The Presidency: Job Specs for the Oval Office

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masterly political operators among the modern Presidents, F.D.R. was frequently dancing along the ethical borderline, and L.B.J. was often well across it.

The President needs perseverance, and personal ambition within healthy Limits. A fashionable cynicism is that anybody so ambitious that he would put up with what it takes to get nominated and elected is morally disqualified for the presidency. Neustadt puts it more sensibly: Presidents need "drive but not drivenness." L.B.J., Nixon and Carter were all driven. Henry Graff of Columbia notes that we like a presidential candidate to look "called," though it is hard to achieve this effect when you are trying to sell yourself on TV.

A President should be "fair" and look fair, magnanimous, willing to give trust, compassionate. No very high marks for any recent President. Reagan gives the impression of insensitivity to the poor. Liberal politicians for some reason can be highly compassionate about "the people" and insensitive to individuals.

The President needs presence, dignity, a certain touch of distance and even mystery; he is also expected to be "human." F.D.R. and Ike set a high standard. The aloofness of a De Gaulle would not sit well in the U.S. He needs courage, physical (just to go outdoors) and moral. He must be tough, even ruthless, but not find sick enjoyment in ruthlessness. He needs a deep self-confidence, stopping short of a grandiose sense of destiny.

He must be steady and stable, housing his exceptional combination of gifts within a personality approximately "normal." Among the modern Presidents, the most nearly "normal" personalities are probably Truman, Ike, Ford, Reagan. "I am disgustingly sane," said Ford. It may be significant that Ford and Truman had not aspired to the presidency, and Ike began to think of it only in his late 50s, when he had already won world fame in a job about as big as President. Reagan had had two satisfying careers in the public eye, as actor and after-dinner free-enterprise speaker, before turning to politics.

> Brains. Justice Holmes called Franklin Roosevelt "a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament." The President needs superior intelligence (at least a B from Holmes) but need not be brilliant, deep or bh'ndingly original. He needn't be an intellectual, and we have not been threatened with one lately.

The President must be a simplifier. Reagan is rightly criticized when he oversimplifies, which is often, but some of his simplifying is just right, not unlike good teaching or preaching.

In abstract intelligence it could be that L.B.J., Nixon and Carter would rate highest among the modern Presidents. All suffered from a lack of judgment and proportion, which does not show up in IQ tests.

A President needs a sense of history, including a feel for the situations where history does not apply. Jimmy Carter, despite his speed-reading studiousness and remarkable memory, was strangely deficient here. The present incumbent seems relatively innocent in the field. Truman and J.F.K. were well-steeped in history. From a sense of history (preferably not just American) flows an informed patriotism, a feel for the powers of an office unique in the world, the restraints upon it, and the tempo of a presidential term, including the special