cover image The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from Roosevelt to Clinton

The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from Roosevelt to Clinton

Fred I. Greenstein. Free Press, $25 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-684-82733-9

What makes a successful president? Greenstein (The Hidden-Hand Presidency), a noted Princeton political scientist, attempts to answer that question by examining the terms of every chief executive of the last 70 years. He considers them in six categories: political communication, organizational capacity, political skill, vision, cognitive style and emotional intelligence. FDR receives high marks almost across the board; Eisenhower wins the prize for organization and Reagan for vision. In Greenstein's view, ""emotional intelligence""--which is his shorthand for maturity and levelheadedness--is the most important attribute: ""In its absence, all else may turn to ashes."" As negative examples, he points to the terms of LBJ and Nixon, whose impressive respective domestic and foreign achievements were all but destroyed by their stubborn paranoia and mercurial tempers. Unfortunately, the brevity of Greenstein's case leads to some rather cliched observations, evident in such hackneyed chapter titles as ""The Paradox of Richard Nixon"" and ""The Highly Tactical Leadership of George Bush."" But what Greenstein loses in depth, he gains in contrast, and his most illuminating lessons come when he weighs the advantages of one president's style against another's (such as Eisenhower's military-like staff organization vs. the freewheeling chaos of the Clinton White House). This book may not become the executive tutorial that Greenstein seems to hope, but it is nonetheless a concise, interesting analysis from one our most knowledgeable presidential scholars. (May)