Presidential Ambition [Hardcover]

Richard Shenkman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 1999

In this timely, provocative, illuminating, and often shocking book. New York Times bestselling author Richard Shenkman provides a vital context for understanding the American presidents, today and throughout history.

Combining a potent narrative with persuasive and compelling insights, Shenkman reveals that it is not just recent presidents who have been ambitiousand at times frighteningly overambitious, willing to sacrifice their health, family, loyalty, and values as they sought to overcome the obstacles to powerbut they all have. This volcanic ambition, Shenkman shows, has been essential not only in obtaining power but in facingand attempting to masterthe great historical forces that have continually reshaped the United States, from Manifest Destiny and Emancipation to immigration, the Great Depression, and nuclear weapons.

As Shenkman describes the lives and careers of the most representative and colorful presidents from Washington to Nixon, he shows that those who succeeded in reaching the White House, whatever their flaws, were complicated human beings, idealistic as well as ambitious. Over time, however, they began to make increasingly troubling compromises, leading to a decline in t he mortal tone of American politics.

What drove politics downward? In a stunning conclusion, Shenkman demonstrates that it wasn't a decline in presidential character that was responsible, but changethe dramatic transformation of the United States from a country of four million in Washington's day to more than a quarter billion todaythat made running the country more complicated and difficult. Instead of things getting better and better they got worse and worse as people became used to increasingly promiscuous political practices.

First John Adams played politics with national security. Then James Polk lied the country into war. James Buchana tolerated the bribing of congressmen. Ulysses S. Grant ignored shocking corruption. Rutehrford B. Hayes became the first of several presidents to win election through vote stealing. Grover Clevland pandered to immigrants. Teddy Roosevelt precipitated an international crises to improve his chances of election. FDR used the IRS to go after his political enemies. Harry Truman faked a war scare. John Kennedy played God with nuclear missiles. And Lyndon Johnson lied and lied and lied.

Sympathetic but balanced in his presentation of the presidents' behavior, in his richly detailed portraits Shenkman shows just how resourceful they had to be to survive and succeed. Presidential Ambitiondramatic, lively, and nakedly honestis a book that will permanently alter the way we think about past, present, and future American presidents.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The standard by which all books on presidential power are judged is Richard E. Neustadt's Presidential Power, which considers modern presidents in terms of their ability to wield influence. In Presidential Ambition, Richard Shenkman takes a more historical--and much more cynical--look at the question of how a president uses and consolidates power. In addition to the compromising of principles, lying, pandering, stealing votes, manipulation of the press, and attempts to manipulate public opinion that take place in the Oval Office, Shenkman also delves into the nefarious methods by which these men became America's leaders.

He maintains that the primary quality that separates the presidents from other Americans, from George Washington onward, is their overwhelming ambition. The most successful occupants of the White House, he suggests, expanded the powers of their position by molding the presidency to their own talents and skills, finding ways to do what they wanted--including lying to the American people (a trait, he makes abundantly clear, that is far from limited to the Clinton administration). Shenkman's conclusions about the presidency and the United States are bleak. He argues that the behavior of American presidents has gotten worse as the world has grown more complex: "If you looked carefully at American history you could see a clear pattern of decline. Instead of things getting better and better over time, as Americans liked to fantasize, they had gotten worse and worse.... The system over time had become more and more politically promiscuous, ever more tolerant of a wider and wider range of unseemly presidential behavior." --Linda Killian

From Publishers Weekly

Shenkman practices the breed of historical revisionism that some call anti-American history. This is a genre prone to suggesting that most traditional American heroes?especially heroic white males?were made of tin. Training his fire on the world's largest collection of prominent white males, Shenkman discounts Lincoln's soaring rhetoric, Washington's shrewd pragmatism and FDR's grand strategies for combating economic catastrophe. According to Shenkman's analysis, what counts most in the success of presidents is "luck?plain, ordinary, dumb luck." (In one instance, Shenkman points to the luck of being born rich and socially advantaged, despite such exceptions to the rule as Lincoln, Coolidge, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Clinton.) It comes as a revelation for Shenkman that our presidents have been ambitious; ambition, he implies, is not an altogether good thing. In portraits designed to shock and disillusion, Shenkman puts each chief executive in his place. Psychoanalyzing Theodore Roosevelt, for example, Shenkman finds that Teddy was nothing more than a "skinny, asthmatic rich kid," anxious to overcompensate for his self-perceived shortcomings by bullying smaller powers with the Great White Fleet. Many readers may prefer their presidents as painted by Stephen Ambrose, Arthur Schlesinger and other chroniclers. Shenkman shows no nuanced understanding (as exemplified by Robert Caro in his two-volume biography of LBJ) of how ambition and genuine idealism can coexist in one person.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (January 27, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006018373X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060183738
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,677,594 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rick Shenkman is the editor and founder of George Mason University's History News Network, a website that features articles by historians on current events. An associate professor of history at George Mason University, he can regularly be seen on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. He is a New York Times best-selling author of six history books, including Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of American History and Presidential Ambition: How the Presidents Gained Power, Kept Power and Got Things Done (HarperCollins, 1999). His latest book is Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter (Basic Books, June 2008). He blogs at: http://howstupidblog.com

Educated at Vassar and Harvard, Mr. Shenkman is an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter and the former managing editor of KIRO-TV, the CBS affiliate in Seattle. In 1997 he was the host, writer and producer of a prime time series for The Learning Channel inspired by his books on myths. He gives lectures at colleges around the country on several topics, including American myths and presidential politics.

Mr. Shenkman can be reached by email at [e-mail].

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating look into presidential power, July 29, 2000

By 

R. Aguilar (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Presidential Ambition: Gaining Power At Any Cost (Paperback)

This book offers a fascinating insight into the lives of some of the men who have held the office of President. The author maintains that as times have gotten more complex, presidents are pressured to break the rules, lie and lend themselves to scandal to maintain political power. Shenkman poses and interesting question when he asks if the system is flawed or the individuals. He fairly concludes that both are flawed and proceeds to give example after example of how different presidents manipulated situations and circumstances to achieve and maintain their presidential ambitions.

The thing that I liked best about this book is that it spotlights some obscure presidents that you rarely hear about such as James K. Polk, James Buchanan and Chester A. Arthur. I particularly found the chapter on Franklin Pierce very interesting. He had high presidential ambitions but at the same time, he had to keep his ambitions a secret from his wife because she did not want him involved in politics.

The book does an excellent job of covering presidential amibitions up until the Eisenhower administration. After this, the author gives an abbreviated view of the Cold War, Vietnam and Watergate. I found this to be strange because it would seem that this period of American history would provide the most blatant examples fo men manipulating events and circumstances to maintain power and shape policy. In anycase, this was the only shortcoming that I didn't like but overall it is a very good easy to read book that is well worth your time.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A timely and original work, June 8, 2000

By 

Lisa Schweitzer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Presidential Ambition (Hardcover)

In his book, Shenkman does an excellent job of ferreting out and explaining presidential ambition. While it may seem that Shenkman is concentrating on the negative, he is vigorously fair, and his ability to empathize with his subjects is his greatest asset. His central themes are:

1.Our presidents have been (from Washington onward) insatiably ambitious men who have done not-so-nice things to get and maintain power;

2.Their ambition and willingness to bend the rules often provided the leadership needed to steer the country through difficult times; and

3.Changes in the media, immigration, political parties, and technology forced presidents to take extreme measures to get and keep power.

What makes his book even more interesting is that he uses evidence from the historical record of presidents *before* Truman. And Shenkman spends a lot of time discussing presidents that most people know nothing about: Cleveland, Hayes, Buchanan, Polk (and his chapters on Buchanan and Polk are the best of the lot). This alone makes the book worth reading: I can't wait to suggest it to my blowhard uncle who claims Clinton was the first president besides Nixon to lie in office.

So why 3 stars, given that I am so enthusiastic about the content and the rigor of Shenkman's work? His writing has been called "breezy" and "journalistic". And his prose is both of those things, but there are times in this book that Shenkman gets in his own way with his self-conscious prose. He overuses two devices that should never, ever be overused in prose--sentence fragments and slang. The first time he used the word "caved" to describe a presidential capitulation, it was refreshing, but by the fourth I was tired of it. More annoying was his continued use of sentence fragments. Some of his points flourished with the punchy use of such informal prose; but in other cases, the device felt to me like an affection-an affection unworthy of someone like Shenkman whose prose in other places was indeed breezy and graceful.

That said, these problems are not serious enough to diminish the maturity of Shenkman's commentary. I think it is an excellent book for people (of any age) interested in the presidency. Some readers may be put off by Shenkman's moral relativism, and I guarantee the book would make for a lively discussion for a book group.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Authors Bait and Switch, March 13, 2004

By 

John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Presidential Ambition: Gaining Power At Any Cost (Paperback)

I am conflicted on this book review. My first response would be that I was disappointed with the book. The title and dust jacket lead me to believe that the author was going to cover story after story of mean, nasty, back stabbing methods past Presidents had employed to get their way. Real tricky Dick Nixon type of stuff that makes people who are skeptical of politicians stand up and cry out "look at those scum!". What I got was a chapter length review of some of the past Presidents from Washington to Ike. Sure it was easy to read, but it did not have enough detail to really get into the topic. The author presented his book in a very nice and calm manner. My opinion is that with a book covering this subject, the author needs to be frank, direct and maybe have a little chip on his shoulder to get the right level of distain in his writing.

This author had not one disagreeable thing to say in the whole book. I got to the mid point and started to think that this author would be hard pressed to speak of criminals in a harsh tone. On the other hand the author did have a very easy to read and almost conversational way of writing. The pages flowed along and before I knew it I had completed the book. Did I learn a lot from the book, well some, but again not what I wanted. I wanted to sit and gawk at a train wreck and this author presented a view to a tea party. He was just so darn nice that I feel some obligation to give him a high mark on the rating.