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Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan

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Neustadt's book describes one of three theories about Presidents. Everyone knows that there is a balance of power between the judiciary, the legislative and the executive branches. Neustadt claims that the President is the weak leg of the stool and that he is unable to govern alone. He must use his powers of persuasion in order to convince the other branches of the government to do his bidding.

As part of a graduate program in political science with a concentration on the United States, you will read this book. If you don't, I am happy to go out on a limb and say that there is something wrong with your program!

This is one of the three seminal works available on the Presidency. There are others but this is one of the big guns. If you read this book, along with Corwin's "Presidential Power" and Rossiter's "The American Presidency", you'll understand all three theories of presidential power: the weak President (Neustadt), the strong President (Corwin) and the President wearing many hats (Rossiter). In reality, all three are correct.

It's interesting but a scholarly read. It's not a book you'd pick up for light after dinner reading.

About half of the way through the book, Neustadt seemed to be saying the same things over and over again. I almost stopped reading. However the incredible tidbits of advice in the first half encouraged me to continue. It was certainly worth it. The last 5 or 6 chapters were written over the period between the Kennedy assasination and the end of the Reagan Administration, allowing Neustadt to ammend many of his ideas from the first 8 chapters (originally published in 1960) making the book far more lively. A wonderful read for those with a weak knowledge of the last 50 years. If you know a lot about the Korean War, Bay of Pigs, or Iran-Contra, the book may be a little too much review. Otherwise it is fabulous.

This is indeed one the classics in the field of presidential studies. Neustadt's contribution, although somewhat commonsensical at first glance, is that despite the huge increase in formal powers that the president has acquired over the years, the most fundamental power the president possesses is the power to persuade.

The president must persuade other independently elected officials to do as he sees fit. This, in a city such as Washington DC where people have seen powerful politicians come and go over the years, is easier said than done. The president must be attuned to the nuances of political issues and not allow himself to become cut off from the political back and forth by his retinue of aides. He must retain the prerogative of making the final political decision and avoid becoming a clerk and simply ratifying the decisions made form by the staff and the bureaucracy. Further, he must define what is in his political self interest.

The president does so by keeping himself informed, by employing a system of information that allows him to be at the center and making real decisions; and by carefully husbanding the power and carefully cultivating the image of the president. While the president does posses the power to command, instances where he must rely on command are a prima facie failure of persuasion.

Finally, the president must ensure that others understand his power. He must be able to strike a modicum of fear into both his allies and his foes. In the political sense, this means the ability to hurt someone electorally. If I as the president can campaign against you and make it stick, you will be more likely to fear me and be persuaded by my requests.

This is not an easy read, but if you are involved as a student of politics you WILL read this book at some point. A classic and well worth the effort.

John C. McKee

Apparently this is THE book to read if one desires to get a feel for the modern day presidency. In any other presidential book, one will see Neustadt's referred to quite often. As a realist, he describes the presidency not in terms of how it was designed by the framers. Neither does he describe the Constitutional process of accomplishing policy objectives. Neustadt explains that the truly effective president uses his position of authority to persuade others. FDR, Neustadt's shining example, knew how to work with people and get them to do his bidding. Downfall (and perhaps because I am no brain surgeon): but the book was sometimes tough to follow, hence it is often boring. Oh well, perhaps the true intellectuals will grasp it all. A DEFINITE FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO UNDERSTAND AMERICAN GOVT!

Neustadt's work has been praised by many other reviewers here, and I won't disagree that this is a classic that must be read by any serious student of the American presidency. Nonetheless, his thesis is quite outdated and has been superceded by more recent scholarship.

Neustadt's fatal flaw is to assume that the individual person in the office is the only thing that matters - if that person has the right set of skills, he can successfully bargain to get his goals accomplished. However, he doesn't pay enough attention to the role other institutions may play in constraining the president's ability to get what he wants, or how increased presidential power may give the president new resources with which to deal with the other branches.

Neustadt also assumes that all presidents before FDR were "pre-modern" and "mere clerks of the office." This perspective has been proven false in several respects. First off, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson clearly acted like "modern" presidents in many respects. Secondly, there are numerous examples of "pre-modern" presidents acting like the modern ones: even the much-reviled Rutherford B. Hayes acted like the modern presidents when appointing executive branch officials. Others such as Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Lincoln, etc., are left out altogether.

If you want to read cutting-edge work that deals with these shortcomings, take a look at Stephen Skowronek's book on the presidency instead.

The 1960 edition of Presidential Power has had a long shelf-life, and has grown over time to append chapters on post-Eisenhower presidents. But Neustadt's original thesis -- that presidents are Constitutionally weak, not strong, and that they therefore must leverage their bargaining advantages to the fullest if they want to be effective leaders -- still holds up. (Think the 104th Congress here.) It's hard to skim Neustadt -- he writes the old-fashioned way, in long, graceful sentences and paragraphs that actually hang together. But it's well worth while to settle in and get a sense of what it takes to be president. It's not clear that 2000 is going to be a good year for the American polity...

Neustadt offers a view of presidential power. One that stresses the many informal resources that are at the disposal of each President. What each of these resources has in common is that they are best used to persuade others to follow the President's wishes. The President must persuade because they do not have many formal powers to require other actors to do what they want in very specific instances. Rather, the can reward these individuals for acting in a way that they favor, but they must rely upon informal tools to accomplish these goals. Rewards such as a ride on Air Force One or Presidential Box Seats at a National's game can be used as rewards to persuade other actors to follow the President. Neustadt presents this information in a way that is both accessible and scholarly, but not too intellectually relaxed as not to be useful for political scientists. Great example of a scholarly book being useful.

The United States is a "government of separated institutions sharing powers" (29). Because of this sharing of power, each actor is not beholden to the will of the other. Rather, actors have individual interests they are pursuing. As such, the power of the president does not stem from some of dictatorial decree, but rather from his ability to persuade. The president has status and authority to help him persuade. Status lies in his holding of office, while authority refers to the incentives and punishments at his disposal. However, other actors in Washington also have incentives and punishments and his disposal. However, other actors in Washington also have incentives and punishments. This leads to the necessity of bargaining and persuasion. As such, the president has to negotiate with various competing interests; Congress, unions and business, political parties, etc. The powers of these various actors can change with personality, time, and circumstances, and as such, the power of the president can fluctuate. "The essence of a President's persuasive task, with congressmen, and everybody else, is to induce them to believe that what he wants of them is what their own appraisal of their own responsibilities requires of them to do in their interest, not his" (40).

Neustadt contends that a president's ability to reduce the risks of failure and maximize his ability to persuade is closely related to the choices he makes. The choices that president's make must always be made if reference to expanding and protecting presidential power. Neustadt claims that presidential power - the power to persuade - stems from his professional reputation in Washington, and his prestige with the public.

A president's reputation is crucial to his bargaining position. Those people who the president must persuade are constantly watching the president's reactions to any given situation. They are weighing how profitable cooperation could be, and how problematic conflict could be. This allows them to predict presidential behavior in the future. They are looking for patterns of behavior. If the president is seen as weak, they are unlikely to cooperate. As such, the president's goal regarding reputation "should be to induce as much uncertainty as possible about the consequences of ignoring what he wants...[and] to minimize the insecurities of possible support" (55). These goals, again, are accomplished though the choices and decisions a president makes.

Public prestige also plays a crucial role in the president's power to persuade. Those who interact with the president need to think about how the public at large feels about the president in addition to his professional reputation. They need to anticipate how the public will feel about the president in gauging their interaction with him. If the president is unpopular, he is likely to face resistance, and vice versa. Prestige is often found outside of Washington, while reputation is found inside. As such, in order to protect or expand his prestige, the president has to go to the source, the public.

People's perceptions of the president can change rapidly. People view the performance of the president based on their current circumstances. Because the president does not have control over events, he must be an effective teacher. That is, the president must "illuminate" his actions in order to overcome the misperceptions of the public. Again, the choices the president makes - what he does, what he will do - protect his influence.

In short, the president's power to persuade stems from three sources: the bargaining advantages that stem from his position as president, the expectations of others regarding his ability to use incentives and punishments, and lastly, other actors perceptions of the president's public prestige. These all stem from the decisions the president makes. He is judged by his actions, and as such, his choices are the key to his power. The president must always weigh the effects of choices on his personal power, if he wants to be successful. In order to make good choices, he must have good information and time to weigh his options.

Neustadt makes one key argument as it relates to presidential power. Namely, presidential power "is the power to persuade." Neustadt argues that the President does not have an unlimited bounty of power; on the contrary, he argues that the chief executive must treat each decision as a trade-off, for his political capital is expended after every chief decision. Thus, especially given the intense media scrutiny and partisanship of the present, each decision has ramifications that either, very temporarily if at all, enhance the president's capital or permanently erase that capital. As Neustadt argues, the president cannot largely regain capital. This is evidenced by the presidencies of LBJ and Carter, in particular.

All in all, this is a must-read for any scholar of the American presidency. This book has been read by every President in office since its publication as a lesson to those in power that each decision carries consequences. While you may not agree with the weak executive theory nor believe that this book still holds true half a century after its original publication, the fact remains that this still is a valuable insight into the modern presidency and should be treated as such. Don't get me wrong, this book is not a leisure read; it's incredibly dry, but you can feel the knowledge and understanding entering you as you read it.

Please note when the book was published. It is very insightful once you get past some of the sexist terminology, as in only refering to potential presidents as "he" or "man" and the same goes for government officials. Otherwise, an interesting read though redundant at times.