Image is everything. Today, our television and movie stars, our athletes, and our politicians carefully craft images for public consumption. Even our country’s Executive Chief is not immune to a bit of image manipulation. If presidents can not always actually satisfy the public’s excessive, contradictory, and unrealistic expectations, they can at least present a compelling image of presidential leadership and success. When it comes to the modern presidency, tennis star Andre Agassi was correct, “Image is everything.”Image creation is a serious business with critically important implications for the success of any politician. But presidents must be careful in deciding how they craft the ways in which we perceive them. If they are to succeed, presidents must present an appropriate image of leadership to the American people; an image that is appropriate for the particular needs of the time when the president governs and is appropriate to the personality of that president. Their ultimate goal is to convince the public that they are actually providing leadership, even if in reality they have only a limited ability to effect outcomes.This book examines the way American presidents in the media age have shaped their public personas as a means of cultivating and advancing their political and ideological agendas. Images play an important role in the perceived success or failure of our presidents. Since public expectations are most often aimed directly at the White House and its central occupant, it is more important than ever that a president control his image, as well as presenting the right image to the American public. Reality thus becomes secondary and image is everything.
Richard W. Waterman is a Political Scientist with specialties in the American Presidency, the Bureaucracy, and the Environment. He currently is a professor of Political Science at the University of Kentucky, Lexington.
He has written eight books:
The Changing American Presidency
The Image-Is-Everything Presidency
Presidential Leadership:The Vortex of Power
Presidential Influence and the Administrative State
The Presidency Reconsidered
Bureaucratic Dynamics: The Role of a Bureaucracy in a Democracy
Politics, Bureaucrats and the Environment
Enforcing the Law: The Case of the Clean Water Acts.
He also has published copiously in such august academic journals as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the Presidential Studies Quarterly, the Legislative Studies Quarterly, Law and Society Review, Public Administration Review, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Western Political Quarterly, and the Social Science Quarterly. He has been awarded funding by the National Science Foundation, appeared on CNN, and testified about his research before a U. S. Senate Committee.
He is a huge fan of science fiction, film (including film noire and silent movies), and is a long time fan of the Boston Red Sox. He has just completed a new epic book on regime change in a succession war called, THE ORACLE: THE SUCCESSION WAR.
