guarantee “freedom from want” but also of its responsibility to provide “freedom from fear”—to
protect the American people, and the world, against foreign aggression. This obligation to uphold
“human rights” became a new guarantee of security, which presupposed a further expansion of
national administrative power. The forces of internationalism allowed Harry Truman to persuade
Congress to carry out additional administrative reform in 1947, which increased the powers of,
and centralized control over, the National Security State. Dubbed the National Security Act, it
created the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of
Defense (Roosevelt 1938-1950: v. 9, 671-672; Shefter 2002).
The creation of a modern executive charged with economic and international security
resulted in a more active and better equipped national state, but one that has had troubling
consequences for American democracy. Most damagingly, it has encouraged presidents to
pursue their programmatic aspirations through executive administration rather than through
collaboration with Congress and the parties and thus devalued collective responsibility for public
policy. As the parties declined, the presidency, isolated from the stable basis of popular support
they once provided, became increasingly dependent on a demanding constellation of interest
groups and a volatile public opinion for its political sustenance. Caught between Scylla of
bureaucratic indifference and the Charybides of the public’s reliance on “big government,” the
modern presidency evolved, or degenerated, into a plebiscitary form of politics, in which citizens
invested their support in an individual leader for a time, then all too often withdrew it (Tulis
1987; Lowi 1985). The inability of modern presidents to achieve their programmatic goals
through executive administration, and the fraying of the traditional ties between the public and
the offices of the national government, contributed to an ongoing crisis in public confidence in
government evident in declining participation in the political process and increased public
dissatisfaction with government performance.
4
Convention