advancement. And governors were “ciphers” no more.
Table 1. Years of Public Service for U.S. Presidents
Table 2. Years of Public Service for U.S. Presidents
Why Hudson Progressives?
The modern presidency was built upon a demonstrable intensification of and emphasis on executive background, coupled with a sudden and related proliferation of governor-presidents. These were clustered as a group during late state development in the United States. New York's governors were particularly crucial figures in this era, and, as such, they began to be featured prominently in the national press. Their status as iconoclasts went as far back as Tilden, and the ensuing increase in press coverage from the last quarter of the nineteenth century through FDR demonstrates just how important New York's (and, to a lesser degree, New Jersey's) governors were in redefining the stature of state executives. As can be seen in the following chart, the significant contributions of Tilden, Cleveland, TR, and ultimately FDR are revealed in the increased press attention they garnered. The New York Times's increased coverage of New York's governors since the paper's inception through the governorship of FDR reveals the elevated status of this crucial cadre of state executives in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and beyond (see Figure 1).
A similar pattern of coverage for governors can be seen in other national papers as well, including the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post. This broader look at the Hudson executive influence will be taken up in Chapters 3 and 4.
Figure 1. Governors of New York and New York Times citations, 1851-1932
In looking to New York and New Jersey, this book explores a particular variety of progressive political development—namely, a Hudson strain linked to executive-led reform, disproportionate press and media influence, and a peculiar mix of large-scale, private, antidemocratic institutions and patronage opportunities. Coupled with enduring and expansive executive constitutional authority, these elements made the case of the Hudson Progressives unique. It was this combination of factors that gave the region's executives a superior platform to innovate at the state level, while playing the lead in invigorating the warrants of executive authority. They did this primarily and initially at the state level, while, in the process, accruing the greater share of presidential possibilities for themselves. It is therefore essential to examine these protagonists as some of the earliest exemplars of what would become modern presidential authority.
Conclusion
Given the rising importance of the governorship as part of the overall elevation in executive power in the United States, it is insufficient to consider modern executive authority to be solely a function of presidential practices. For instance, Wilson's threat to govern unconstitutionally and his appeals to the public were both innovations developed during his governorship (and patterned after other governors such as La Follette). The same can be said for TR's strengths as party leader, and, on occasion, party challenger. Nearly all the chief builders associated with the birth of modern presidential power were once governors whose policies and theories of governance were largely replicated later on the presidential stage. In turn, these governor-presidents influenced the practices of their gubernatorial counterparts, producing an intriguing dialectic in American executive politics. Moreover, as I will later describe, the bases of modern presidential leadership and practices were informed by other state executives as well. The shifting tectonic plates of executive authority converged around the nation's governors and its early modern presidents at the turn of the last century. To miss this is to overlook one of the important stories of American political development and the rise of American executive power.
Thus far, I have avoided making any normative arguments about the nature of this transformation in executive background as it applies to the modern presidency. I will take up this argument more directly in the conclusion of the book. In short, the relationship between prior executive office and the birth of the modern presidency begs new approaches to understanding the broad set of political, sociological, and economic factors driving the popular appeal of both state and national executives. The anomie of modern industrial society had its consequences for both individuals and the nature of the state. One of these consequences was the elevation of executive power as a counterweight to the large, faceless institutions that were increasingly prevalent in society. In the American context, this elevation of the executive grew primarily among Progressive Era governors who gained a host of new institutional powers and tools to stoke popular sentiment in their favor. This was a mutually induced process, as voters sought antimachine and often antiparty leaders often with extralegal (and at times anticonstitutional) perspectives on executive governance. While the rise of modern industrial capitalism in America brought its own staggering implications for the reshaping of republican values, so too did the emergence of the outsized executive. This is one of the great ironies of progressivism in America: it extolled the virtue of popular ends, but, in its untethering of executive power, simultaneously extolled the virtue of personalist leadership. We are still trying to untangle the benefits and costs of this transformation in American politics.
Chapter 1
Emerging Executives of the Second Republic, 1876–1912
I would go back as far as Hiram Johnson when he destroyed boss rule.
—Gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan, describing his party philosophy, 19661
In the end of course, there will be a revolution, but it will not come in my time.
—Hiram Johnson, 19202
Introduction
Just months into his first campaign for the presidency, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was forced to attend to some unfinished business in Albany. Despite his reluctance to assault his party or New York's political machine, FDR nonetheless confronted New York City's errant, albeit famously colorful mayor. For years, Jimmy Walker had provided ample ammunition to his political foes through his personal and political excesses. Over time, he had grown to personify graft and big city corruption. If Roosevelt were to win the Democratic nomination, he would have to satisfy the progressive elements of his party, who, since the time of Samuel J. Tilden, had come to expect the use of executive power as the chief means of protecting the people's trust. Moreover, as the historian Richard L. McCormick has noted, New York's increasingly powerful “governorship inevitably encouraged anyone who attained it to distance himself from the [Party] boss.”3 It was in this context that Roosevelt launched his late assault upon Walker, ultimately compelling the mayor's resignation.
The importance to late nineteenth-century politics of Roosevelt's row with Walker, which will be discussed more fully later, is its indebtedness to past executive practices. Here, the political legacy of New York's governors—and of Tilden specifically—figured into FDR's and the state's claims against Walker. It was Tilden who brought down Boss William Tweed some sixty years before Roosevelt's fight with Walker. That victory regained the power of removal for New York's governor—still a point of some contention in 1932.4 As Roosevelt's Seabury Commission argued to the state's attorney general at the time, “the justification for the position taken by [FDR] was actuated by the same considerations which served as guides for his illustrious predecessors, Governors Tilden, Cleveland and
