When a new president is elected in November, someone will be called
to greatness. But it remains to be seen whether that call will be
answered.
In the wake of the Clinton scandal, the upcoming election
presents an opportunity for candidates and citizens alike to
reaffirm their belief that the office of the president demands
greatness. But Marc Landy and Sidney Milkis suspect that the public
will be disappointed once again, because the demand for greatness
far exceeds the supply. In fact, they claim that we have had no
great presidents in the last half of this century. In this
provocative new book, they explain why.
Landy and Milkis look to the past to show how five
presidents-Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Franklin
Roosevelt-set the standards for presidential leadership and
achievement. These were men who left genuine legacies, whose vision
expanded the office of the presidency as they inaugurated momentous
and far-reaching change. They were leaders who knew how to
reconcile innovation with constitutional tradition and were able to
both educate the people about their agendas and win their
allegiance. They were also great builders and leaders of their
parties amid times of political realignment.
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. They show how presidents after
FDR have never risen to true greatness-not even Lyndon Johnson, an
"overreacher" whose Great Society was a failed revolution, or
Ronald Reagan, an underachiever whose conservative revolution never
fully got under way. Our greatest presidents, they argue, sought to
profoundly change the nature of the regimes they inherited and had
the luck to assume office under conditions that allowed such
renovation; today's leaders have lacked either the ambition, the
opportunity, or both.
Perhaps, the authors observe, the older our country gets the
harder greatness is to come by. Our next great president might be
sworn in next year, but he or she will face a daunting task in
matching the stature of past leaders. Landy and Milkis's book is an
evenhanded assessment of our national icons that reestablishes our
understanding of presidential greatness and demonstrates the
importance--and reality--of inspired democratic leadership.
General
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