Presidential Leadership and African Americans examines the leadership styles of eight American presidents and shows how the decisions made by each affected the lives and opportunities of the nation's black citizens. Beginning with George Washington and concluding with the landmark election of Barack Obama, Goethals traces the evolving attitudes and morality that influenced the actions of each president on matters of race, and shows how their personal backgrounds as well as their individual historical, economic, and cultural contexts combined to shape their values, judgments, and decisions, and.

From routine operations to the workings of a White House in crisis, this comprehensive, best-selling text examines all aspects of the presidency in rich detail. With a special emphasis on policy, the new edition surveys the most up-to-date scholarship on the topic, and includes an examination of the groundbreaking 2008 presidential election. Best-selling authors George C. Edwards and Stephen J. Wayne use engaging analysis and timely, fascinating examples to view the presidency from two theoretical standpoints the president as facilitator, and the president as director of change. A theoretical (versus chronological) approach combined with the currency and relevance of the material, makes PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP: POLITICS AND POLICY MAKING, 8th Edition, the most comprehensive text available today for the presidential studies course. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Dilemmas of Presidential Leadership challenges the widely accepted distinction between "traditional" and "modern" presidencies, a dichotomy by which political science has justified excluding from its domain of inquiry all presidents preceding Franklin Roosevelt. Rather than divide history into two mutually exclusive eras, Richard Ellis and Aaron Wildavsky divide the world into three sorts of people-egalitarians, individualists and hierarchs. All presidents, the authors contend, must manage the competition between these rival political cultures. It is this commonality which lays the basis for comparing presidents across time. To summarize and simplify, the book addresses two general categories of presidencies. The first is the president with a blend of egalitarian and individualist cultural propensities. Spawned by the American revolution, this anti-authoritarian cultural alliance dominated American politics until it was torn asunder by what Charles Beard has called the second American revolution, the Civil War. The Jeffersonian and Jacksonian presidents labored, with varying degrees of success, to square the exercise of authority with their own and their followers' ami-: authoritarian principles. They also were faced with intraparly conflicts that periodically flared up between egalitarian and individualist followers. The president with hierarchical cultural propensities faced different problems. While the precise contours of the dilemma varied, all straggled in one way or another to reconcile their own and their party's preferences with the anti-hierarchical ethos that inhered in the society and the polity. Hierarchical presidents like Washington and Adams were hamstrung by this dilemma, as were Whig leaders like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster who aspired to the presidency but never achieved it. .Abraham Lincoln's greatness resided in part in his ability to resolve the hierarch's dilemma. He operated in wartime when he could invoke the commander-in-chief clause, and he created a new cultural combination in which hierarchy was subordinated to individualism. This, suggest the authors, was a key to his greatness. The unique dimension of this volume is its use of cultural theory to explain presidential behavior. It also differs from other books in that, it deals with pre-modern presidents who are too often treated as only of antiquarian interest in mainstream political science literature on the presidency. The analysis lays the groundwork for a new basis for comparison of early presidents with modern presidents.

"Searching for common threads in these five presidencies, Landy and Milkis enable us to better understand both the possibilities and the limitations of the office."--BOOK JACKET.

This book assesses the impact of presidential character on the popularity, productivity, and ethics of contemporary presidents. Through comparative analyses, author Lara Brown demonstrates that the character of a president’s leadership does not change in office and that the success of future presidents can be evaluated before they step into the White House. She traces the rise of “amateur outsiders,” like Donald Trump, and asserts the need for systemic reform and cultural reassessment of presidential character. Intended for students and scholars of the presidency, this book also holds appeal for general readers who seek understanding of past and future presidential elections.

From Pulitzer Prize–winning author and esteemed presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, an invaluable guide to the development and exercise of leadership from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The inspiration for the multipart HISTORY Channel series Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. “After five decades of magisterial output, Doris Kearns Goodwin leads the league of presidential historians” (USA TODAY). In her “inspiring” (The Christian Science Monitor) Leadership, Doris Kearns Goodwin draws upon the four presidents she has studied most closely—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights)—to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking back to their first entries into public life, we encounter them at a time when their paths were filled with confusion, fear, and hope. Leadership tells the story of how they all collided with dramatic reversals that disrupted their lives and threatened to shatter forever their ambitions. Nonetheless, they all emerged fitted to confront the contours and dilemmas of their times. At their best, all four were guided by a sense of moral purpose. At moments of great challenge, they were able to summon their talents to enlarge the opportunities and lives of others. Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader? “If ever our nation needed a short course on presidential leadership, it is now” (The Seattle Times). This seminal work provides an accessible and essential road map for aspiring and established leaders in every field. In today’s polarized world, these stories of authentic leadership in times of apprehension and fracture take on a singular urgency. “Goodwin’s volume deserves much praise—it is insightful, readable, compelling: Her book arrives just in time” (The Boston Globe).

Newton Minow’s long engagement with the world of television began nearly fifty years ago when President Kennedy appointed him chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. As its head, Minow would famously dub TV a “vast wasteland,” thus inaugurating a career dedicated to reforming television to better serve the public interest. Since then, he has been chairman of PBS and on the board of CBS and elsewhere, but his most lasting contribution remains his leadership on televised presidential debates. He was assistant counsel to Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson when Stevenson first proposed the idea of the debates in 1960; he served as cochair of the presidential debates in 1976 and 1980; and he helped create and is currently vice chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has organized the debates for the last two decades. Written with longtime collaborator Craig LaMay, this fascinating history offers readers for the first time a genuinely inside look into the origins of the presidential debates and the many battles—both legal and personal—that have determined who has been allowed to debate and under what circumstances. The authors do not dismiss the criticism of the presidential debates in recent years but do come down solidly in favor of them, arguing that they are one of the great accomplishments of modern American electoral politics. As they remind us, the debates were once unique in the democratic world, are now emulated across the globe, and they offer the public the only real chance to see the candidates speak in direct response to one another in a discussion of major social, economic, and foreign policy issues. Looking to the challenges posed by third-party candidates and the emergence of new media such as YouTube, Minow and LaMay ultimately make recommendations for the future, calling for the debates to become less formal, with candidates allowed to question each other and citizens allowed to question candidates directly. They also explore the many ways in which the Internet might serve to broaden the debates’ appeal and informative power. Whether it’s Clinton or Obama vs. McCain, Inside the Presidential Debates will be welcomed in 2008 by anyone interested in where this crucial part of our democracy is headed—and how it got there.