The Presidential Difference

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

KLIATT

In Hail to The Chief (reviewed above), Robert Dallek discusses how American presidents are made and unmade. In The Presidential Difference, Greenstein tells us why. Style, it seems, is everything; the very root of the electorate's favorable or unfavorable perception of a president. Greenstein grades the personal skills and quirks of our last 12 presidents on a sliding scale of solipsism, attributing high and low marks based on how the chief executive applies, conceals, obfuscates, emphasizes and controls personal "qualities." Greenstein's style meter measures: "organizational capacity, political skill, vision, cognitive style [IQ] and emotional intelligence." You won't find much in this work about mistakes or triumphs of political strategy or public policy. Rather, it assesses the psychological differences between presidents and how the vicissitudes of personality have determined the success or failure of a presidency. Of the 12 presidents, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, according to Greenstein, score highest on all the above attributes, with Reagan nosing out FDR in the cognitive style and emotional intelligence categories. Greenstein characterizes Roosevelt with an epithet from Oliver Wendell Holmes, who called FDR "a second class intellect with a first class temperament," while Reagan's "cognitive limitations" were merely "worrisome" and his intellect "was more than met the eye." Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter peg the low end of the Greenstein style meter as "psychically challenged," running themselves into moral and political ditches as they tried to negotiate the hairpin turns of presidential politics. Eisenhower, "theClark Kent of the American presidency," gets high marks for organizational capacity and emotional intelligence. He was also indulged by the electorate as a heroic, lovable American icon and thus forgiven his considerable shortcomings. Clinton was more a failure of promise than propensity. He desperately wanted to do the right thing, but despite scoring brilliantly on political skills and cognitive style, he flopped miserably on tests of emotional intelligence, organizational capacity and vision. George W. Bush is evaluated in a thin, hurry-up, ergo inconclusive afterword. At the back of this book lies a rich vein of source material. The appendix, bibliography and chapter notes are a comprehensive outline for an entire semester's mid-20th century course in political science. Students (and politicians) should learn at least one valuable lesson from this thesis. Of all six personal qualities, Greenstein warns, one above all others, is most important. "Beware the presidential contender who lacks emotional intelligence. In its absence all else may turn to ashes." Category: History & Geography. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, Princeton Univ. Press, 293p. illus. bibliog. index., $16.95. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: William Kircher; Washington, DC SOURCE: KLIATT, March 2002 (Vol. 36, No. 2)

Library Journal

American presidents are repeatedly evaluated, and this work by Princeton political scientist Greenstein (The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader) systematically assesses each modern president from FDR to Clinton. Greenstein bases his chronological evaluation of the Chief Executives on six factors: public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. Psychologically healthiest, he concludes, were Eisenhower, Ford, and Bush. He finds LBJ, Nixon, Carter, and Clinton "emotionally handicapped" and notes that FDR, Truman, JFK, and Reagan all experienced "emotional undercurrents that did not significantly impair their leadership." The author's modest conceptual scheme serves as a balance between Richard E. Neustadt's Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (1960. o.p.) and James D. Barber's Presidential Character (Prentice Hall, 1992. 4th ed.), based upon a four-dimensional typology of personality that Greenstein finds too bold. For readers who find virtue in Eisenhower's presidential leadership, this book will appeal. For those who recognize that Eisenhower needed a specific mission to succeed (which explains why he was more successful in the military than in the White House), Greenstein's social science-lite treatment may be too mundane and subjective. Still, this book is quite readable. Recommended for presidential collections.--William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Phil Gailey

Greenstein offers new insights into the successes and failures of 11 American presidents. . . . There are some surprises in his assessments . . . and even serious students of presidential history may find parts of Greenstein's work illuminating.
—The New York Times Book Review

Hugh Sidey

The Presidential Difference is a wonderfully concise and constructive book on leadership in the White House. Greenstein has hit the most important point about the presidency - it is a very personal job. We can talk all we want about laws - not men and flow charts, but in the end it comes down to the nature of the person who sits in the oval office.
—Time

Kirkus Reviews

Good presidents have solid visions of public policy, communicate them effectively, reconcile conflicting data—and feel good about themselves. Political scientist Greenstein (The Hidden-Hand Presidency, 1982), a student of what might be called leadership psychology, examines the lives and characters of the men who have served as president since the Great Depression (when the executive branch took the lead in policymaking away from Congress). He ranks these men according to six broad categories: proficiency in public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. By these measures, he writes, Franklin Roosevelt earns high marks for rhetorical and political skills, but low marks for "chaotic organizational skills" and an inability to conceptualize, so that he frequently set conflicting political programs into play. Jimmy Carter was petulant, incapable of communication, and so wedded to the engineer's habit of breaking down problems into their component parts that he failed to see the big picture, shortcomings that cost him dearly. Richard Nixon battled many limitations, including unease in public speaking and "imperfect control of his emotions"; intellectually masterful, he fell victim all the same to his shortcomings. Ronald Reagan's intellectual limitations "were worrisome," Greenstein writes, and he never quite seemed comfortable inside his president's role, but he was tremendous at selling his political vision. Surprisingly, in Greenstein's account it is the generally underappreciated Gerald R. Ford who emerges with a restored reputation, for Ford had tremendouspragmaticskills, a fine intelligence, and a deep reserve of emotional strength. And Bill Clinton earns high marks for his conceptual abilities and powerful intellect, even though history may well remember him as "a politically talented underachiever." Greenstein offers a fascinating, if sometimes simplistic, way of considering presidential power—and a timely one in this election year.