The Dynamics of Presidential Reality Testing: Evidence from Two Vietnam Decisions
Just as plagues and famines are a boon for the advancement of certain medical specialties, the unhappy course of United States relations with Vietnam provides an intellectual bonanza for the study of the performance of American political institutions. In what follows we draw on evidence about United States decision making on Vietnam to address an important component of institutional performance -namely the capacity of key protagonists in the executive branch, particularly presidents and their advisers, to engage in effective reality testing. We do so to advance, argue, and provide illustrative evidence for a series of propositions that challenge, qualify, or support a variety of influential claims in the now largely separate literatures on presidential advising and presidential leadership, and that suggest ways of thinking about the interaction of the collective properties of presidential advisory systems and the individual properties of presidents themselves. We use the term reality testing not in any technical psychological sense, but rather to refer to issues bearing on the preconditions of well-informed, well-advised presidential decision making that arise in the literature on presidential advisory systems and on presidential leadership. Specifically, we ask of American decision making on Vietnam questions such as the following: How did presidents and their prin-