The Hardest Job within the World: The American Presidency

Think about you will have simply been elected president. You are actually commander-in-chief, chief government, chief diplomat, chief legislator, chief of celebration, chief voice of the individuals, first responder, chief priest, and world chief. You’re anticipated to meet your marketing campaign guarantees, however you’re additionally anticipated to unravel the pressing crises of the day. What’s in your to-do listing? The place would you even begin? What shocks aren’t you fascinated with?

The American presidency is in hassle. It has turn out to be overburdened, misunderstood, nearly unimaginable to do. “The issues within the job unfolded earlier than Donald Trump was elected, and the challenges of governing at this time will confront his successors,” writes John Dickerson. In spite of everything, the founders by no means supposed for our system of checks and balances to have one superior Chief Justice of the Peace, with Congress demoted to “the little brother who can’t sustain.”

On this eye-opening e book, John Dickerson writes about presidents in historical past such a Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and Eisenhower, and and in modern occasions, from LBJ and Reagan and Bush, Obama, and Trump, to indicate how a posh job has been finished, and why we have to reevaluate how we view the presidency, how we select our presidents, and what we anticipate from them as soon as they’re in workplace. Consider the presidential marketing campaign as a job interview. Are we asking the correct questions? Are we on the lookout for good campaigners, or good presidents? As soon as a candidate will get the job, what can they do to thrive? Drawing on analysis and interviews with present and former White Home staffers, Dickerson defines what the job of president truly entails, identifies the issues that solely the president can do, and analyzes how presidents in historical past have managed the burden. What qualities make for a superb president? Who did it effectively? Why did Invoice Clinton name the White Home “the crown jewel within the American penal system”? The presidency is a job of surprises with excessive stakes, requiring imaginative and prescient, administration ability, and an excellent temperament. In the end, as a way to consider candidates correctly for the job, we have to modify our expectations, and be extra lifelike concerning the objectives, the necessities, and the restrictions of the workplace.

As Dickerson writes, “Individuals want their president to succeed, however the presidency is ready up for failure. It doesn’t should be.”