Download or read book Why Presidents Fail And How They Can Succeed Again written by Elaine C. Kamarck and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Failure should not be an option in the presidency, but for too long it has been the norm. From the botched attempt to rescue the U.S. diplomats held hostage by Iran in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter and the missed intelligence on Al Qaeda before 9-11 under George W. Bush to, most recently, the computer meltdown that marked the arrival of health care reform under Barack Obama, the American presidency has been a profile in failure. In Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again, Elaine Kamarck surveys these and other recent presidential failures to understand why Americans have lost faith in their leaders—and how they can get it back. Kamarck argues that presidents today spend too much time talking and not enough time governing, and that they have allowed themselves to become more and more distant from the federal bureaucracy that is supposed to implement policy. After decades of "imperial" and "rhetorical" presidencies, we are in need of a "managerial" president. This White House insider and former Harvard academic explains the difficulties of governing in our modern political landscape, and offers examples and recommendations of how our next president can not only recreate faith in leadership but also run a competent, successful administration.

Download or read book Presidential Leadership in Political Time written by Stephen Skowronek and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this expanded third edition, renowned scholar Stephen Skowronek, addresses Donald J. Trump’s presidency. Skowronek’s insights have fundamentally altered our understanding of the American presidency. His “political time” thesis has been particularly influential, revealing how presidents reckon with the work of their predecessors, situate their power within recent political events, and assert their authority in the service of change. A classic widely used in courses on the presidency, Skowronek’s book has greatly expanded our understanding of and debates over the politics of leadership. It clarifies the typical political problems that presidents confront in political time, as well as the likely effects of their working through them, and considers contemporary innovations in our political system that bear on the leadership patterns from the more distant past. Drawing out parallels in the politics of leadership between Andrew Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt and between James Polk and John Kennedy, it develops a new and revealing perspective on the presidential leadership of Clinton, Bush, Obama, and now Trump. In this third edition Skowronek carefully examines the impact of recent developments in government and politics on traditional leadership postures and their enactment, given the current divided state of the American polity, the impact of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, of a more disciplined and homogeneous Republican party, of conservative advocacy of the “unitary theory” of the executive, and of progressive disillusionment with the presidency as an institution. A provocative review of presidential history, Skowronek’s book brims with fresh insights and opens a window on the institution of the executive office and the workings of the American political system as a whole. Intellectually satisfying for scholars, it also provides an accessible volume for students and general readers interested in the American presidency.

Download or read book The Buying of the President written by Charles Lewis and published by Avon Books. This book was released on 1996 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Details where campaign contributions are coming from for the 1996 presidential candidates and describes the role these donations play in American elections

Download or read book Accidental Presidents written by Jared Cohen and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This New York Times bestselling “deep dive into the terms of eight former presidents is chock-full of political hijinks—and déjà vu” (Vanity Fair) and provides a fascinating look at the men who came to the office without being elected to it, showing how each affected the nation and world. The strength and prestige of the American presidency has waxed and waned since George Washington. Eight men have succeeded to the presidency when the incumbent died in office. In one way or another they vastly changed our history. Only Theodore Roosevelt would have been elected in his own right. Only TR, Truman, Coolidge, and LBJ were re-elected. John Tyler succeeded William Henry Harrison who died 30 days into his term. He was kicked out of his party and became the first president threatened with impeachment. Millard Fillmore succeeded esteemed General Zachary Taylor. He immediately sacked the entire cabinet and delayed an inevitable Civil War by standing with Henry Clay’s compromise of 1850. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded our greatest president, sided with remnants of the Confederacy in Reconstruction. Chester Arthur, the embodiment of the spoils system, was so reviled as James Garfield’s successor that he had to defend himself against plotting Garfield’s assassination; but he reformed the civil service. Theodore Roosevelt broke up the trusts. Calvin Coolidge silently cooled down the Harding scandals and preserved the White House for the Republican Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. Harry Truman surprised everybody when he succeeded the great FDR and proved an able and accomplished president. Lyndon B. Johnson was named to deliver Texas electorally. He led the nation forward on Civil Rights but failed on Vietnam. Accidental Presidents shows that “history unfolds in death as well as in life” (The Wall Street Journal) and adds immeasurably to our understanding of the power and limits of the American presidency in critical times.

Download or read book The Impossible Presidency written by Jeremi Suri and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new history of the American presidency, arguing that the successful presidents of the past created unrealistic expectations for every president since JFK, with enormously problematic implications for American politics In The Impossible Presidency, celebrated historian Jeremi Suri charts the rise and fall of the American presidency, from the limited role envisaged by the Founding Fathers to its current status as the most powerful job in the world. He argues that the presidency is a victim of its own success-the vastness of the job makes it almost impossible to fulfill the expectations placed upon it. As managers of the world's largest economy and military, contemporary presidents must react to a truly globalized world in a twenty-four-hour news cycle. There is little room left for bold vision. Suri traces America's disenchantment with our recent presidents to the inevitable mismatch between presidential promises and the structural limitations of the office. A masterful reassessment of presidential history, this book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand America's fraught political climate.

Download or read book The Presidential Expectations Gap written by Richard W. Waterman and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2014-03-14 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, all presidents confront an expectations gap—the difference between what the public expects them to accomplish and what is actually possible

Download or read book American Reboot written by Will Hurd and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From former Republican Congressman and CIA Officer Will Hurd, a bold political playbook for America rooted in the timeless ideals of bipartisanship, inclusivity, and democratic values. It's getting harder to get big things done in America. The gears of our democracy have been mucked up by political nonsense. To meet the era-defining challenges of the 21st century, our country needs a reboot. In American Reboot, Hurd, called "the future of the GOP" by Politico, provides a clear-eyed path forward for America grounded by what Hurd calls pragmatic idealism--a concept forged from enduring American values to achieve what is actually achievable. Hurd takes on five seismic problems facing a country in crisis: the Republican Party's failure to present a principled vision for the future; the lack of honest leadership in Washington, DC; income inequality that threatens the livelihood of millions of Americans; US economic and military dominance that is no longer guaranteed; and how technological change in the next thirty years will make the advancements of the last thirty years look trivial. Hurd has seen these challenges up close. A child of interracial parents in South Texas, Hurd survived the back alleys of dangerous places as a CIA officer. He carried that experience into three terms in Congress, where he was, for a time, the House's only Black Republican, representing a 71 percent Latino swing district in Texas that runs along 820 miles of US-Mexico border. As a cyber security executive and innovation crusader, Hurd has worked with entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of technology to anticipate the shockwaves of the future. Hurd draws on his remarkable experience to present an inspiring guide for America. He outlines how the Republican party can look like America by appealing to the middle, not the edges. He maps out how leaders should inspire rather than fearmonger. He forges a domestic policy based on the idea that prosperity should be a product of empowering people, not the government. He articulates a foreign policy where our enemies fear us and our friends love us. And lastly, he charts a forceful path forward for America's technological future. We all know we can do better. It's time to hit "ctrl alt del" and start the American Reboot.

Download or read book Changing Their Minds written by George C. Edwards III and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-05-21 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite popular perceptions, presidents rarely succeed in persuading either the public or members of Congress to change their minds and move from opposition to particular policies to support of them. As a result, the White House is not able to alter the political landscape and create opportunities for change. Instead, successful presidents recognize and skillfully exploit the opportunities already found in their political environments. If they fail to understand their strategic positions, they are likely to overreach and experience political disaster. Donald Trump has been a distinctive president, and his arrival in the Oval Office brought new questions. Could someone with his decades of experience as a self-promoter connect with the public and win its support? Could a president who is an experienced negotiator obtain the support in Congress needed to pass his legislative programs? Would we need to adjust the theory of presidential leadership to accommodate a president with unique persuasive skills? Building on decades of research and employing extensive new data, George C. Edwards III addresses these questions. He finds that President Trump has been no different than other presidents in being constrained by his environment. He moved neither the public nor Congress. Even for an experienced salesman and dealmaker, presidential power is still not the power to persuade. Equally important was the fact that, as Edwards shows, Trump was not able to exploit the opportunities he had. In fact, we learn here that the patterns of the president’s rhetoric and communications and his approach to dealing with Congress ultimately lessened his chances of success. President Trump, it turns out, was often his own agenda’s undoing.

Download or read book Presidential Party Building written by Daniel J. Galvin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-21 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern presidents are usually depicted as party "predators" who neglect their parties, exploit them for personal advantage, or undercut their organizational capacities. Challenging this view, Presidential Party Building demonstrates that every Republican president since Dwight D. Eisenhower worked to build his party into a more durable political organization while every Democratic president refused to do the same. Yet whether they supported their party or stood in its way, each president contributed to the distinctive organizational trajectories taken by the two parties in the modern era. Unearthing new archival evidence, Daniel Galvin reveals that Republican presidents responded to their party's minority status by building its capacities to mobilize voters, recruit candidates, train activists, provide campaign services, and raise funds. From Eisenhower's "Modern Republicanism" to Richard Nixon's "New Majority" to George W. Bush's hopes for a partisan realignment, Republican presidents saw party building as a means of forging a new political majority in their image. Though they usually met with little success, their efforts made important contributions to the GOP's cumulative organizational development. Democratic presidents, in contrast, were primarily interested in exploiting the majority they inherited, not in building a new one. Until their majority disappeared during Bill Clinton's presidency, Democratic presidents eschewed party building and expressed indifference to the long-term effects of their actions. Bringing these dynamics into sharp relief, Presidential Party Building offers profound new insights into presidential behavior, party organizational change, and modern American political development.

Download or read book The Outlier written by Kai Bird and published by Crown. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Important . . . [a] landmark presidential biography . . . Bird is able to build a persuasive case that the Carter presidency deserves this new look.”—The New York Times Book Review An essential re-evaluation of the complex triumphs and tragedies of Jimmy Carter’s presidential legacy—from the expert biographer and Pulitzer Prize–winning co-author of American Prometheus Four decades after Ronald Reagan’s landslide win in 1980, Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency is often labeled a failure; indeed, many Americans view Carter as the only ex-president to have used the White House as a stepping-stone to greater achievements. But in retrospect the Carter political odyssey is a rich and human story, marked by both formidable accomplishments and painful political adversity. In this deeply researched, brilliantly written account, Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Kai Bird deftly unfolds the Carter saga as a tragic tipping point in American history. As president, Carter was not merely an outsider; he was an outlier. He was the only president in a century to grow up in the heart of the Deep South, and his born-again Christianity made him the most openly religious president in memory. This outlier brought to the White House a rare mix of humility, candor, and unnerving self-confidence that neither Washington nor America was ready to embrace. Decades before today’s public reckoning with the vast gulf between America’s ethos and its actions, Carter looked out on a nation torn by race and demoralized by Watergate and Vietnam and prescribed a radical self-examination from which voters recoiled. The cost of his unshakable belief in doing the right thing would be losing his re-election bid—and witnessing the ascendance of Reagan. In these remarkable pages, Bird traces the arc of Carter’s administration, from his aggressive domestic agenda to his controversial foreign policy record, taking readers inside the Oval Office and through Carter’s battles with both a political establishment and a Washington press corps that proved as adversarial as any foreign power. Bird shows how issues still hotly debated today—from national health care to growing inequality and racism to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—burned at the heart of Carter’s America, and consumed a president who found a moral duty in solving them. Drawing on interviews with Carter and members of his administration and recently declassified documents, Bird delivers a profound, clear-eyed evaluation of a leader whose legacy has been deeply misunderstood. The Outlier is the definitive account of an enigmatic presidency—both as it really happened and as it is remembered in the American consciousness.

Download or read book Comparative Constitutional Law written by Tom Ginsburg and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 681 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark volume of specially commissioned, original contributions by top international scholars organizes the issues and controversies of the rich and rapidly maturing field of comparative constitutional law. Divided into sections on constitutional design and redesign, identity, structure, individual rights and state duties, courts and constitutional interpretation, this comprehensive volume covers over 100 countries as well as a range of approaches to the boundaries of constitutional law. While some chapters reference the text of legal instruments expressly labeled constitutional, others focus on the idea of entrenchment or take a more functional approach. Challenging the current boundaries of the field, the contributors offer diverse perspectives - cultural, historical and institutional - as well as suggestions for future research. A unique and enlightening volume, Comparative Constitutional Law is an essential resource for students and scholars of the subject.

Download or read book Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era written by Joseph S. Nye Jr. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-31 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How presidents forged the American century This book examines the foreign policy decisions of the presidents who presided over the most critical phases of America's rise to world primacy in the twentieth century, and assesses the effectiveness and ethics of their choices. Joseph Nye, who was ranked as one of Foreign Policy magazine’s 100 Top Global Thinkers, reveals how some presidents tried with varying success to forge a new international order while others sought to manage America’s existing position. The book shows how transformational presidents like Wilson and Reagan changed how America sees the world, but argues that transactional presidents like Eisenhower and the elder Bush were sometimes more effective and ethical. It also draws important lessons for today’s uncertain world, in which presidential decision making is more critical than ever.

Download or read book Truman Speaks written by Harry S. Truman and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lectures and discussions held at Columbia University on April 27, 28, and 29, 1959.

Download or read book You re Hired written by Casey B. Mulligan and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Donald J. Trump had essentially zero experience running for office and his candidacy for President of the United States was opposed by many in both parties that dominate American politics. Nevertheless, in 2016 the American people told him "You're hired!". As an insider, scholar, and Chief Economist of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, Casey Mulligan presents riveting first-hand accounts of President Trump's engagement with policy and politics. The struggle between Trump and a ruling class is skillfully presented by revealing business practices that President Trump is using to dismantle and reshape the Federal administrative state. It proves that today's populism has some real substance, but also acknowledges Trump's political incorrectness. You're Hired! brilliantly details the administration's successes and failures alongside the scandals, and accurately portrays the approach and capabilities of our President and our government. You will feel like an insider as you learn how Trump handles auto companies, Senator Bernie Sanders, immigration, international aid, the 2016 election, Twitter, and more that the news media has often failed to report or explain. Rigorous evidence is detailed on assertions that the White House staff is in perpetual chaos which is directly attributable to the President. A fascinating comparison of the similarities and differences between Presidents Reagan and Trump is presented along with topics including Obamacare, Putin, the opioid epidemic, and tariffs. This book highlights the great divides created by the President and his "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) supporters being on one side and a small, unelected, and insulated class who have years of experience running, and reporting on the Federal government being on the other side. Anyone wanting to understand, emulate, or oppose President Trump's "populist" methods will be enthralled by accurate first-hand accounts of how he engages with policy and politics.

Download or read book Presidential Transitions written by Patrick H. Sanaghan and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2009-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is designed to provide assistance to presidents, trustees, faculty, and other important stakeholder groups and help them avoid the pitfalls of poorly managed transitions.

Download or read book Romney Readiness Project 2012 written by and published by R2p Incorporated. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The importance of effective and well-planned presidential transitions has long been understood. The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 provided a formal recognition of this principle by providing the President-elect funding and other resources "To promote the orderly transfer of the executive power in connection with the expiration of the term of office of a President and the Inauguration of a new President." The Act received minor amendments in the following decades, but until 2010 all support providedwas entirely post-election. The Pre-Election Presidential Act of 2010 changed this by providing pre-election support to nominees of both parties. Its passing reinforced the belief that early transition planning is prudent, not presumptuous. The Romney Readiness Project was the first transition effort to operate with this enhanced pre-election focus. While Obama's re-election prevented a Romney transition from occurring, it is hoped that the content of this book can provide a valuable insight to future transition teams of both parties.

Download or read book The Presidential Difference written by Fred I. Greenstein and published by Free Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fred Greenstein is among the top students of the American presidency - his book on Eisenhower, THE HIDDEN-HAND PRESIDENCY, is regarded as a classic. His pioneering work in political psychology has done much to illuminate the nature of power and leadership writ large. Now, as the culmination of a half century of study and firsthand experience, THE PRESIDENTIAL DIFFERENCE rewrites the book on greatness in the presidency. Greenstein looks at both personality and context to consider how well each president 'fit' his times. From FDR to Clinton, he paints a portrait, by turns sweeping and detailed, of the era of the imperial presidency. THE PRESIDENTIAL DIFFERENCE employs a concise set of six categories by which a chief of staff is rated: communication, organisation, natural skill, vision, cognitive style, and the unexpected key to the whole package - emotional intelligence. Not since Richard Neustadt's PRESIDENTIAL POWER has a scholar so clearly defined the keys to success for the world's most powerful office.