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This article examines the impact of the "neutral" or "honest" broker role in presidential decision making, particularly as applied to the job of National Security Council adviser. It provides further evidence of the positive and continuing contribution of the role to effective decision making, which has been expressed both in theory (Alexander George's formulation of the related concept of the "managerial custodian" in the 1970s) and in practice (the broker role of the Eisenhower-era NSC special assistants). At the same time, it considers the feasibility of additional tasks such as policy advocacy, public visibility, political watchdog, and operational assignments, which have been embraced, to varying degrees, by more recent NSC advisers but were largely absent in the Elsenhower era and rejected by George as appropriate to the custodian role. The article also examines the applicability of the broker role in light of differing presidential decision-making needs, different advisory structures, and the issue of bureaucratic leverage and personal influence. Attention to the broker role remains relevant not only in understanding classic decision failures (the expansion of troop commitments in Vietnam in 1965) and successes (Indochina in 1954) but in gaining perspective on more recent decisions, such as Iran-Contra during the Reagan years and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and issues surrounding its postwar reconstruction in the George W. Bush presidency.
Analysis of presidential decision making, particularly in the area of foreign and national security policy, has been a well-mined area of research. Much attention has focused on a range of variables thought to have some causal impact on and explanatory value for understanding presidential decision making: the organization and structure of decision-making processes, the impact of presidential personality, management, and leadership style, the development and effects of a White House-centered institutional presidency, the presence of bureaucratic politics and group dynamics, and the consequences of rational actors operating within institutionally defined parameters, to list just a few. However, with some important exceptions,1 relatively little attention has focused on how the particular roles of participants in presidential decision-making processes are defined and operate.
The Case for the Broker Role
Most notable has been the lack of attention to the place of the broker role in presidential decision making and the contributions that it might make to...