Download or read book The Cult of the Presidency written by Gene Healy and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2009 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intro -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers -- 2. "Progress" and the Presidency -- 3. The Age of the Heroic Presidency -- 4. Hero Takes a Fall -- 5. Superman Returns -- 6. War President -- 7. Omnipotence and Impotence -- 8. Why the Worst Get on Top ... and Get Worse -- 9. Toward Normalcy -- Afterword: Our Continuing Cult of the Presidency -- Notes -- About the Author -- Cato Institute

Download or read book The Cult of the Presidency written by Gene Healy and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2009-05-01 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bush years have given rise to fears of a resurgent Imperial Presidency. Those fears are justified, but the problem cannot be solved simply by bringing a new administration to power. In his provocative new book, The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy argues that the fault lies not in our leaders but in ourselves. When our scholars lionize presidents who break free from constitutional restraints, when our columnists and talking heads repeatedly call upon the “commander in chief ” to dream great dreams and seek the power to achieve them—when voters look to the president for salvation from all problems great and small—should we really be surprised that the presidency has burst its constitutional bonds and grown powerful enough to threaten American liberty? Interweaving historical scholarship, legal analysis, and trenchant cultural commentary, The Cult of the Presidency traces America’s decades-long drift from the Framers’ vision for the presidency: a constitutionally constrained chief magistrate charged with faithful execution of the laws. Restoring that vision will require a Congress and a Court willing to check executive power, but Healy emphasizes that there is no simple legislative or judicial “fix” to the problems of the presidency. Unless Americans change what we ask of the office—no longer demanding what we should not want and cannot have—we’ll get what, in a sense, we deserve.

Download or read book The Cult of the Presidency written by Gene Healy and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2024-09-10 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern presidency has become the central fault line of polarization in America because the president, increasingly, has the power to reshape vast swaths of American life. In The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy argues that “We, the People” are to blame. Americans on each side of the red-blue divide demand a president who can create jobs, teach our children well, tend to the “national soul”—and vanquish their culture-war enemies. Our political culture has invested the office with preposterously vast responsibilities, and as a result, the officeholder wields powers that no human being ought to have. In a new preface to the 2024 edition, Healy argues that the rise of partisan hatred lends new urgency to the cause of re-limiting executive power. In the years since Cult was first published, politics has gone feral, with polls showing that substantial majorities of Democrats and Republicans view members of the other party as “a serious threat to the United States and its people.” At the same time, the most powerful office in the world has grown even more so. That’s raised the stakes of our political differences dramatically: the issues that divide us most are now increasingly settled by whichever party manages to seize the office. In our partisan myopia, we’ve laid down the infrastructure for autocratic rule and sectarian warfare, making the presidency powerful enough to tear the country apart. Interweaving historical scholarship, legal analysis, and trenchant cultural commentary, The Cult of the Presidency traces America’s decades‐long drift from the Framers’ vision for the presidency: a constitutionally constrained chief magistrate charged with faithful execution of the laws. Restoring that vision will require a Congress and a Court willing to check executive power, but Healy emphasizes that there is no simple legislative or judicial fix. Unless Americans change what we ask of the office—no longer demanding what we should not want and cannot have—we’ll get what, in a sense, we deserve.

Download or read book The Cult of Trump written by Steven Hassan and published by Free Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterful and eye-opening examination of Trump and the coercive control tactics he uses to build a fanatical devotion in his supporters written by “an authority on breaking away from cults…an argument that…bears consideration as the next election cycle heats up” (Kirkus Reviews). Since the 2016 election, Donald Trump’s behavior has become both more disturbing and yet increasingly familiar. He relies on phrases like, “fake news,” “build the wall,” and continues to spread the divisive mentality of us-vs.-them. He lies constantly, has no conscience, never admits when he is wrong, and projects all of his shortcomings on to others. He has become more authoritarian, more outrageous, and yet many of his followers remain blindly devoted. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert and a major Trump supporter, calls him one of the most persuasive people living. His need to squash alternate information and his insistence of constant ego stroking are all characteristics of other famous leaders—cult leaders. In The Cult of Trump, mind control and licensed mental health expert Steven Hassan draws parallels between our current president and people like Jim Jones, David Koresh, Ron Hubbard, and Sun Myung Moon, arguing that this presidency is in many ways like a destructive cult. He specifically details the ways in which people are influenced through an array of social psychology methods and how they become fiercely loyal and obedient. Hassan was a former “Moonie” himself, and he presents a “thoughtful and well-researched analysis of some of the most puzzling aspects of the current presidency, including the remarkable passivity of fellow Republicans [and] the gross pandering of many members of the press” (Thomas G. Gutheil, MD and professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School). The Cult of Trump is an accessible and in-depth analysis of the president, showing that under the right circumstances, even sane, rational, well-adjusted people can be persuaded to believe the most outrageous ideas. “This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the current political climate” (Judith Stevens-Long, PhD and author of Living Well, Dying Well).

Download or read book False Idol written by Gene Healy and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the waning days of the Bush administration, the Cato Institute published Gene Healy’s The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, which argued that the demands we place on the presidency have turned it into a constitutional monstrosity: too powerful to be trusted, and too weak to fulfill all the demands we invest in it. George Will called the book “the year’s most pertinent and sobering public affairs book”; and the Economist noted that it “was written while Barack Obama's career was still on the launch pad, yet it describes with uncanny prescience the atmosphere that allowed him to soar.” Now, with the 2012 presidential election upon us, in his timely new ebook False Idol: Barack Obama and the Continuing Cult of the Presidency, Healy examines the causes and consequences of a presidential cult. President Obama claims broad power over the U.S. economy; fires the CEO of General Motors; extends federal control over Americans’ health insurance plans; claims the power to launch wars without congressional authorization and assassinate American citizens abroad, far from any battlefield. False Idol demonstrates that the vision of the presidency Obama embodies has led to a dangerous concentration of power in an office primarily designed for faithful execution of the laws. Sharply focused and rigorously researched, False Idol is also a highly compelling examination of our national fixation with being led, comforted, and delivered by a presidential savior. Decades of longing for a national redeemer have forged an institution that promises everything and guarantees nothing, save public frustration and the steady growth of federal power. A constitutional restoration can only begin, Healy shows, when Americans turn away from false idols and false hope.

Download or read book The Imperial Presidency written by Arthur Meier Schlesinger and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2004 with total page 630 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description

Download or read book The Obama Nation written by Jerome R. Corsi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thoroughly researched and documented book, the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry explains why the extreme leftism of an Obama presidency would leave the United States weakened, diminished and divided, why Obama must be defeated -- and how he can be. Barack Obama stepped onto the national political stage when the then-Illinois State senator addressed the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Soon after Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, author Jerome Corsi began researching Obama's personal and political background. Scrupulously sourced with more than 600 footnotes, The Obama Nation is the result of that research. By tracing Obama's career and influences from his early years in Hawaii and Indonesia, the beginnings of his political career in Chicago, his voting record in the Illinois legislature, his religious training and his adoption of Christianity through to his recent involvement in Kenyan politics, his political advisors and fundraising associates and his meteoric campaign for president, Jerome Corsi shows that an Obama presidency would, in his words, be "a repeat of the failed extremist politics that have characterized and plagued Democratic Party politics since the late 1960s." In this stunning and comprehensive new book, the reader will learn about: Obama's extensive connections with Islam and radical politics, from his father and step-father's Islamic backgrounds, to his Communist and socialist mentors in Hawaii and Chicago, to his long-term and close associations with former Weather Underground heroes William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn -- associations much closer than heretofore revealed by the press. Barack and Michelle's 20-year-long religious affiliation with the black-liberation theology of former Trinity United Church of Christ Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons have always been steeped in a rage first expressed by Franz Fanon , Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X, a rage that Corsi shows has deep meaning for Obama. Obama's continuing connections with Kenya, the homeland of his father, through his support for the candidacy of Raila Odinga, the radical socialist presidential contender who came to power amid Islamist violence and church burnings. Obama's involvement in the slum-landlord empire of the Chicago political fixer Tony Rezko, who helped to bankroll Obama's initial campaigns and to purchase of Barack and Michelle's dream-home property. The background and techniques of the Obama campaign's cult of personality, including the derivation of the words "hope" and change." Obama's far-left domestic policy, his controversial votes on abortion, his history of opposition to the Second Amendment, his determination to raise capital-gains taxes, his impractical plan to achieve universal health care, and his radical plan to tax Americans to fund a global-poverty-reduction program. Obama's naïve, anti-war, anti-nuclear foreign-policy, predicated on the reduction of the military, the eradication of nuclear weapons and an overconfidence in the power of his personality, as if belief in change alone could somehow transform international politics, achieve nuclear-weapons disarmament and withdrawal from Iraq without adverse consequences, for us, for the Iraqis or for Israel. Meticulously researched and documented, The Obama Nation is the definitive source for information on why and how Barack Obama must be defeated -- not by invective and general attacks, but by detailed arguments that are well-researched and fact-based.

Download or read book The Problem of Democracy written by Nancy Isenberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Told with authority and style. . . Crisply summarizing the Adamses' legacy, the authors stress principle over partisanship."--The Wall Street Journal How the father and son presidents foresaw the rise of the cult of personality and fought those who sought to abuse the weaknesses inherent in our democracy. Until now, no one has properly dissected the intertwined lives of the second and sixth (father and son) presidents. John and John Quincy Adams were brilliant, prickly politicians and arguably the most independently minded among leaders of the founding generation. Distrustful of blind allegiance to a political party, they brought a healthy skepticism of a brand-new system of government to the country's first 50 years. They were unpopular for their fears of the potential for demagoguery lurking in democracy, and--in a twist that predicted the turn of twenty-first century politics--they warned against, but were unable to stop, the seductive appeal of political celebrities Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. In a bold recasting of the Adamses' historical roles, The Problem of Democracy is a major critique of the ways in which their prophetic warnings have been systematically ignored over the centuries. It's also an intimate family drama that brings out the torment and personal hurt caused by the gritty conduct of early American politics. Burstein and Isenberg make sense of the presidents' somewhat iconoclastic, highly creative engagement with America's political and social realities. By taking the temperature of American democracy, from its heated origins through multiple upheavals, the authors reveal the dangers and weaknesses that have been present since the beginning. They provide a clear-eyed look at a decoy democracy that masks the reality of elite rule while remaining open, since the days of George Washington, to a very undemocratic result in the formation of a cult surrounding the person of an elected leader.

Download or read book The Paradoxes of the American Presidency written by Thomas E. Cronin and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2022-06-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new edition of The Paradoxes of the American Presidency--now with three prize-winning presidential scholars: Thomas E. Cronin, Michael A. Genovese and Meena Bose--explores the complex institution of the American presidency by presenting a series of paradoxes that shape and define the office. Rewritten and updated to reflect recent political events including the presidency of Barack Obama, the 2012 and 2014 elections (with greater emphasis on the importance of the Presidential midterm election), and the primary and presidential election of 2016, as well as the 2020 election and beginning of the Biden Administration, this must-read sixth edition incorporates findings from the latest scholarship, recent elections and court cases, and essential survey research.

Download or read book The Living Presidency written by Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A constitutional originalist sounds the alarm over the presidency’s ever-expanding powers, ascribing them unexpectedly to the liberal embrace of a living Constitution. Liberal scholars and politicians routinely denounce the imperial presidency—a self-aggrandizing executive that has progressively sidelined Congress. Yet the same people invariably extol the virtues of a living Constitution, whose meaning adapts with the times. Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash argues that these stances are fundamentally incompatible. A constitution prone to informal amendment systematically favors the executive and ensures that there are no enduring constraints on executive power. In this careful study, Prakash contends that an originalist interpretation of the Constitution can rein in the “living presidency” legitimated by the living Constitution. No one who reads the Constitution would conclude that presidents may declare war, legislate by fiat, and make treaties without the Senate. Yet presidents do all these things. They get away with it, Prakash argues, because Congress, the courts, and the public routinely excuse these violations. With the passage of time, these transgressions are treated as informal constitutional amendments. The result is an executive increasingly liberated from the Constitution. The solution is originalism. Though often associated with conservative goals, originalism in Prakash’s argument should appeal to Republicans and Democrats alike, as almost all Americans decry the presidency’s stunning expansion. The Living Presidency proposes a baker’s dozen of reforms, all of which could be enacted if only Congress asserted its lawful authority.

Download or read book Follow The Leader written by Paul Brace and published by . This book was released on 1992-11-10 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carter, for example, emerges as "the median president": average in activity, success in Congress, and public support. Follow the Leader shows that presidents often do make Faustian bargains on behalf of their popularity, but they get surprisingly little in return. For example, while it is true that the use of force by the United States abroad has followed bad economic times at home much more frequently than would be expected by chance, the use of force itself does not boost a president's popularity. In fact, foreign policy activities show a variety of different effects. There is an uneasy balance at best between being liked and being president. Conventional wisdom suggests that popular presidents are strong leaders. But Brace and Hinckley demonstrate that things are not so simple. Indeed, presidents who structured their agendas solely on the basis of public approval would often be making choices the American people would not support.

Download or read book James Monroe written by Gary Hart and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-10-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The former senator and presidential candidate offers a provocative new assessment of the first "national security president" James Monroe is remembered today primarily for two things: for being the last of the "Virginia Dynasty"—following George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison—and for issuing the Monroe Doctrine, his statement of principles in 1823 that the western hemisphere was to be considered closed to European intervention. But Gary Hart sees Monroe as a president ahead of his time, whose priorities and accomplishments in establishing America's "national security" have a great deal in common with chief executives of our own time. Unlike his predecessors Jefferson and Madison, Monroe was at his core a military man. He joined the Continental Army at the age of seventeen and served with distinction in many pivotal battles. (He is prominently featured at Washington's side in the iconic painting Washington Crossing the Delaware.) And throughout his career as a senator, governor, ambassador, secretary of state, secretary of war, and president, he never lost sight of the fact that without secure borders and friendly relations with neighbors, the American people could never be truly safe in their independence. As president he embarked on an ambitious series of treaties, annexations, and military confrontations that would secure America's homeland against foreign attack for nearly two hundred years. Hart details the accomplishments and priorities of this forward-looking president, whose security concerns clearly echo those we face in our time. "A well-written, useful précis of Monroe’s life and career." - Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book Recarving Rushmore written by Ivan Eland and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Updated rankings from George Washington to Barack Obama."

Download or read book Eleven Presidents written by Ivan Eland and published by Independent Institute. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presidents who claimed to limit government often actually did the opposite. History often looks unfavorably on presidents who may have actually contributed smart and important policies. Were Harding and Coolidge really as ineffective as their reputations maintain? Did Hoover not do enough to end the Depression? Was Reagan a true champion of small-government conservatism? We all know that the American president is one of the most powerful people in the world. But to understand the presidency today we often have to learn from the past. Author Ivan Eland offers a new perspective in Eleven Presidents on the evolution of the executive office by exploring the policies of eleven key presidents who held office over the last one hundred years: Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. The book combines an exploration of how political currents shape historical legacies with an in-depth analysis of presidents' actual policies. An important, revealing book about the presidency, legacy, and the formation of history, Eleven Presidents is essential reading for understanding the American presidency.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of the American Presidency written by Leonard Williams Levy and published by Macmillan Reference USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 1827 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains 1,011 articles by 335 contributors from all regions of the country, representing many disciplines and institutions, captures the origin, evolution, and constant unfolding of the American presidency.

Download or read book The Lost Soul of the American Presidency written by Stephen F. Knott and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American presidency is not what it once was. Nor, Stephen F. Knott contends, what it was meant to be. Taking on an issue as timely as Donald Trump’s latest tweet and old as the American republic, the distinguished presidential scholar documents the devolution of the American presidency from the neutral, unifying office envisioned by the framers of the Constitution into the demagogic, partisan entity of our day. The presidency of popular consent, or the majoritarian presidency that we have today, far predates its current incarnation. The executive office as James Madison, George Washington, and Alexander Hamilton conceived it would be a source of national pride and unity, a check on the tyranny of the majority, and a neutral guarantor of the nation’s laws. The Lost Soul of the American Presidency shows how Thomas Jefferson’s “Revolution of 1800” remade the presidency, paving the way for Andrew Jackson to elevate “majority rule” into an unofficial constitutional principle—and contributing to the disenfranchisement, and worse, of African Americans and Native Americans. In Woodrow Wilson, Knott finds a worthy successor to Jefferson and Jackson. More than any of his predecessors, Wilson altered the nation’s expectations of what a president could be expected to achieve, putting in place the political machinery to support a “presidential government.” As difficult as it might be to recover the lost soul of the American presidency, Knott reminds us of presidents who resisted pandering to public opinion and appealed to our better angels—George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and William Howard Taft, among others—whose presidencies suggest an alternative and offer hope for the future of the nation’s highest office.

Download or read book The Smithsonian Book of Presidential Trivia written by Smithsonian Institution and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Which president holds the record for the most vetoes? Which president had the largest shoe size? Who was the only president to serve in both World War I and World War II? Who was the tallest president? These questions and many, many more are answered in The Smithsonian Book of Presidential Trivia, which has been fully updated to 2024 to include trivia question and answers about every US president to date. Divided into 11 chapters, The Smithsonian Book of Presidential Trivia looks at every aspect of our heads of state and presidential history: Citizens, Officers, Heroes, and Saviors; Stumping: From Front Porch to Facebook; The Pledge and the Parties; Inside the Oval Office; The Perpetual Podium; Home, Hotel, Parlor, Playground; First Families; Impeachment, Controversy, Shame; Assassination; Death, and National Mourning; Presidents in the Popular Imagination; and The Quotable President. Many of the questions are accompanied with photographs of artifacts from the Smithsonian's collections. The Smithsonian Book of Presidential Trivia is sure to puzzle the trivia buff and presidential expert alike!