Ideologues and presidents

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How have ideologues - people drawn to politics by the force of ideas - influenced presidential administrations and even the presidency itself? In Ideologues and Presidents Thomas Langston approaches this question through case studies of three key presidents whose programs changed the direction of the modern domestic agenda. In chapters on Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan, Langston illustrates the important role of ideologues in national politics. In an epilogue on the Bush presidency, Langston demonstrates that ideologues, though they are often overlooked, are now too powerful to be kept out of even the most anti-ideological administrations. For Langston, these "people of ideas" form a class of political actors distinct not only from pragmatic professional politicians but also from nonideological "experts," with whom ideologues compete for power. Because they are appointed to their governmental positions, ideologues are not directly accountable to the electorate, but report only to the president himself. Whether liberal or conservative, Langston argues, they are a creative yet destructive force in policy making. During the "New Deal" and the "Great Society," strong political parties helped maintain a balance in policy making between interests and ideas. By the time of the Reagan administration, ideologues faced fewer partisan obstacles to turning private dogma into public policy. And the next president who decides to rewrite the nation's domestic agenda, Langston concludes, will likely give ideologues even greater power. Drawing on archival material, personal interviews, oral histories, government documents, and other primary sources, Langston presents the evidence from a variety of theoretical perspectives - among them, party-systems and de-alignment theory, "new class" theory, and anthropological approaches to ideology. With contemporary presidents increasingly dependent on the advice of unelected "people of ideas," Ideologues and Presidents provides an especially timely and provocative look at an issue with serious consequences for the future of American democracy.

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