient requisite power to regulate them for the public weal.

logical extension of academic thought and subsequent political action.

Pluralism and Group Theory

their interests, and (c) the techniques they employ.

Interactions Between Political Institutions, Citizens, and Organized Interest Groups

Empirical Predictions of Pluralism

Empirical predictions of pluralism can be viewed from either a static or dynamic

power, will be reduced to a minimum.

of all the parties to a conflict. (p. 24)

the life cycle of issues.

and subsequent dynamic realignment of the plural interests.

The Normative Expectations of Pluralism

There is an inherent problem in discussing normative expectations of pluralism because,

interest is involved, and (f) social welfare.

political and agency leadership.

culminating in what he characterizes by means of a quote from Walter Lippmann as a

making conflict-of-interest a principle of government rather than a criminal act, participatory

What is the Structure of the Presidency?

Jones (1994) characterizes the presidency as a minigovernment of approximately 1,500

toed the right line on forestry issues).

Organization of the Executive Office of the President

National Office of Council of

Office of Science Council on Office of

at effectively organizing and deploying presidential staff.

reported by Berry, the policy is likely doomed to failure.

presidency intervened with the Environmental Protection Agency to force a rollback of

Thomas was confirmed in a close vote (Berry, 1997).

opposition” (p. 10).

What are the Functions of the Presidency?

to the executive and courts, legislator by making recommendations to Congress, and by

branch of government, reflecting the totality of the President’s priorities, promises,

factor is the flow of information. Secretaries (or Undersecretaries, or Assistant Secretaries, or

Amendment” (p. 314).

power shall be vested in a president” (Article 2, Section 1).

counterbalance the so-called Four Horseman of Conservatism on the Court. President

means including increasing procedural and substantive control on promulgation of regulations

interests in making “the deal.”

democratic citizenship in vigorous pursuit of particular presidential interests. Citizens and

for the presidency to do so.

Broad Pluralism in the Presidency

Structural pluralism—decentralization, checks and balances within and between. The

committees in Congress, a constituency it serves, interest groups who have organized to

Management and Budget or the President’s Council of Economic Advisors.

Empirical Predictions of Pluralism for the Presidency

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you, Mr. President. (Applause.)

legislating morality. A Democratic Party corollary is not apparent.

President Bush Signs Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003

government” (p. 281). He further observes, “Organizing a presidency is an adaptive process

problems he then encounters in doing the job” (p. 283).

Expectations of the Presidency from a Normative View of Pluralism.

grist to draw modest conclusions from the mill.

1. Consensus. Building consensus is the primary stuff of the presidency. McKay

verb, then “consensus” is the only possible object.