The Political Presidency: Practice of Leadership from Kennedy through Reagan [Paperback]

Barbara Kellerman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195040376 | ISBN-13: 978-0195040371 | Publication Date: March 13, 1986 | Edition: Trade

How presidents lead--or fail to--is the central concern of this pointed analysis of political leadership in America. Beginning with a solid theoretical examination of the political leadership, Kellerman moves on to assess the nature of presidential power under America's six most recent administrations and considers the way each president handled the most important item on his domestic agenda.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A useful contribution....The book is of clear value as supplementary reading assignment for courses on American politics and the presidency."--American Political Science Review

"Required reading for the new crop of presidential hopefuls about to be harvested by the American public and media."--American Politics

"Required reading for the next president and for citizens who want to understand the politics of success in the White House."--James David Barber, Duke University

"Kellerman has written a book on the presidency that will interest a wide-ranging audience...This book is a very accessible bit of research."--The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences

"Penetrating in analysis, clear in focus, wise in judgment, The Political Presidency--from the pen of a rising young leader in the study of leadership--is sure to become a landmark study of our most indispensable and dangerous governmental institution."--James MacGregor Burns, Williams College

About the Author

Barbara Kellerman is at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Trade edition (March 13, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195040376
• ISBN-13: 978-0195040371
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,201,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Barbara Kellerman is the James MacGregor Burns Lecturer in Public Leadership at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was the Founding Executive Director of the Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership, from 2000 to 2003; and from 2003 to 2006 she served as the Center's Research Director. Kellerman has held professorships at Fordham, Tufts, Fairleigh Dickinson, George Washington, and Uppsala Universities. She also served as Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Fairleigh Dickinson, and as Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at the Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland.

Kellerman received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. (1975, in Political Science) degrees from Yale University. She was awarded a Danforth Fellowship and three Fulbright fellowships. At Uppsala (1996-97), she held the Fulbright Chair in American Studies. Kellerman was cofounder of the International Leadership Association (ILA), and is author and editor of many books including Leadership: Multidisciplinary Perspectives; The Political Presidency: Practice of Leadership; and Reinventing Leadership: Making the Connection Between Politics and Business. She has appeared often on media outlets such as CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, NPR, Reuters and BBC, and has contributed articles and reviews to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the Harvard Business Review.

Her most recent books are Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters (2004); a co-edited (with Deborah Rhode) volume, Women & Leadership: State of Play and Strategies for Change (2007); and Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders (2008). Kellerman speaks to audiences around the world, including in recent years Berlin, London, Moscow, Rome, Sao Paolo, Shanghai, Zurich, Jerusalem, Turin, Toronto, and Montreal. She is on the Advisory Board of the Leadership Research Network, on the Advisory Panel of the White House Leadership Project Report, on the editorial Board of Leadership Quarterly, and on the Publications Committee of the International Leadership Association. She is ranked by Forbes.com as among "Top 50 Business Thinkers" (2009) and by Leadership Excellence in top 15 of 100 "best minds on leadership." Her next book, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence, will be published in March 2010 by McGraw-Hill.

Customer Reviews

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Anomaly! Gives value to American Politics and Leadership., April 14, 2003

By 

Timothy Shives (Collegedale, tn USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Political Presidency: Practice of Leadership from Kennedy through Reagan (Paperback)

"Presidential power is the power to persuade," wrote Richard Neustadt in Presidential Power his famous handbook on the presidency (15). But what does it take to effectively use that power in order to become an effective leader in the Oval Office? In her book The Political Presidency, Barbara Kellerman did more than merely cite and expound on Neustadt's famous line. Kellerman took his quote a step further in diagnosing the presidencies of John F. Kennedy down through Ronald Reagan in order to develop what works and does not work in each administration. In doing so, Kellerman has not only given the reader a better perspective on the presidency, she has also uncovered strategies for leaders who wish to succeed in any arena besides the presidency.
Kellerman's main hypothesis regarding presidential leadership is, "the president who is motivated and equipped to be politically skilled will prove to be a more effective leader in the American political culture than the one to whom politicking is irrelevant or even distasteful" (53). In signifying her thesis, Kellerman focuses on the domestic agendas of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. Her tendency is to make an assertion based on the success rate of the single major domestic objective of each president and show how his political leadership made that agenda a success or a failure. Her major bias is towards the more extroverted presidents who have a personal desire for political influence on the national level. She also asserts that it is these presidents who tend to be more successful in achieving their domestic priorities. That is why Kellerman believes that the two most successful recent presidencies have been those of Johnson whom she titles "the very model of a political president" (124) and Reagan who "brought to the presidency both remarkable personal qualities and a readiness to employ a wide array of political tactics" (252).

However, Kellerman's hypothesis is best demonstrated not in analyzing the two most successful presidents, it is best shown in her scrutiny of the factors behind the failure of Carter's energy plan. Her main contention with Jimmy Carter is his abhorrence towards politics. She states that in "playing the manager instead of the politician [he] chose to separate and distance himself from what he saw as little more than a sullied kind of maneuvering" (23). Another aspect of Carter which Kellerman contends with is the fact that he was extremely introverted and labels him "an inner-directed man" (219). Kellerman perceives that these two factors are the primary explanation for the failure of the national energy policy. She concludes that Carter "was a political failure because, especially in the initial and very critical months, he was very much a failed politician" (219).
While Neustadt analyzed each president's persuasive capabilities, Kellerman used The Political Presidency to reveal how a president's personal ability to lead is crucial to the success of that president. Kellerman states that while she mostly agrees with Neustadt, she differs in her focus of examination and therefore comes to a different conclusion on the presidency. She observes that Neustadt's tendency to concentrate on the study of power as a limited scope because it does nothing in evaluation of the actual success of a particular president. Kellerman asserts that analyzing leadership as more beneficial area to study because it is more useful in determining the actual ability of a president and also gives a larger picture into the president's character.
The Political Presidency is significant because it contradicts the typical American bias against politics. As a nation, Americans tend to extol heroes who are not within the political arena because of a national apprehension towards the political arena. However, The Political Presidency shows the value of politics and choosing the leaders of our country. Kellerman gives the reader a perspective of looking at the political field as honorable and worthy of recognition. Though Kellerman is limited in analyzing only the key domestic agenda of each president studied, she gives a solid breakdown in which the reader can easily grasp the leadership abilities of recent presidents. For a more thorough understanding one would need to research each presidency in much more detail. This is because The Political Presidency cannot extract all of the factors which led to the success and failures of each administration. However, Kellerman's book is an excellent read for a political science student who lacks insight in modern presidencies or even for the scholar wishing to study a leadership approach to some of the most current incumbents of the White House.
This book is on par with Presidential Power as a useful handbook for observing the nation's most powerful and sacred political offices. Kellerman is excellent in reviewing each president's leadership ability. Furthermore, her study into leadership is useful for improving any leader's own leadership skills. For the up and coming future leaders of America a better a book does not exist for studying political leadership than Barbara Kellerman's The Political Presidency.