June 15, 2007
Imperial Presidencies II Posted by John Steele Gordon at 02:15 PM EST As Joshua Zeitz notes, the late Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., coined the phrase “the imperial presidency” in 1973. It seems to me that people usually start to worry about an overreaching White House when the other party is in power there, and that the other two branches of the government—not exactly averse to wielding power themselves—can be counted on to keep executive imperialism under control. The Founding Fathers, after all, knew what they were about. But the phrase always reminds me of one of the sillier incidents of the Nixon presidency. On January 27th, 1970, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was greeted at the White House by White House guards decked out in snappy new uniforms. Nixon, apparently, had been impressed with the uniforms worn by the presidential and royal guards who had greeted him on a European tour the previous year. He ordered the sprucing up of the White House police, who had until then been dressed more or less like ordinary American policemen. The uniforms featured double-breasted white tunics with lots of gold braid, a black gunbelt and holster, and black vinyl, gold trimmed hats that Time magazine thought looked like something that might be worn by a cross between a Belgian customs inspector and Prince Danilo in The Merry Widow. The New York Times described the get-ups as “dazzling new operetta-like uniforms” and thought the White House police looked distinctly sheepish wearing them. It also noted that they had been designed by a Washington tailor named Jimmie Muscatello, whose downtown store featured a sign in its window saying “Pants cuffed free while you wait.” When the pictures of the White House ceremony hit the TV news programs and the newspapers, the entire nation collapsed as one in helpless mirth. The new uniforms soon disappeared, beginning with the hats, which were never seen again. If the United States is to have an imperial presidency, it seems it will have to be clothed in workaday, republican garb.
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