Finding the Words Freedman, James O; Halberstam, David
2021, 2007, 2021-04-13
eBook
James Freedman, the fifteenth president of Dartmouth College, began life in a struggling middle-class Jewish family in a provincial industrial New Hampshire town. By the time of his death from cancer ...in March 2006, he was one of the most celebrated educational leaders of his generation, perhaps of the twentieth century. Finding the Words is Freedman's account of the first twenty-seven years of this astonishing trajectory in a life made difficult by depression, but sustained throughout by a love of books and learning, a life that would transform the culture of American higher education. His mother's fierce and bruising ambition instilled in him an overwhelming drive to leave his mark upon the world. His father, a revered high-school English teacher who was timid outside the classroom, introduced him to the rich world of literature--and also passed on to him his doubts and insecurities. Freedman retraces his intellectual formation as a student, educator, scholar, and leader, from his early?obsession with book collecting through his undergraduate years at Harvard and his professional training at Yale Law School. This same passion for language and ideas defined Freedman's leadership at Dartmouth, where he deftly countered lingering anti-Semitism, fought entrenched interests to open the way for women and minorities, reformed and revitalized the curriculum, and boldly reconceived the school's campus. This moving and inspiring book vividly depicts the formative years of a man nourished by lifelong learning, whose rise from humble beginnings to heights of achievement will serve as a model for generations to come.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many questioned whether the large number of political appointees in the Federal Emergency Management Agency contributed to the agency's poor handling of the ...catastrophe, ultimately costing hundreds of lives and causing immeasurable pain and suffering.The Politics of Presidential Appointmentsexamines in depth how and why presidents use political appointees and how their choices impact government performance--for better or worse.
One way presidents can influence the permanent bureaucracy is by filling key posts with people who are sympathetic to their policy goals. But if the president's appointees lack competence and an agency fails in its mission--as with Katrina--the president is accused of employing his friends and allies to the detriment of the public. Through case studies and cutting-edge analysis, David Lewis takes a fascinating look at presidential appointments dating back to the 1960s to learn which jobs went to appointees, which agencies were more likely to have appointees, how the use of appointees varied by administration, and how it affected agency performance. He argues that presidents politicize even when it hurts performance--and often with support from Congress--because they need agencies to be responsive to presidential direction. He shows how agency missions and personnel--and whether they line up with the president's vision--determine which agencies presidents target with appointees, and he sheds new light on the important role patronage plays in appointment decisions.
From George Washington's decision to buy time for the new nation by signing the less-than-ideal Jay Treaty with Great Britain in 1795 to George W. Bush's order of a military intervention in Iraq in ...2003, the matter of who is president of the United States is of the utmost importance. In this book, Fred Greenstein examines the leadership styles of the earliest presidents, men who served at a time when it was by no means certain that the American experiment in free government would succeed.
This book is the first to undertake a detailed historical and legal examination of presidential power and the theory of the unitary executive. This theory-that the Constitution gives the president ...the power to remove and control all policy-making subordinates in the executive branch-has been the subject of heated debate since the Reagan years. To determine whether the Constitution creates a strongly unitary executive, Steven G. Calabresi and Christopher S. Yoo look at the actual practice of all forty-three presidential administrations, from George Washington to George W. Bush. They argue that all presidents have been committed proponents of the theory of the unitary executive, and they explore the meaning and implications of this finding.
The American president is widely viewed by the public and media
as the nation's single most influential political and economic
figure. But social scientists have often concluded that
presidential ...words fall "on deaf ears" or have little lasting
impact on policy or public opinion. Then why did Bill Clinton make
12,798 public references to the economy during his eight years in
office compared with Harry Truman's mere 2,124 during his own two
terms? Why George W. Bush's 3,351 remarks during his first term?
Did all these words matter? The Politics of Economic
Leadership is the first comprehensive effort to examine when,
why, and how presidents talk about the economy, as well as whether
the president's economic rhetoric matters. It demonstrates
conclusively that such presidential words do matter. Using an
unprecedented compendium of every known unique statement by U.S.
presidents about the economy from World War II through the first
George W. Bush administration, Dan Wood measures the relative
intensity and optimism of presidents' economic rhetoric. His
pathbreaking statistical analysis shows that presidential words can
affect everything from approval of the president's job performance
to perceptions of economic news, consumer confidence, consumer
behavior, business investment, and interest rates. The impacts are
both immediate and gradual. Ultimately, Wood concludes, rhetoric is
indeed a tool of presidential leadership that can be used
unilaterally to affect a range of political and economic
outcomes.
Despite all that has been written on it, the Iraq war - its causes, agency and execution - has been shrouded in an ideological mist. Now, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad dispels the myths surrounding the war, ...taking a sociological approach to establish the war's causes, identify its agents and describe how it was sold. Ahmad presents a social history of the war's leading agents - the neoconservatives - and shows how this ideologically coherent group of determined political agents used the contingency of 9/11 to overwhelm a sceptical foreign policy establishment, military brass and intelligence apparatus, propelling the US into a war that a significant portion of the public opposed. The book includes an historical exploration of American militarism and of the increased post-WWII US role in the Middle East, as well as a reconsideration of the debates that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt sparked after the publication of The Israel lobby and US Foreign Policy.
A little understood reason for the success of the Biden Presidency is the occupant's range of role diversity. His multiple forms of leadership allow him to present himself as the situation warrants ...at a moment's notice. This skill refers not just to varied speaking styles but wholly different personae. Eight of these roles are illustrated and evaluated: Mentor, Commander, Lawgiver, Warrior, Advocate, Visionary, Preacher, and Comforter.
The belief that U.S. presidents' legislative policy formation has centralized over time, shifting inexorably out of the executive departments and into the White House, is shared by many who have ...studied the American presidency. Andrew Rudalevige argues that such a linear trend is neither at all certain nor necessary for policy promotion. In Managing the President's Program, he presents a far more complex and interesting picture of the use of presidential staff. Drawing on transaction cost theory, Rudalevige constructs a framework of "contingent centralization" to predict when presidents will use White House and/or departmental staff resources for policy formulation. He backs his assertions through an unprecedented quantitative analysis of a new data set of policy proposals covering almost fifty years of the postwar era from Truman to Clinton. Rudalevige finds that presidents are not bound by a relentless compulsion to centralize but follow a more subtle strategy of staff allocation that makes efficient use of limited bargaining resources. New items and, for example, those spanning agency jurisdictions, are most likely to be centralized; complex items follow a mixed process. The availability of expertise outside the White House diminishes centralization. However, while centralization is a management strategy appropriate for engaging the wider executive branch, it can imperil an item's fate in Congress. Thus, as this well-written book makes plain, presidential leadership hinges on hard choices as presidents seek to simultaneously manage the executive branch and attain legislative success.
