The power of the presidency: Why Trump can't make it go

Might Donald Trump be experiencing "buyer's remorse"? The presidency, it seems, doesn't automatically come with the power to get things done.

Any holder of the office must bring the power to govern to the White House.

President Harry Truman famously predicted of his successor, Dwight Eisenhower: "Poor Ike. He will sit here and say, 'Do this!' 'Do that!' and nothing will happen."

President Trump has many promises to keep, but he may have miles to go down his current long, lonely road marked by one frustration or setback after another.

Just recently, Trump could not make good on one of his big promises — to repeal and replace Obamacare. Members of the president's own Republican Party in the House of Representatives took his needs and threats less seriously than the needs and fears motivating their constituents.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Democrats from more conservative districts might be willing to support Trump on one initiative or another. But right now they are loath to bring upon themselves retribution from the so-called "Resistance" — the hard-core opposition to Trump — by engaging in any such accommodation.

It's also been demonstrated that a handful of federal judges — even if using sophomorically bad legal reasoning — can nonetheless stop a president's executive orders in a matter of days.

Citizens can bring harassing lawsuits over Trump's reputed conflicts of interest. Mean-spirited moles burrowed into the bureaucracy can, with seeming impunity, leak annoying information about Trump campaign associates meeting with Russians, diverting administration time and energies away from more important matters.

President Trump can lay down a condition. But Mexico's president can say, "No deal."

Former President Barack Obama struggled with the same reality — our presidency, in itself, is a weak reed. Obama's response was to closet himself where he could be in charge: in giving speeches and talking to adoring subordinates. In foreign policy, he stood for "leading from behind."

Fact is, the powerlessness of the presidency is old news. Harvard Prof. Richard Neustadt became famous by making this point in his 1960 book "Presidential Power."

A president, Neustadt argued, has only so much power as the people bestow upon him (or her) from day to day.

A president is constrained by law. The Congress has its own mind (actually 535 of them). The courts do as they choose. Cabinet secretaries and agency bureaucracies have their own constituencies and ambitions, and a need to secure money and support from Congress. State governments respond to their own political dynamics. The media and academia are beyond any rational control, pushing agendas of their own devising.

Back in 1960, Neustadt's thesis caught the attention of then-newly elected President John F. Kennedy, and he became a "New Frontier" insider in the Kennedy administration.

Neustadt pointed out that people never really do what a president wants — they do what they want to do for their own reasons. If they come to want to do what a president prescribes, the president will have "power." If not, he or she will have little.

Neustadt took his insight from a formulation of Truman's, for whom he had also worked. Truman said: "Presidential power is the power to persuade."

If you can, that is.

If presidential power depends upon persuasion, as Truman said, how can President Trump gain sufficient power when the great channel of mass persuasion — the establishment media — seems unwilling to cooperate in getting his message out with decorum and respect? And when parts of the media work to sabotage his every effort at persuasion?

A president must convince others that what the White House wants of them is exactly what they ought to do for their own sakes. In a way, presidential power echoes the mores of politics in the old Roman Republic of Cicero. Back then, only after a man had earned a reputation for gravitas, dignitas and auctoritas would voters give him an office. A serious, dignified personal character that gave one influence over others was a precondition for wielding official authority.

So what are the elements of real — "charismatic" — presidential power?

First, logic, charm and "a way with words" provide the power of influence.

A president's choices in what to say (and what not to say), and in what to do and whom to see, are the primary means in his own hands of making his intangible influence effective. Every photo-op, every executive order, every round of golf, every tweet adds to or subtracts from a president's power.

Second, presidential power grows from having a reputation for actually using one's advantages in exerting influence. Those a president must persuade are always judging the officeholder and calculating their best advantage — depending on how they expect the future to unfold and the chief executive to behave. A president must be concerned with what all these people expect.

At a minimum, a president needs a reputation for making those who ignore or thwart his will pay a price.

So in Neustadt's thinking, Trump was by no means wasting his time last week in lashing out at uncooperative members of his own party's Freedom Caucus with a tweet promising that "We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!"

Third, presidential power depends on public prestige. Those the president needs to persuade constantly monitor his standing with the public at large. What specific constituencies think of a president also weighs on the minds of those for whom such constituencies make a difference and can alter the power equation between them and the president.

In limited ways a president can bolster his prestige by becoming a "teacher" of public sentiment. This is the power of Theodore Roosevelt's "bully pulpit." But it doesn't work for every president — or all the time for any president.

Trump's best moment so far was his address to the Congress. It was effective persuasion and coalition building, assisted by the ceremonial pageantry of the occasion.

But the very next day the speech's impact was undone by revelations that during his confirmation hearing Attorney General Jeff Sessions had not disclosed meetings with the Russian ambassador.

Ever since the election, we Americans have been bystanders to a vicious power struggle as Trump tries to gather power into his hands and as his opponents seek to thwart him in that attempt.

As befits an era of culture war, each antagonist works to deconstruct the legitimacy of the other.

Trump critics call him a "liar" so that no one will listen to him. Trump undermines the media tribunes' power to persuade, calling them purveyors of "fake news."

Trump aims to discredit the media as a privileged cultural elite, calling it an "enemy of the people." Trump detractors disparage the White House's "alternative facts."

It's worth noting that providing alternative facts and theories has been a staple tool of trial lawyers for generations. Rhetoricians since Aristotle have taught how to use facts in selective ways. Choosing one's facts wisely brings victory in persuasion.

Trump's adversaries, consciously or not, have taken Neustadt's analysis to heart. They tirelessly work to deny Trump the power to persuade. They have belittled him, disparaged him, insulted him and, systemically, day in and day out, have challenged his integrity, his intelligence and his ethics — all tending to deny him stature and credibility.

Think of "Saturday Night Live" skits. Their aim is to make Trump, if not despicable, at least … deplorable.

Trump seems to know exactly what his adversaries are doing. He reacts viscerally with great passion and determination to gain power.

He seeks above all to reassure his base. He confirms their biases — about the media, the courts, the bureaucracy, the Hollywood elite — and plays to what they believe, building bonds of mutuality between them and himself. He acts decisively, even rashly, to deliver on what he has promised — the wall, the travel ban. He walks his talk to convince them that in the future he will continue to battle for what they want.

Then he raises the cost of conflict for his adversaries. This he does with gusto through his often-outrageous tweets. Attacked for seditious conniving with the Russians, Trump drags Obama into the fray. This is a street fighter at work: You hit me, I hit you back harder. Still wanna fight?

Trump brings advantages to this endeavor from his career in real property development and branding.

Property developers typically have no real power. Their ability to get things done depends mostly on access to OPM — "other people's money." Developers work on leverage. Their own capital is usually a fraction of what a project costs. They rise or fall on their ability to convince others to trust them.

Brand managers' power, too, is ephemeral. Consumers can turn from them in a heartbeat when a new brand or trend comes along. Brand managers must persuade morning, noon and night. They must get inside the heads of potential customers and connect with whatever they find there. Brands piggyback on preexisting emotions and beliefs. They do not create tastes, preferences or insecurities — they cater to them.

For Trump, since his election, his brand is no longer "The Donald." It is now "Mr. President." Can he adjust his persuasive talents to market that bold new project?

The balance of power between Trump and his adversaries is about the same as it was on Election Day. Trump has secured his base, and the Democratic leadership has held its core support. Neither side has majority backing among the people.

But merely holding his base loyal will never give Trump enough power to be a successful president. Just as he won the election by mobilizing the voting power of those who were once Democrats or who at least had voted for Obama, he now needs to influence moderates to bestow real presidential credibility upon him.

His power depends on their affirmative support, not just their passive indifference to both combatants in Washington's current Game of Thrones.

Stephen B. Young, of St. Paul, is global executive director of the Caux Round Table, an international network of business leaders working to promote a moral capitalism.