Posted by Walter Bornemanon October 13, 2008 3:15 PM
More on presidential leadership: Richard Norton Smith on Principled Pragmatism
Among the 42 men who have been president of the United States, there have been micro-managers and big-picture visionaries. James K. Polk was one president who was effective as both.
Elected as a Democrat from Tennessee in 1844, Polk has long been characterized as a dark horse. In fact, he was everything but. Before becoming president, Polk served fourteen years in Congress--four as speaker of the house; had been governor of Tennessee; a candidate for vice president in 1840; and the logical western state choice to balance presumptive nominee Martin Van Buren of New York in 1844. When Van Buren went down to defeat in a convention divided over the annexation of Texas, Polk rode a white horse out of the chaos.
Scholarly Polk was a stickler for details all his life. As a young attorney in Nashville, he once criticized an older San Houston for attempting the execution of a judgment from a North Carolina court that was "incomplete, and not authenticated in the manner required." For his part, the much looser Houston is supposed to have observed that Polk was "a victim of the use of water as a beverage."
Somber and sober, Polk carried his attention to detail throughout his political career, earning respect from friends and foes alike whether he was presiding over the House of Representatives or managing the myriad of supporters and issues necessary to survive the cutthroat politics of Tennessee.
"I intend to be myself President of the United States," Polk told one of his Tennessee confidants after his election, discounting rumors that he would be Andrew Jackson's or anyone else's pawn. Then, Polk took the unprecedented step of insisting that his cabinet appointees pledge not only to support the Democratic platform, but also to refrain from seeking the presidency in their own right. If you run, Polk told them, you must resign from the cabinet.
On the other hand, James K. Polk never let executive details, political infighting, or public opinion distract him from the very specific goals--"four great measures" he called them--that he enumerated for his administration: the resolution of the decades-old joint occupation of the Oregon country with Great Britain; the acquisition of California and an expanse of the Southwest; the reduction of the tariff that was crippling the southern economy; and the creation of an independent treasury system immune from recent national bank wars.
While some questioned Polk's foreign policy of going to war with Mexico to acquire California, he maneuvered the British out of Oregon without a shot and by both actions almost doubled the size of the country. His tariff compromise survived for a contentious ante-bellum decade and his treasury re-organization remained in effect until the present Federal Reserve System was created in 1913.
When Secretary of State James Buchanan grew uneasy over the thought of wars on two fronts and procrastinated over a response to Great Britain during the Oregon debate, Polk used one of his twice-weekly cabinet meetings to command Buchanan into action. The president then confided to his diary: "The truth is, Mr. Buchanan has from the beginning been, as I think, too timid and too fearful of war on the Oregon question, and has been most anxious to settle the question by yielding and making greater concessions than I am willing to make."
Polk's executive office was miniscule by later standards--when his only full-time secretary took a rare vacation, the president relied on Mrs. Polk or borrowed a clerk from the Navy Department. But Polk rarely allowed himself to become overwhelmed, never feared delegating, and always demanded accountability in return. "I have made myself acquainted with the duties of the subordinate [Cabinet] officers," Polk wrote late in his term, "and have probably given more attention to details than any of my predecessors."
There is much evidence to suggest that James K. Polk--never a terribly vigorous soul--was run ragged by the strains of the presidency. In The Imperial Presidency, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. suggested only somewhat tongue in cheek that Polk was "the only President who clearly died of overwork." Barely three months after leaving the White House, having announced in accepting the nomination that he would serve only one term, Polk was dead of cholera at 53.
But by minding the details without taking his eye off his major goals, James K. Polk left a political legacy that transformed both the executive power of the presidency and the geography of the American nation.
Historian Walter R. Borneman's most recent book is Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America (Random House, 2008).
