Being President of the U.S., Commander in Chief of the armed forces and acknowledged leader of the free world must not be all that it used to be. All that, and Bill Clinton still doesn't qualify as one of the 25 most influential people in America? What ever happened to the prerogatives of office? Whom do you have to know to get on this list?
If that roll call identified the most powerful people in America rather than the most influential (a more subtle concept), then the President would be at the top. Power and influence generally go hand in hand. Anyone who has the clout to make decisions with the stroke of a pen has influence over the way we think and live. But some people, particularly Presidents, are more notable for the former than the latter. Clinton is powerful. He can propose how to parcel out the federal budget, stock the federal courts and decide which uncooperative trade partners get spanked. Influential is another matter. When he succeeds at governing, as he has (for now) with the budget, he's a man who doesn't so much shape national opinion as locate it, then wraps his arms around whatever he has found and holds on for dear life. What he sometimes lacks is those things that help define influence: a vision that inspires people to shed their doubts and follow his lead, an ability to connect with people and shape the way they look at the world. This is why the same man who can order troops to Haiti can still lose a floor vote in Congress on health care.
One other distinction between power and influence: a list of the most influential people in America reflects at least some of the nation's racial and ethnic diversity and includes both men and women. But for now, any inventory of the people who really pull the levers of power is topped by white men in suits. The President and the Federal Reserve Board chairman, the leaders of Congress, the chiefs of industry and communication--these are the men who can, in the end, still dictate where money is spent, how troops and workers get deployed, which programs and movies are distributed, who gets promoted and who gets laid off, which factories are closed and what happens to interest rates and insurance premiums.
To hold power is to have at your disposal blunt instruments. But without influence, power dies out at the end of its own channels of command. To have influence is to gain assent, not just obedience; to attract a following, not just an entourage; to have imitators, not just subordinates. Power gets its way (when it gets it). Influence makes its way. And in free societies it makes its way further.