Customer Reviews

Presidential Ambition

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I was very disappointed in this book. While I am not a professional historian by any means, I have lately read other "survey" books which review various aspects of multiple presidencies.

This book's contents unfortunately concentrate on a narrative review of events in each of the president's terms the author discusses rather than an in-depth and more analytical review of what personnally nmotivated the various president's to act as they did.

From the title of the book, the reader is lead to believe that the author is going to provide the deeper psychological motives and impulses of these presidents; what one got, for the most part, was how outside events "forced" presidents to act as they did.

Within the last two years, I have read two other similar, but different books which purport to cover some of the same material. I can't remember the titles, but only the authors. One was by Robert Dallek; the other by Marvin Olasky. Dallek's was by far the best. Shenkman's the worst. It got just very tedious after awhile with little information on the deeper, personal motivations of these individuals who became presidents.

However, all of these books try to cover too much ground and end up with their narratives disproving the hypothesis they start out trying to prove.

I learned a number of things about James Monroe and corruption in his administration. as a sidebar. I learned a fair amount about the ambition of the one "feature" president in the book, Chet Arthur. (I've not read a full bio of either.)

But, as one other reviewer notes, Shenkman lays out the "what" of ambition in terms of facts, but gets little into the why in most cases. A couple, like Lincoln and FDR, are obvious. Others aren't even close.

Why was Frank Pierce so driven? Shenkman never really tells us.

Then, there are three definite errors I noted. Two from these were near the end, and partially related to this being a skim job, but still, and the third is just wrong, and on page i of the introduction, no less.

Shenkman miscounts the number of presidents from New York State. When I see an error like that up-front in a book, my antennae pop up.

Second was oversimplifying Truman's decision on Hiroshima, including (by his implicit hints, since he never gives details) screwing up the timeline of both when the US indicated it would let Hirohito keep his throne, then, the timeline of when Japan was ready to surrender on that basis. (Hirohito, after BOTH bombs had been dropped, still had to force his war cabinet to accept surrender, and at that, was nearly toppled by a colonels' coup a day later.) Shenkman either should have ignored this, or else taken the time to get it right, especially since two of his books are about historical lies.

He then repeats the canard that Dick Nixon came up with the "pink sheet" attack against Sen. Helen Gahagan Douglas in his 1950 run for her seat. Nope, not at all. Her primary opponent on the Democratic side invented the idea; Tricky Dick just copied it, refined it and upped the ante.

And so, with errors like these, I'll be more skeptical about other books of his in advance, if I read them.

Americans believe most of their leaders are and have been honest, with the best interests of our and their country at heart. Shenkman's look at presidential ambition could destroy that view of honorable U.S. presidents of both the past and the future. It will certainly make those who read the book view more critically what future candidates say about their reasons for pursuing the office. When viewing the current political atmosphere in Washington and many state capitals, it is easy to believe that most if not all politicians care only about being elected and work while in office to be re-elected. There is no view toward what will serve the country best.

Most people, both Americans and people who study our history in other countries, have always believed that George Washington served only because it was what his countrymen wanted, and it was his duty. The fact that he refused to be named king and retired after only two terms reinforces that view. But even Washington's ambition, or ability to serve as president without personal benefit, is questioned by Shenkman. Even he admits, though, that Washington set the bar very high for those who followed in the office - most of whom failed miserably, beginning immediately with John Adams.

Another career that many readers will find surprising, and a lot of readers may even disagree with, is that of Abraham Lincoln. He depicts Lincoln as a man who had to take enormous steps to reach the office he coveted so dearly. His Lincoln is a political animal, whose every thought, every action was calculated to take him higher and higher.

Shenkman examines the careers of various other presidents, but not all. He more or less ends his study with the career of Dwight Eisenhower, which means that he does not examine some of the most dishonest men to hold the office. Even so, his view of presidential politics is only that of negative aspects. We all know that many of these men accomplished great things. But in his view it appears that none acted out of love for the country, even when their accomplishments had positive results.

Presidential Ambition is an elementary read on the politics of the presidency. It significantly misleads the reader into believing that they are going to read a political/psychological analysis of the presidency, by treating each president individually. Rather we get a historical recap of what events forced the president to act "ambitiously" and "without scruples." Although each time we are reminded that the President did not really want to act in this matter, but the events around him forced him to do so. Shenkman offer little in terms of analysis and my reasons for offering an average review is that while there is little in terms of political analysis or an a look into the presidential psyche (in terms of analyzing personal papers, decisions, etc.); Shenkman offers a very good history on the presidency in an easy to read manner. His anectodes are interesting and purposeful chosen to support his rather simplistic thesis that to be President one must be ambitious, and as the country grew more complex, the more ambitious the president. Ambitious as the sole reason for propelling a President to make any decision sets up an unrelaistic scenario that suggests the President acts unilaterally. It is a historical delight, but as a book of political sciecne, it is underwhelming and a travesty

As we get closer to the next Presidential election, Shenkman's book offered me a different way to look at history and think about office of the President. The book gives brief and easy to follow history and enabled me to put past presidents in the context of the events that surrouned their term and really created their drive to the White House. I definitely recommend it.

I only wish Mr. Shenkman had more books out there. I read his "Revere" and "One Night Stands" book when I was in high school, but "Presidential Ambition" is where the author arrived at a new level. I could not put it down and have read it twice. I wish he'd re-issue it with GW Bush added in. This puts most of the Presidents on trial and turns the light on all the dirt associated with everyone from Polk to Pierce to Cleveland and even non-entities like Garfield and Arthur. I read so many things in this book that I had never heard of before (And 80% of the books I read are on Presidents):

Pierce had an entire town destroyed.

Benjamin Harrison turned a blind eye in the ousting of Hawaii's Queen (since she wasn't white).

There's even a tale of a night when white citizens in Tacoma made all the Chinese of that town leave at gunpoint during Cleveland's administration (who didn't see fit to do anything about it since they weren't a decent sized voting block).

Just thinking about it makes me want to read it again. Fascinating. Just fascinating. Leave your ridiculous Presidential pedestal at home 'cause he's knockin' 'em off one by one.

Shenkmans work is a must read for those who want to know the truth about our presidents. Shown warts and all, Shenkman seems to revel in pulling the cloak of greatness from these men. It's still heartening, none the less. He shows that crooked politicians are not a new phenomenon and that private moral behavior doesn't have to affect public behavior