Download or read book Leadership in the Modern Presidency written by Fred I. Greenstein and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nine political scientists and historians evaluate the leadership qualities of presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan.
Download or read book The Unitary Executive and the Modern Presidency written by Ryan J. Barilleaux and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-07 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During his first term in office, Pres. George W. Bush made reference to the "unitary executive" ninety-five times, as part of signing statements, proclamations, and executive orders. Pres. Barack Obama's actions continue to make issues of executive power as timely as ever. Unitary executive theory stems from interpretation of the constitutional assertion that the president is vested with the "executive power" of the United States. In this groundbreaking collection of studies, eleven presidential scholars examine for the first time the origins, development, use, and future of this theory. The Unitary Executive and the Modern Presidency examines how the unitary executive theory became a recognized constitutional theory of presidential authority, how it has evolved, how it has been employed by presidents of both parties, and how its use has affected and been affected by U.S. politics. This book also examines the constitutional, political, and even psychological impact of the last thirty years of turmoil in the executive branch and the ways that controversy has altered both the exercise and the public’s view of presidential power.
Download or read book The Myth of the Modern Presidency written by David K. Nichols and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea that a radical transformation of the Presidency took place during the FDR administration has become one of the most widely accepted tenets of contemporary scholarship. According to this view, the Constitutional Presidency was a product of the Founders' fear of arbitrary power. Only with the development of a popular extra-Constitutional Presidency did the powerful "modern Presidency" emerge. David K. Nichols argues to the contrary that the "modern Presidency" was not created by FDR. What happened during FDR's administration was a transformation in the size and scope of the national government, rather than a transformation of the Presidency in its relations to the Constitution or the other branches of government. Nichols demonstrates that the essential elements of the modern Presidency have been found throughout our history, although often less obvious in an era where the functions of the national government as a whole were restricted. Claiming that we have failed to fully appreciate the character of the Constitutional Presidency, Nichols shows that the potential for the modern Presidency was created in the Constitution itself. He analyzes three essential aspects of the modern Presidency--the President's role in the budgetary process, the President's role as chief executive, and the War Powers Act--that are logical outgrowths of the decisions made at the Constitutional Convention. Nichols concludes that it is the authors of the American Constitution, not the English or European philosophers, who provide the most satisfactory reconciliation of executive power and limited popular government. It is the authors of the Constitution who created the modern Presidency.
Download or read book Presidential Leadership at the Crossroads written by Michael J. Korzi and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Presidential Leadership at the Crossroads: William Howard Taft and the Modern Presidency, Michael J. Korzi examines Taft’s presidency against the backdrop of early twentieth century politics, placing particular emphasis on Taft’s theory of presidential leadership. Though Taft’s legacy is often overshadowed by those of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, his predecessor and successor, respectively, Taft’s model of presidential leadership was complex and nuanced, forged in a time of changing expectations, at the crossroads between traditional and modern views of what the role of a president should be. This focus on Taft’s leadership adds new dimension to our understandings of the Progressive era and presidential leadership in general. Ultimately, Taft’s leadership represented a middle-ground position, one that faced serious challenges from both conservative as well as radical forces, particularly the latter. While embodying some features of the modern presidency, Taft’s model also represented a partial challenge to, and critique of, modern presidential leadership. Korzi reveals that Taft was considerably more modern in his leadership aspirations than previously thought and that his shift to traditionalism, or conservativism, only emerged with the threat of a third Roosevelt term on the horizon. Presidential Leadership at the Crossroads makes an important contribution to our understanding of presidents and their leadership. Taft’s model is particularly relevant today, given the prominence of the modern presidency and its values and expectations. Taft’s moderate, middle-way position provides a foundation for critiquing the excesses of the modern presidency, while offering a vision for strong, if disciplined, presidential leadership.
Download or read book The Presidents vs the Press written by Harold Holzer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning presidential historian offers an authoritative account of American presidents' attacks on our freedom of the press—including a new foreword chronicling the end of the Trump presidency. “The FAKE NEWS media,” Donald Trump has tweeted, “is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Has our free press ever faced as great a threat? Perhaps not—but the tension between presidents and journalists is as old as the republic itself. Every president has been convinced of his own honesty and transparency; every reporter who has covered the White House beat has believed with equal fervency that his or her journalistic rigor protects the country from danger. Our first president, George Washington, was also the first to grouse about his treatment in the newspapers, although he kept his complaints private. Subsequent chiefs like John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Barack Obama were not so reticent, going so far as to wield executive power to overturn press freedoms, and even to prosecute journalists. Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to actively manage the stable of reporters who followed him, doling out information, steering coverage, and squashing stories that interfered with his agenda. It was a strategy that galvanized TR’s public support, but the lesson was lost on Woodrow Wilson, who never accepted reporters into his inner circle. Franklin Roosevelt transformed media relations forever, holding more than a thousand presidential press conferences and harnessing the new power of radio, at times bypassing the press altogether. John F. Kennedy excelled on television and charmed reporters to hide his personal life, while Richard Nixon was the first to cast the press as a public enemy. From the days of newsprint and pamphlets to the rise of Facebook and Twitter, each president has harnessed the media, whether intentional or not, to imprint his own character on the office. In this remarkable new history, acclaimed scholar Harold Holzer examines the dual rise of the American presidency and the media that shaped it. From Washington to Trump, he chronicles the disputes and distrust between these core institutions that define the United States of America, revealing that the essence of their confrontation is built into the fabric of the nation.
Download or read book Thinking About the Presidency written by William G. Howell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the search for power defines the American presidential office All American presidents, past and present, have cared deeply about power—acquiring, protecting, and expanding it. While individual presidents obviously have other concerns, such as shaping policy or building a legacy, the primacy of power considerations—exacerbated by expectations of the presidency and the inadequacy of explicit powers in the Constitution—sets presidents apart from other political actors. Thinking about the Presidency explores presidents' preoccupation with power. Distinguished presidential scholar William Howell looks at the key aspects of executive power—political and constitutional origins, philosophical underpinnings, manifestations in contemporary political life, implications for political reform, and looming influences over the standards to which we hold those individuals elected to America's highest office. Howell shows that an appetite for power may not inform the original motivations of those who seek to become president. Rather, this need is built into the office of the presidency itself—and quickly takes hold of whoever bears the title of Chief Executive. In order to understand the modern presidency, and the degrees to which a president succeeds or fails, the acquisition, protection, and expansion of power in a president's political life must be recognized—in policy tools and legislative strategies, the posture taken before the American public, and the disregard shown to those who would counsel modesty and deference within the White House. Thinking about the Presidency assesses how the search for and defense of presidential powers informs nearly every decision made by the leader of the nation. In a new preface, Howell reflects on presidential power during the presidency of Barack Obama.
Download or read book The Toddler in Chief written by Daniel W. Drezner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-03-25 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. . . . And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.”—An anonymous senior administrative official in an op-ed published in a New York Times op-ed, September 5, 2018 Every president faces criticism and caricature. Donald Trump, however, is unique in that he is routinely characterized in ways more suitable for a toddler. What’s more, it is not just Democrats, pundits, or protestors who compare the president to a child; Trump’s staffers, subordinates, and allies on Capitol Hill also describe Trump like a small, badly behaved preschooler. In April 2017, Daniel W. Drezner began curating every example he could find of a Trump ally describing the president like a toddler. So far, he’s collected more than one thousand tweets—a rate of more than one a day. In The Toddler-in-Chief, Drezner draws on these examples to take readers through the different dimensions of Trump’s infantile behavior, from temper tantrums to poor impulse control to the possibility that the President has had too much screen time. How much damage can really be done by a giant man-baby? Quite a lot, Drezner argues, due to the winnowing away of presidential checks and balances over the past fifty years. In these pages, Drezner follows his theme—the specific ways in which sharing some of the traits of a toddler makes a person ill-suited to the presidency—to show the lasting, deleterious impact the Trump administration will have on American foreign policy and democracy. The “adults in the room” may not be able to rein in Trump’s toddler-like behavior, but, with the 2020 election fast approaching, the American people can think about whether they want the most powerful office turned into a poorly run political day care facility. Drezner exhorts us to elect a commander-in-chief, not a toddler-in-chief. And along the way, he shows how we must rethink the terrifying powers we have given the presidency.
Download or read book Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents written by Richard E. Neustadt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1991-03 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a revised edition of Presidential power, 1980, which was originally published by Wiley in 1960. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book The Modern American Presidency written by Lewis L. Gould and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Modern American Presidency" is a lively, interpretive synthesis of 20th century leaders, filled with intriguing insights into how the presidency has evolved as America rose to prominence on the world stage. Gould traces the decline of the party system and the increasing importance of the media, resulting in the rise of the president as celebrity. 36 photos.
Download or read book Powersharing written by Shirley Anne Warshaw and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1996-04-25 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complex relationship between the White House staff and the presidential cabinet has changed dramatically in the last 25 years. During that time, the White House has emerged as the center of power in the domestic policy process, leaving the departments with a diminishing role in initiating major policy proposals. This book focuses on powersharing between the White House and the cabinet in the policy process and examines how and why the White House has become the dominant player, relegating the departments to implementation, rather than design, of key initiatives. Powersharing begins with an overview of the role of the modern cabinet and a discussion of the cabinet's emergence in a policy role, and then in a chapter-by-chapter analysis of presidential administrations from Nixon through Clinton chronicles the shifting balance of power from the departments to the White House in both the design and management of the nation's major domestic programs. The book concludes with an assessment of the prospects for effective powersharing between the cabinet and the White House staff.
Download or read book The Modern Presidency and Crisis Rhetoric written by Amos Kiewe and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1994 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines how presidents from Truman to Bush rhetorically approached and managed political, military, judicial, legislative, and economic crises during their presidencies. Editor Amos Kiewe assembles new essays by communications scholars who look at rhetoric initiated during national crises, and account for various rhetorical developments affected by crises, changes in presidential rhetoric, and rhetorical and situational crisis constraints. Their studies suggest similarities in rhetoric in different types of crises, and yield resources for postulating patterns of crisis rhetoric. Each chapter's author presents a crisis rhetoric case study, analyzing initial strategies and tactics, shifts in rhetorical tactics, adjustments of discourse to particular phases in the crises, and unique rhetorical approaches designed to accommodate unexpected turns of events. The contributors discuss how presidents use rhetorical inventions, flip-flops, face-saving posturing, and even silence to diffuse crises. Specific topics include Eisenhower's response to the constitutional crisis in Little Rock, Kennedy and the Berlin Wall crisis, Johnson and the Kennedy assassination, Nixon and Watergate, and Bush and the Persian Gulf Crisis. Recommended for political scientists and communication theorists.
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 The Myth of the Modern Presidency written by David K. Nichols and published by Penn State University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea that a radical transformation of the Presidency took place during the FDR administration has become one of the most widely accepted tenets of contemporary scholarship. According to this view, the Constitutional Presidency was a product of the Founders' fear of arbitrary power. Only with the development of a popular extra-Constitutional Presidency did the powerful "modern Presidency" emerge. David K. Nichols argues to the contrary that the "modern Presidency" was not created by FDR. What happened during FDR's administration was a transformation in the size and scope of the national government, rather than a transformation of the Presidency in its relations to the Constitution or the other branches of government. Nichols demonstrates that the essential elements of the modern Presidency have been found throughout our history, although often less obvious in an era where the functions of the national government as a whole were restricted. Claiming that we have failed to fully appreciate the character of the Constitutional Presidency, Nichols shows that the potential for the modern Presidency was created in the Constitution itself. He analyzes three essential aspects of the modern Presidency--the President's role in the budgetary process, the President's role as chief executive, and the War Powers Act--that are logical outgrowths of the decisions made at the Constitutional Convention. Nichols concludes that it is the authors of the American Constitution, not the English or European philosophers, who provide the most satisfactory reconciliation of executive power and limited popular government. It is the authors of the Constitution who created the modern Presidency.
Download or read book The Press and the Modern Presidency written by Louis W. Liebovich and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2001-06-30 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scandal and sex sell, even in the serious business of presidential news coverage. The media deference shown to Kennedy and the scrutiny applied to Clinton illustrate the changed relation between the two, and bookend this pertinent, updated 1998 Choice Outstanding Academic Book award-winner. Liebovich tackles misconceptions about the media's role in politics; how chief executives cooperate with and manipulate the press as it suits their needs; and how ratings pressures have bent coverage of elections and the Executive Branch for the worse. Well-written, thorough, and the only book to explore the changing relation between the press and the presidency in the later twentieth century, students and researchers alike will profit from reading this work written by one of America's leading scholars in the field. For students interested in communications, history, or contemporary American politics, it is an unparalleled administration-by-administration introduction to the complex and intertwined workings of two of the most powerful and influential forces at work in American politics today. It furthermore provides researchers with a solid historical explanation of how both presidential politics and political news coverage have come to be popularly reviled and discounted.
Download or read book Executive Orders and the Modern Presidency written by Adam L. Warber and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores whether and how modern presidents use executive orders to establish policy unconstrained by the legislative process.
Download or read book By Invitation Only written by Steven Schier and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2000-01-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steven Schier examines the shift in U.S. politics to activation—the political variant of niche marketing. This method encourages only a strategically selected few to get involved, resulting in a decline of majority rule in American politics.
Download or read book The Unitary Executive Theory written by Jeffrey Crouch and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2020-11-30 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I have an Article II,” Donald Trump has announced, citing the US Constitution, “where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” Though this statement would have come as a shock to the framers of the Constitution, it fairly sums up the essence of “the unitary executive theory.” This theory, which emerged during the Reagan administration and gathered strength with every subsequent presidency, counters the system of checks and balances that constrains a president’s executive impulses. It also, the authors of this book contend, counters the letter and spirit of the Constitution. In their account of the rise of unitary executive theory over the last several decades, the authors refute the notion that this overweening view of executive power has been a common feature of the presidency from the beginning of the Republic. Rather, they show, it was invented under the Reagan Administration, got a boost during the George W. Bush administration, and has found its logical extension in the Trump administration. This critique of the unitary executive theory reveals it as a misguided model for understanding presidential powers. While its adherents argue that greater presidential power makes government more efficient, the results have shown otherwise. Dismantling the myth that presidents enjoy unchecked plenary powers, the authors advocate for principles of separation of powers—of checks and balances—that honor the Constitution and support the republican government its framers envisioned. A much-needed primer on presidential power, from the nation’s founding through Donald Trump’s impeachment, The Unitary Executive Theory: A Danger to Constitutional Government makes a robust and persuasive case for a return to our constitutional limits.
