Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition: The Myth of Presidential Leadership

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

For over half a century, space advocates and presidents alike have tried to recreate the JFK moment of calling on the country to send a man to Moon — but is this a mistake? The classic book Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership argued that it is, and by focusing on presidential power alone advocates set up these initiatives to fail.  However, in the decades since its publication, presidential authority has dramatically expanded. In this episode, we examine this tension: Did the success of Apollo create a false expectation about the role of presidential leadership in spaceflight? How can a president most effectively set new long-term goals for NASA? Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/myth-of-presidential-leadership  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to the Space Policy edition of Planetary Radio. My name is Casey Dreyer. I am the chief of space policy here at the Planetary Society. I have a very nice, I think, end of year episode here for us all. I am joined by my colleague, Jack Carelli, the director of government relations here at the Planetary Society. And we are here to talk about something that is pretty relevant to us at this point in time, which is a book from 1997 called Space Flight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership,

edited by Roger Lownius and Howard McCurdy, two stalwart space policy historians that we have heard on this show and we've talked about on the show. But it's a book that's been very much in my mind as we approach the second Trump administration. And I think it is, despite its age, has some interesting things to say, but also reveals a certain change in approach and ideas of the role of presidential leadership, since it was published in the late 90s. Before we get to that, Jack, hello. Thank you for joining me this month. Hi, Casey. It's great to be here. You have just come back from a lot of travel, doing a lot of work representing us.

We've been busy since the election, preparing for the incoming Congress and incoming administration. Jack, is there anything you want to tell listeners to this show, maybe even members of the Planetary Society about ways they can participate sometime next year about if you have thoughts or commitments to space exploration in this country, if you live in the US, what could they possibly do? So I will say it is a very exciting time to be part of this journey of space exploration and scientific discovery in our solar system and beyond. If this is something that is important to you, I highly, highly, highly recommend you join us in Washington, DC for our day of action, March 24th, 2025. And the timing couldn't be better.

Casey, you and I were joking about this the other day. Our timing has been impeccable. The last few days of action, this one notwithstanding. Right now we are potentially facing down another continuing resolution in the Congress through March of 2025, meaning that our day of action is going to be right before potentially a big funding deadline. Still some dates are in flux. So if you want to have an impact, that's when you get involved. This is one of the best ways that our members can make a difference in space policy.

And if you want to see this future in space that we talk about on this show and that you hear on Planetary Radio all the time, Day of Action, March 24th, mark your calendars, go to planetary.org slash day of action and sign up today. Book your flights, get your hotel room. We're gearing up for the new Congress and there's gonna be a lot of opportunities to shape the future of space policy in the incoming administration and the incoming Congress. I'm there, Jack. I'm gonna be there too. I'm looking forward to a day of action, March 24th at Washington DC. More details to come, but you can sign up and register now. And if you do sign up and register now, you will get a discount compared to later in January when

prices go up to the full amounts. So I highly encourage you to do as we will talk about. There is a lot going on. And as you highlight, they will be a double this basically a two-for-one budget situation. Good to talk about FY 25 and FY 26 at the same time. So you know, what a good bang for your buck if you come and join us to advocating at the day of action in Washington, DC, March 24th, planetary.org slash day of action. Jack, I was thinking a lot about this book, Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership. It's a book that I'd say most, do you think still space policy graduate students are assigned or at least read from as?

If they went through the same program I did. Yes, it is. I mean, this is one of those books that is written by the greats, Roger Lanius, Howard McCurdy, John Logsdon's got a couple pieces in here. Like this is quintessential space policy reading material. I Think it's one of those books that and we'll talk here about it You don't have to have read it to listen to this episode It helps to have read it but you don't have to and you can find it online or you can actually find it on

Archive org you can rent it you can can check it out to browse and borrow. It's a book that, particularly for its time, attempted to evaluate this idea that I think a lot of us who are in space, particularly those space advocates, have in their head about the role of the president and also Our expectations for what presidents should or shouldn't be able to do through their role as as in that office but as a function of what we've internalized I

think maybe subconsciously for most of us Which is John F Kennedy standing before a joint session of Congress in March of 1961, calling for the US to go to the moon and return by the end of the decade. And then Apollo happens, right? We see this in the past, you know, through the lens of history. And then forever kind of expecting that we need a presidential impetus. And if only the president cared in the way JFK did, we would have the next Apollo moment. We'd have our mission to Mars, our mission to even return to the moon. And this book attempts to evaluate that role of what is the president's responsibility? What are the limits of presidential power?

And I would even add, since it's been published, how those limits have changed and evolved. And specifically, we can kind of think about this in the incoming administration that we have. And we'll make it clear that we don't really know what the explicit priorities are in terms of space policy yet. So this is a book, I think, very timely in the sense of what we can expect about how much a president, someone like Trump, can do from an individual perspective. Jack, reading through this book, maybe we can go back to younger Jack, wide-eyed, ambitious, optimistic graduate student

at American University in what year would that have been? 20, 2015? 2016. All the way again, almost 10 years ago. Don't remind me of that. I love that. I was already working at the Society by then. What was this book like when you read it? Was this something that took you by surprise,

or was this this idea? Did you already have a skeptical relationship to this idea of the president as the prime mover of space policy? It definitely took me by surprise. That is one of those and you said it very well, they're sort of subconscious understandings that we have about the creation and and success of space policy that if you just have one president that cares a lot about this thing and gives enough

good speeches that kind of a very Sorkin-esque the West Wing, right, one really good speech changes the world. And in reality, what this book details is all of the factors, all of the the confluence of all the other areas of government, not just within the executive, but involving the Congress, involving the relationship internationally, talking about the competition with the Soviet Union at the time, and really delving into some of these themes that led to the success of the space program, but is not widely talked about or understood, because it's not as easy as president gives a great speech to a joint session of Congress. And not to say that those things don't matter, but they're part of a overall formula, right, that can maybe be replicated in the future, given the

right circumstances, to eventually get successful space policy. But we've seen a number of experiments in space policy from shuttle to Starlab to space station freedom, now the ISS, that evolved, that had to evolve through the political process. It's not as clear of a causality connection, I think, in terms of how our brains, I'm always interested, you know, our brains are our hominid brains evolved to say, you know, one thing causes another thing to happen a very, you know, direct kind of causal agents. And so I think the use of the word myth in the title is very subtle. It's not myth in the sense that it's false, which I think we kind of colloquially use

myth in language today. But it's myth is then the narrative seductive role of it, that there's this mythic presidential leadership aspect to ensuring space flight and, you know, broadly, wildly ambitious space flight programs. And it was a seductive myth. And I think to your point for a long time, and I probably still, to a certain degree, presidents are, or people, you know, space advocates will want this or, and sometimes presidents try it, try to recreate this Kennedy

moment in terms of the superficial surface level presentation of it in that they go up and they state something. So that comes to mind would be Reagan, for example, during the 1984 State of the Union address where he called for space station freedom, kind of trying to replicate, you know, he's standing before in a sense, a joint session of Congress is for the State of the Union, or George H.W. Bush calling for the space exploration initiative to send humans to the moon on the 20th anniversary of Apollo and then on to Mars. And both of those efforts foundered to some degree, obviously, space eventually worked, but it kind of suffered for many years before it kind of survived, you know, it morphed into a post

Cold War project between US and Russia. And the point that Lownius and McCurdy are making in this book that is emphasized by the more detailed historical analysis of these various presidential space policy activities up through George H.W. Bush give this idea that there's more complexity as you say, that it in a sense where success happened with Apollo was due to a highly unusual historical aberration, an alignment of various historical threads that united and to kind of almost overdetermine that the moon That we had to go to the moon whether or not Kennedy gave a speech

But those were all missed in the sense that just this visual sense this myth like the president Says we should do this and then by gum we go and do it that seems like a Some aspect of this must happen with everyone who studies political science at some level, right? That this side, the actual messiness of creating policy in a democracy is not the satisfying West Wing style narratives that we crave. And I wonder if that actually ultimately leads to a lot of tension in modern society and frustration with our own democracies and here and around the world because of that. It definitely does. I think a lot of people who come in wide-eyed, whether it's in space or other

areas, I mean, I see this translate to other areas of public policy. I think very famously, President Obama's moonshot, right? That sort of tasking the then Vice President Biden with looking for a cure for cancer, right? Even the name, the moonshot. Moonshot, not actually going to the moon, but doing something else. Yeah. But hey, executive action. I'm the head of the government. I declare that this is going to happen in a big speech to Congress and therefore it

will happen. And I think a lot of people go into it seeing that as this this prime example of the way that government quote unquote, you can't see but I have the biggest air quotes on screen of this is the way it's supposed to work. And in a way it kind of is right, it's the confluence of a number of factors, congressional leadership also buying in the defense sector, buying in international factors being taken into account, that it does happen. But it isn't just that one, that impetus of that one speech or that one proclamation.

And I will note, I think really, I mean, since Kennedy gave the speech to the joint session of Congress and the subsequent Rice University speech, that every president since then has, I think aside from President Biden, has given a major proclamation. Even then, I would say President Biden's unveiling of the first James Webb images might be up there as one of those proclamation moments, not in the same vein as your space exploration initiative or vision for space exploration or President Obama's speech at Kennedy Space Center in the fall of 2009.

But every president gets that moment and they want to capture that enthusiasm and it's seen as an opportunity to advance some other qualities that the administration wants to promote, whether that's leadership abroad or scientific discovery or engineering prowess. But it fits in those narratives, right, for each of those administrations. It's seductive in that it gives them, it probably feels really good to say it. You know, if you're the president, you stand up,

I declare we will move heaven and earth in order to get to the moon. And the moment I'm gonna get a bunch of applause, wow, you know, what a head rush. But at the end of the day It requires this much longer Much more frustrating process for it to succeed even partially. I'll quote from the book

That puts this in maybe more Condensed terms than I'm capable of doing it off the top of my head But it calls this says that the book reveals how the illusion of presidential government affected public policy Not unexpectedly this illusion created expectations that could not be satisfied space advocates pressed for the salvation that presidential leadership seemed to provide and You know, I remember when I was younger And and my my bright-eyed bushy-tail era of just you know, I remember when I was younger, and my bright-eyed bushy-tail era

of just, you know, thinking, if only we had, you know, a president who just really wanted to go to space or do this or do that. And besides the relative disinterest of most presidents in this activity, I think to your point, it's a much bigger and hairier problem with few immediate political benefits. And I think that's always the issue here. One of the aspects of this, and I think this is what ties this interpretation of the book into the moment we're at now, is this idea of the imperial presidency, which, I mean, I don't know how you can summarize it as like the kind of a growing series of powers associated with the office of president that maybe

extend beyond the original intent of the of the founders and framers of the Constitution that the the president is imbued with some pretty awesome power I mean particularly once ICBMs existed and nuclear weapons that they could end all life on earth if they wanted to. Sole authority. So that's you know I'd say a notable expansion of presidential power weapons that they could end all life on earth if they wanted to. Soul authorities. So that's, you know, I'd say a notable expansion of presidential power. But this idea, as it's discussed at this point in 1996, is fascinating because it seemed to be an ebb of presidential power. They write about it, and this is what I think makes this book, I don't know if I fully agree with this book anymore, at least in the framing of it.

The basic chapters within are just a wonderful piece of historical analysis and irrelevant regardless. But the framing of this, I question more, because it's written at this time, this is I guess at the start of Bill Clinton's second term. It is the post-Cold War, pre-911 era of American hegemony in the world. You know, your kind of classic end of history moment. And they keep talking about how well, obviously, presidential power has only been diminishing since Nixon. Like Nixon, you know, maybe was the apex of presidential power and it's really just been on this downward

Trend since then they've been stymied by Congress over and over again That is not how I would describe presidential power in terms of a directionality since the 21st century And I'd say notably because of the 9-eleven attacks with the war and terror you had W. Bush and then pretty much every president subsequently asserting some novel and to various degrees, some novel new interpretation of their power and ability to act absent congressional authority. And to the point where we're coming in with this new Trump administration, what we've seen with how they intend to, at least how they're saying, they intend to focus with the Department they're saying that they intend to focus

with the Department of Government Efficiency and this idea that most of it will be done through executive power alone. We're purposely not interested in working with Congress. It's almost we have this new sense of the imperial presidency extended over the last 20 years that was just purely not considered at the time this book was written. Rereading this now and I mean what first reading it you know 10 years ago actually nine and a half years ago okay not even that's not a decade. Reading this again now I think it did sort of strike me as a little bit aspirational I don't say but more, hey, we're reaching this new equilibrium of presidential power has been curtailed and Congress reigns supreme. And I mean, certainly you would come to the same conclusion in 1995, 1996, when you were

writing this book, given sort of the change in power dynamic following the Reagan administration and then the 1994 sort of change in balance of power with the sort of ascension of Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House. You saw a very strong Congress and an executive that was not as involved in those big proclamations. But what I find interesting too is that since this book has come out, right, 25-ish years or longer, geez, it's 2024, 28 years almost, that you have now sort of reverted back to a very strong presidency. But yet a lot of US space policy is still shaped on the congressional level.

Certainly the first Trump administration sort of disproved that theory quite a bit with the the numerous executive actions, I believe six executive decisions by the administration plus the sort of reinstitution of the National Space Council and all the work that they did under Vice President Pence. But even outside of that, I mean, you look at what we just celebrated earlier this year, Europa Clipper, right? The launch of the largest, physically largest flagship mission that the US has ever built and sent anywhere

in the solar system. And that happened because of congressional power. The executive, the administration, actively worked against a Europa mission in the beginning of the last decade. So I think it's the role of space policy as a function of executive authority, despite the sort of increasing abilities and powers vested in the executive is also maybe something interesting to look at because it's not necessarily seen as that same moonshot initiative. It is seen more as maybe space doesn't rise to the level of interest to a lot of administrations and they sort of push off the major decisions to Congress.

Or maybe we just haven't had the space advocate president, right? Quite yet, in the same way as maybe you could say that Kennedy or Johnson or Nixon maybe sort of embraced space as this vehicle for societal change and technological change and developing sort of the US hegemony abroad. We'll be right back with the rest of our Space Policy edition of Planetary Radio after this short break. Greetings, Bill Nye here. 2024 was another great year for the Planetary Society thanks to support from people like you.

This year we celebrated the natural wonders of space with our Eclipsarama event in the Texas Hill Country. Hundreds of us, members from around the world, gathered to witness totality. We also held a Search for Life Symposium at our headquarters here in Pasadena and had experts come together to share their research and ideas about life in the universe.

And finally, after more than 10 years of advocacy efforts, the Europa Clipper mission is launched and on its way to the Jupiter system. With your continued support, we can keep our work going strong into 2025. When you make a gift today, it will be matched up to $100,000 thanks to a special matching challenge from a very generous Planetary Society member. Your contribution, especially when doubled, is critical to expanding our mission. Now is the time to make a difference before years end at planetary.org slash planetary

fund. As a supporter of the Planetary Society, you make space exploration a reality. Thank you. Europa Clipper is an interesting counterpoint that, you're right, it was very much spearheaded by a small one or two members of Congress. And there's been other science missions like that, the one that tested, I'm forgetting the name off the top, the general relativity mission that launched around Earth. There are still opportunities and clearly, and I wonder if the unitary executive or imperial president works better when you have the same party controlling Congress as is in the White House.

And when you have, when you don't have that, then suddenly at least some aspects of Congress want to reassert themselves. At the same time, I feel like another here's another way to maybe measure this. The rate of which congressional NASA authorizations has fallen off. Where up through basically 94 with the Gingrich Republican Revolution, Congress would have an annual bill authorizing the activities of NASA and authorizing certain amount of appropriations that then would be appropriated by, you know, appropriately enough the appropriators.

That used to be very common broadly, right throughout government. Now the only agency that has an annual authorization anymore is the National Defense Authorization. And that's just because it's almost so big that everyone wants a piece of it. You know, this is like an $800 billion authorization. But that drop of congressional authorizations that because they don't have to happen, appropriations have to but authorizations don't have to happen. Appropriations have to, but authorizations don't. NASA doesn't cease to exist if it's not operating without an authorization bill. That's reducing congressional

power, right? They have a legislative opportunity, they have a legislative pathway to assert their policy positions and they generally choose to not do it. And I forget exactly how many years now that has been in the last 30 years without an authorization. They do multi-year authorizations now, which cover some of this. But clearly, you know, there is some, I don't know if I'd say intentional, but measurable ways in which Congress itself has abrogated its responsibilities in the policy sphere. It's almost easier in some ways to turn it over to a centralized executive who does have that and doesn't have to go through as much of a frustrating give-and-take process that, you know, to build the coalition necessary to enable this. But then at the same time, without that process, the executive power is ultimately

kind of limited to the duration of that executive, you know, four to eight years. And maybe that's the other flip side here, right, is that Apollo survived, again, through almost historical accident in that JFK was assassinated. A successor in his own party assumed office and Apollo got wrapped up in both the moment but also the legacy of the president they were trying to honor that helped carry it through. And you know, you had Congress bought in already but absent that you don't know how anything that started by a singular executive can be as easily removed by the subsequent one and that's ultimately not a great place if you have multi-decadal commitments.

Efforts. Yeah, to pursue. Yeah, I think maybe one of the areas, though, that has also changed quite significantly, you mentioned authorizations, appropriation has changed significantly. The role of appropriations reports and the ability to legislate through that effort has also,

I think, changed and become more common, especially when it comes to space. I mean, you can look at any number of potential threats of cancellation of missions throughout NASA's history that were undone, not necessarily through an authorization, but through, you know, administration. You say you want to cancel this? Well, cancel these funds that we're going to send your way. And the Budget Act of 1976, and the requirement for the administration to spend the funds that are appropriated to it, I think is that check, one of those checks, right, that the Congress has on sort of unfettered power of the executive to make a declaration that we are no longer going to pursue X project of my predecessor and going to start this

new project. And I think we've seen because there is so much work being done behind the scenes by advocates, and not just of space in general, but of administration priorities, taking a look really at the Artemis program. Its survival through a pretty contentious presidential transition from the first Trump administration to the Biden administration, I think is a testament to the congressional buy-in that the folks behind it developed, right? And the building of the international relationships and I think maybe knowing some of the folks behind it developed, right? And the building of the international relationships and I think maybe knowing some of the folks involved knowing that some of them have certainly read this book because they assigned it in

class indicates that there is some staying power to this theory of, I guess, maybe a multifaceted executive, not one that is just solely based on that one individual, the president, saying to Congress, I want to send people to the moon. But rather it is that president having that larger vision that maybe space fits into that then the sort of rank and file of that administration can use that as an opportunity to develop lasting programs. Something like Artemis. Yeah. Artemis is so strange though, because it was in a way, yeah. I mean, this is almost the counterpoint to this or the essence of maybe this book in that Artemis was already kind of happening,

even though no one talked about it under Obama. You were developing the SLS. I mean, they were developing a moon, despite calling it the journey to. I mean, they were developing a moon, despite calling it the journey to Mars, everyone knew they were building a moon rocket, a moon capsule with Orion. You know, they tried to send it anywhere else they couldn't, you know, it just, they were building moon hardware, basically, just no one could say it.

And Artemis just admitted what was already happening and then added some extra stuff on top of it to maybe set the focus back to where it was always supposed to be. Maybe that helped it survive. You know, I'm going back and forth though because at the same time I'm keying on this idea of leadership and I wonder if that's worth pausing on for a second where presidential leadership could mean a number of different things. And this is what made me think about this when you were just talking about these different ways an executive branch can move agendas forward. Being out there and giving a big speech

and being high profile and you know that's I think our in again this intuitive sense of yes, we have a leader who's going to state things and be very stately about it and impressive. But that's almost in a way, the worst possible thing you could do as the president if you wanted to have a long new commitment being made for any program, because I think just it would visually associate it with them so much that this is where we have, I think, these challenges of induced polarization on an issue. If the president really graphs onto something, this is my issue, it becomes an issue for their party, which means that the opposition party is like very hesitant to embrace it

as well. It actually might drive them away. If Obama had gone up and said, I want to return to the moon, I want to call this project Artemis, I think there's a good chance that the Republican Congress would never have funded it. Maybe, maybe that's maybe too strong. But it's, you know, when you have a when you have an oppositional Congress to you, leadership has to almost express itself in a more subtle way. Like they have to be the executive branch has to buy in, but maybe they

don't want to be the ones out front visibly. Well, the the big speech to Congress or to Rice University or wherever is a tool in the toolbox, right? For in it for any given administration, I think maybe you touched on a very great point with this sort of induced opposition. This is all also a function. We live in a polarized partisan world. Some of the highest level of polarization, partisan allegiance that we've seen in generations. Although the 1960s aren't known for being without their moments of civil unrest. Politically speaking, you had liberal Republicans

and conservative Democrats working together or working against each other, but working with folks of the opposing party to pass things like the Civil Rights Act. This book highlights the collapse of partisanship as a historical trend, which again, growing up subsequent to this seems insane. Like, it's just a wild they said there's always been just downward trends since the 1800s of partisanship and Kennedy they said fascinatingly every initiative that Kennedy passed was some cobbled together ad hoc coalition of

Exactly the types of factions you you mentioned it was not partisan votes It just wasn't just did not operate in the same way. And that has been a profound shift since this book really came out about how, we're in that functional inverse of that situation now. To be bipartisan is to welcome a primary challenger in your next election and you will possibly lose as not being pure

enough and that's a completely different than set of decisions to make when you think about supporting some broad presidential initiative here. Right. I mean you can trace a lot of that back to 1994 Republican Revolution. I wonder if while they were writing this book that that was a consideration was, is this a major, I don't know if, I mean, I think I've lived through a number of unprecedented historical events and I don't think of them as unprecedented historical events while they're happening. But now looking back on them and I think in the context of this book, looking back on 1994 election, they thought it was a blip in the radar, and that it would eventually dissipate and

that that was not the direction that things were going the swinging of the pendulum back towards the sort of hyper partisan environment that we currently exist in. But yet, despite all that, we still have bipartisan agreement on space. But there's, I feel like many more caveats in making sure that certain programs continue to exist because it benefits a specific district or state, despite how that impacts the overall vision for space policy

that maybe an administration might set forward. So these hobbled together coalition still exist when it comes to space. It just, I think some of the finer details take a different shape. And just to go back a little bit, I mean, just to think that the 2010 authorization set in motion really what became the Artemis program, but so many of the sort of the big picture

space policy initiatives that we're talking about now and to have now the current NASA administrator be one of the original patrons of that bill is quite interesting. But the political and policy environment has shifted so much. This was pre or this was post selection of the commercial cargo and commercial crew programs. selection of the commercial cargo and commercial crew programs. Yet they had yet to be author, if I remember the, my history correctly, they had yet to be fully authorized in legislation. That's what happened in 2008 and 2010 and those authorization acts. Shuttle was still flying when they were writing the 2010 authorization. And yet now we exist in now and the sort of expectations of what our program, what the roles of the

program and the capabilities of the program are. And that I think, and we can start talking about the future if you want, is starting to shift in some of the public narratives that we're seeing with the sort of growth of commercial space endeavors that I don't think the authors of the book could have necessarily seen in 1995 and 1996. I wonder if the way to think about this is the role of the presidential leadership I think can be very good for starting things and they discussed that to some degree in this,

that it's a good, I was thinking about it in an Aristotelian sense, the prime mover of space initiatives is the president. But once something has been passed into law, the president has a hard time stopping things just on their own from an executive position. So that's an interesting imbalance of what they are able to bring. I think, you know, this book starts with a pretty skeptical view of presidential power,

not just from a I think philosophical, but just in terms of its effectiveness. And again, I just don't know if I fully agree with that. Because I mean, just to start, you know, from the power of the president to start things, you know, even though space station freedom didn't work, we still got the ISS. George W. Bush proposed to end the space shuttle and it ultimately did propose to go back to the moon. And even though that didn't work, it led to ultimately the creation of a moon rocket, even though the subsequent administration didn't really want it. And as you said, Trump first term started the Artemis project and got enough buy-in from that to sustain it moving forward

that wouldn't have happened just from Congress. So it's almost as if the role of Congress is not good at starting things because it's hard to get this critical mass of individuals who are all roughly at the same, you know, those hierarchies but all roughly the same power versus the president has a way to direct that energy somewhere. But then at the same time, you need to get a coalition to stop stuff. And so this is maybe why we have maybe some of the frustrations with inefficiencies that we see or projects that that maybe don't

function as well as we'd like them to. I think this is going to be fascinating moving forward. So in the last few minutes here, let's talk about the incoming Trump administration has talked openly about adding power to the executive, specifically through this impoundments clause, this idea that the president can stop funding something if they choose to. The executive can decline to spend money

appropriated to it by Congress, which I think even you can hear in the context of this discussion is a pretty radical reinterpretation of presidential power, which would shift things around, right, that you could, a single person could just say, nope, I'm going through that whole coalition process. Hey, Congress, I know you wrote me this check

for this moon rocket, but I'm not gonna cash it. And that would add an ability for the individual executive to stop something, you know, to some degree. But again, this is where I keep going back to the more you invest in the executive, I think you just get less consistency between administrations. Because you also have a diminishing relationship between the executive and Congress. Well, yeah, coalitions are pain in the butt. But once you get the buy in, they're really powerful. And otherwise you by hyper focusing on executive power for

in this case, we're just talking about space. You open up to a high degree of variability, I think, in terms of what those policies then are going forward subsequently, because you don't have that buy in. And if you've invested so much, I've been talking about this with people, it's like modeling a group is easier than modeling an individual in terms of, you're able to smooth out all the variabilities

of individuals, but if you're trying to model an individual's behavior, that can be very difficult over time. And by investing a single person or the president in total or significant control of more space policy, I think you'll get much more variable space policy as a consequence. Unless there's some very compelling reason beyond that for a potentially oppositional party to take over. Well, and then also you have the reality that NASA is 0.38% of the federal budget, or less than one-tenth of one percent of all federal spending, including the mandatory social

security and Medicare spending. That's not going to take up the majority of any administration's brain space. And so you need not just the coalitions for the longevity of these programs, but to have the constancy of purpose as well. Because somebody of the 535 members of the Congress give or take a few depending on vacancies, you need those, at least one of those people is going to be paying attention. Whether it's our Planetary Science Caucus Co-Chairs, or attention, whether it's our Planetary Science Caucus Co-Chairs, or heads of appropriation subcommittees or just a given member who really cares about one program or another. And I think that balance leads to the survival of these programs, but also in maintaining that direction.

It's going to be fascinating to see where we go. Just to wrap this up, this this theme of again the the book itself presents the concept of this myth as a desirable one for space advocates that the lesson learned Was from JFK that we need a stronger executive that we need a this imperial presidency as they frame it in order to carry us forward that is the only way. And I see that basically, I'd say, presenting itself coming into this next presidency,

at least in terms of how I'm not really taking a stand on this yet, but this idea that, particularly for people who really are into this new kind of commercial aspect of space and efficiency and the incredible capabilities that have developed and are really irritated by legacy programs like the SLS that are more of a product of this coalitional mindset. I think there's a certain level of giddiness for, you know, now that we also know that the incoming administrator nominee, Jared Isaacman, shares at least a philosophical approach to efficiency and himself as CEO. I mean, CEOs Isaacman, shares at least a philosophical approach to efficiency and himself

as CEO. I mean, CEOs and entrepreneurs, they are their own imperial presidents of their domains, right? They have the power. There's no, in the similar way, there's no Congress to dividing power among themselves. You know, they have the, they call the shots for the most part, particularly in privately held companies. And you see this desire almost of we just need this singular decisive executive, whether it's administrator or president to say, you know, to cut the BS and to make things work a certain way. And it takes me right back to this framing of JFK calling for Apollo to the moon. If only we had a strong enough imperial-style president who can muscle this idea through a recalcitrant,

feckless Congress or something, then we'll see the future we want to see. And this is where, even though this book came out almost three decades ago, I feel a strong relevance to it because of how the powers associated with presidency have been inverted over the interim time. And I just, I don't even know exactly what, at the end of the day, I just think that that is ultimately a self-defeating strategy in that you need a strong executive to corral and lead the start of an initiative, but then ultimately do need to go through that coalition building process, however messy it can be if you want something to subsist for decades. And until that happens, it doesn't matter how effective

they are at the beginning unless they get that buy in. Right. I mean, that's, that's, I think, cuts to the core of you can have a strong executive, but also work in coalition with your other branches of government that do. I will remind everyone, and I think if appropriators had the microphone, they would remind you too, that they hold the purse strings. I think every one of them has the section of the constitution enumerating that power on their website. So they are the first to remind you. And it's true. At the end of the day.. And even if you know, even if they kind of claim this impoundments clause, we can say we don't know exactly what the Supreme Court would say this would go to the Supreme Court.

I think the vast majority of people are pretty confident the Supreme Court would not grant that right. Even if it's one more conservative Supreme Court, it probably you know, it's probably too far and too clear in the Constitution to say otherwise. Right. It would be a extreme shift in authority of the executive. That again would cut both ways. It sure would. You know, an opposition party come into power again. So it's, you're right, it diffuses, you know, having a diffused power structure is probably good for the long run, as seductive

as it can be in the short term. We're just getting back to like American democracy 101. We end up writing the federalist papers here. But yeah. There's a reason it's persisted as long as it has. Right. I think with everything that we're seeing in democracy writ large, right, you see these ebbs and flows and the pendulum swings. And I think that there's certainly a major shift in one direction will invite a reaction from likely an opposition party or opposition candidate in the next election. And so it'll be interesting to watch this unfold and how that influences space policy. As we have a Congress that is chomping at the bit on both sides of the aisle, in both chambers to pass a new authorization and get appropriations for NASA and other parts of the

government done with the new administration. So it'll be interesting to track. It's great that we get to talk about this and I can't wait to write the sequel. We'll check in in four years and see all of our future tents here. Jack, thank you for joining me this month. It's been a great year working with you and thank you to all of our members of the Planetary Society and listeners to the Space Policy edition. I literally mean this. We cannot do this without you. We would not have jobs and we would need to do other things. So we are grateful for your support.

Planetary.org slash join if you want to become a member or planetary.org slash day of action if you want to join me and Jack in Washington DC March 24th 2025 Jack until next time we will talk about hopefully we'll see the ongoing discussions of the role of the presidential leadership but it's important to think about why we feel we want certain things and how effective they are in the long term. And starting something is a lot easier than making it actually work and implementing it. Then year five or six of the implementation plan. As we're finding out with Artemis at this very point. So we will check in on where this is in a few years. Until next month, Jack, add Astra. Add Astra, Casey. Thank you for having me.

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