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On any specific issue the President needs to know the facts, get the best information, so that he can make the decision and then lead from there. I do not think a President should run the country on the basis of the polls. The public in so many cases does not have a full comprehension of the complexity of a problem. A President ought to listen to people, but he cannot make hard decisions just by reading the polls once a week. It just does not work, and what the President ought to do is make the hard decisions and then go out and educate the people on why a decision that was not necessarily popular was made. It can be done, and it has to be. That is what it means to be a leader.
Needed: Clarity of Purpose
By Richard M. Nixon
At least for the balance of this century, the survival of freedom and peace in the world will depend on the strength and effectiveness of the American presidency.
This may sound melodramatic. But it happens to be the truth. It lends added point to the perennial debates about whether the basic constitutional structure of the office should be "modernized." Certainly we should consider such proposals as limiting the President to a single six-year term, or creating a second vice presidency to assist with day-to-day oversight of the Executive Branch. However, while we can dream about tinkering with the constitutional arrangements, the fact of the matter is that whoever is President for the next four years will have to deal with the office as it is — including all of its frustrations, its limitations and its demands.
Any major institutional changes are not going to take place in the near future, and unless we master the needs of the presidency in the near future, there may not be a distant future.
Some say we are entering a period of collective leadership in the West — that because the United States has lagged in economic growth and lost its military supremacy, we are going to have to consult our more prosperous allies and defer to them in the search for a Western consensus. This is nonsense. Consult, of course. But unless the United States leads, nobody will. And unless the President leads, nobody will.
There are three keys to an effective presidency. To succeed, a President must succeed at all three. He must 1) analyze, 2) decide and 3) persuade.
The fact that we face a challenge to the nation's very survival gives special urgency in the '80s to the power to persuade — to rally the nation to meet the challenge. This is more than a matter of political and managerial skills, and more than being able to communicate well on television. It also requires a driving vision of where the nation is and where it should be heading, and why. It requires a clear, compelling purpose, from which presidential priorities then flow logically. This is central to an effective presidency: the vision, the sense of direction, to see the map whole and to chart the basic course without leading the country aimlessly on one detour after another.