Moral Leadership and Administrative Statesmanship: Safeguards of Democracy in a Constitutional Republic

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2012.02588.x
• Date: 01 November 2012
• Author: Chad B. Newswander
• Published date: 01 November 2012

Chad B. Newswander is assistant

professor in the Department of Political

Science at the University of South Dakota.

His research interests include constitutional

governance, power and politics, and

domestic security.

E-mail: chad.newswander@usd.edu

866 Public Administration Review • November | December 2012

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 72, Iss. 6, pp. 866–874. © 2012 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.111/j.1540-6210.2012.02588.x.

Chad B. Newswander

University of South Dakota

 e pursuit of the common good must be understood

from the reality that governing is ugly.  e ability to

grapple with situations that are ambiguous requires

administrators to be cognizant of action that might be

suspect but n ecessary to accomplish the public interest.

 is often requires them to become active players. John

Rohr postulates that the U.S. Supreme Court’s standards

of strict scrutiny is one approach that could be used to

justify such action. Building on this line of thinking, the

strict scrutiny test can be used as a guide to shape the

constitutive character of administrative statesmanship

while simultaneously restraining it.  e ability to balance

formative action and restraint provides a dif‌f erent

dimension to an understanding of administrative states-

manship. Even though this process is not easy, it helps

administrators refrain from going beyond the mark and

enables them to act like statesmen in seemingly unresolv-

able situations.

Chief William P. Hazen of the Secret Service

division of the U.S. Treasury Department

unilaterally assigned operatives to protect

the president in the spring of 1894 despite not

having congressional approval to do so.  e decision

was based on information gathered from agents

in Colorado concerning a potential assassination

attempt against President Grover Cleveland.

Operatives who were tasked with protecting the

president were “instructed to stay in the vicinity of

the White House during the daytime and watch for

suspicious persons who might be Western gamblers,

Anarchists, or cranks; and in the evening they were to

attend meetings of Coxey’s Army, which was then in

town” (President’s Commission 1964, 777). Hazen’s

decision to assign the responsibilities of protecting the

president and searching for threats provided the foun-

dational elements for how the Secret Service would

come to protect the president (Kaiser 1988).

What made Hazen’s command so bold was that he

lacked the statutory authority to assign operatives

the task of protecting the president. Although the

need to guard the president might be clear from a

contemporary standpoint, this was not the case in

nineteenth-century America. In fact, the status of the

bodyguard was in disrepute (Ellis 2008; Melanson

and Stevens 2002; Seale 1986). It had been a long-

standing tradition, supported by Jef‌f ersonian ideals

of presidential openness, not to rely on a bodyguard

to secure the nation’s chief magistrate.  is was one

reason why Hazen did not go to Congress. He also

did not have the time to petition for permission, and

it would have been unlikely that the Secret Service

would have received authorization. In avoiding

this route, Hazen’s decision to push for a new

understanding of presidential protection resembled

an administrator trying to forge some degree of

autonomy and constitute a new state of af‌f airs in rela-

tion to a presidential bodyguard. Although his action

was not legal or socially permissible, Hazen took steps

to secure the common good by using resources at his

disposal to protect the president from an increasingly

dangerous situation.

Even though Hazen potentially acted like a statesman,

his actions raise several concerns regarding the proper

role of unelected of‌f‌i cials in a constitutional republic.

According to Herbert Storing, contemporary under-

standings of statesmanship are built on the principles

of populism/responsiveness and scientif‌i c manage-

ment/ef‌f‌i ciency (Bessette 1995). A brief application

of this view of statesmanship would quickly f‌i nd fault

with Hazen’s decision. His action might have been

ef‌f‌i cient, but he was not responsive to his elected

representatives or the people. He failed to balance the

twin values of responsibility and ef‌f‌i ciency. However,

Storing f‌i nds this understanding of statesmanship

to be problematic, even arguing that it “represents

a decay” (Bessette 1995, 406).  e issue with this

contemporary view is that it has become so prevalent

that it acts as a blinder to understanding older forms

of statesmanship rooted in nonpopulist and nonsci-

entif‌i c terms.  e twin pillars of popular opinion and

scientif‌i c management have become so prominent,

according to Storing, that they serve as “bedrock

principle[s] in which all else derives in American

Moral Leadership and Administrative Statesmanship:

Safeguards of Democracy in a Constitutional Republic