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THE MOST POWERFUL MEN IN THE WORLD Lewis L. Gould, The Modern American Presidency. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003, Pp. XV, 301. $29.95.)
Lewis L. Gould, a leading historian of the American presidency from the University of Texas at Austin, has written a first-class study of the development of the modern American presidency from William McKinley through Bill Clinton. It is first-class in every respect, the writing of it, the main points about the presidents, and the command Gould has of the subject, and of the sources about it.
In recent years there has been a number of new books on the modern presidency, and Gould's book is one of the best. Though the book is written for general readers, academic specialists on the presidency will find it informative and useful. One can hope that a sitting president and his staff, if they still read books, can also learn from this instructive volume.
Gould has made so many points about the modern American presidency itself and about the eighteen presidents examined here that it is not possible to include all of them in this review. I can only sample them here and hope that readers will go beyond this review.
Gould is persuaded that the rise of the modern presidency should be traced back to the period between 1897 and 1921 (McKinley-Wilson) rather than from FDR on. Inevitably, bureaucracy became the dominant feature of the White House with interconnected layers of staff to interact with Capitol Hill, the public, other branches of government, foreign countries and the courts. But the essence of change in the presidency did not reside in the bureaucratic accretion of assistants and offices. What the presidents did in the twentieth century mattered most. They fought and won two world wars. They championed legislation, oversaw the economy, traveled around the world and articulated American values. They became "the most powerful men in the world" (p. xii).
In the process, the presidency absorbed for its own purposes the style and methods of celebrity and show business. To win election and reelection now requires mastery of the arts of movies and television. Campaigning for the office puts a premium on symbolism over serious thought. Thus presidential celebrity is a major element of...