Time Essay: New Places to Look for Presidents

Can anyone remember when he last went to vote for a U.S.

President and felt both enthusiastic and confident? Totally enthusiastic about his own candidate; reasonably confident that if his man lost, the other fellow would still be a good President?

Not since 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower, a victorious general with some extra dimensions, squared off against the eloquent Governor Adlai Stevenson, have a large majority of Americans felt they were given a choice between two first-rate candidates, either of whom could lead the nation well. By 1956 both Ike and Stevenson had lost a little of their luster. Since then, more and more Americans have voted with deep misgivings. They have been worried that their own candidate was flawed, or that his opponent would be a disaster—or both. Nixon-Kennedy, Goldwater-Johnson, Nixon-Humphrey, Nixon-Mc-Govern. Increasingly the voters ask: "Are these really the best candidates we can find?" Between now and next November it is certain that the question will be asked again, often in anger: Out of our large (214 million) and highly educated population, is this the best choice the American system can offer?

No, it is not. The trouble is that presidential candidates are selected (or self-selected) from a very small pool. With rare exceptions, they are professional politicians who have served as a U.S. Senator or Governor, preferably of a large state. Since some of these are too old (65 is about the line) or heavily compromised on personal grounds (sex, drink, money) or hopelessly mediocre, it comes down at any one time to a list of maybe 50 who have a real shot at the presidency. Perhaps half of these would not be interested, so the list shrinks to 25. Considering that twelve men have already announced for the job and several more (Hubert Humphrey, John Connally, Frank Church, Charles Mathias) are clearly interested, roughly half the "eligibles" are already in the race.

And to this whole list many Americans react with a mixture of boredom and dismay. Ford-Humphrey? Reagan-Carey? The leadership of the free world?

It is wildly unrealistic to imagine the U.S. could tap new pools of presidential talent by Nov. 2, 1976. And there is no particular reason to think we will by 1980. But if the country did by chance begin to survey its presidential resources in an imaginative way, where might the search begin?

One place to start, surely, would be in the large private institutions, which find their leaders through an intensely competitive process and demand of them certain qualities the U.S. presidency also demands.

A U.S. President, above all, must be a leader, able to direct a large, complex organization, or federation of organizations, and to deal with competing, often conflicting constituencies. He (or she) must be able to recognize talent, recruit it, deploy it, inspire it, oversee it (and fire people when necessary). A President must be a man of vision who knows in what direction he wants to guide the nation, a persuasive individual who can explain his means and ends in ways that will move people to support him. In private life, the people who have the jobs most nearly comparable to the U.S. President's are those who head corporations, banks, universities, labor unions and large civic or public service institutions.