When Life Strikes the President

When Life Strikes the President PDF Author: Jeffrey A. Engel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190650761
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
What happens when life, so to speak, strikes the President of the United States? How do presidents and their families cope with illness, personal loss, and scandal, and how have such personal crises affected a president's ability to lead, shaped presidential decision-making in critical moments, and perhaps even altered the course of events? In asking such questions, the essays in this volume -- written by twelve leading scholars noted for their expertise on their respective subjects -- reveal alternately the frailty, the humanity, and the strength of character of some of America's most controversial presidents. Three of them deal with the death of children--the impact of the loss of a young son on Franklin Pierce, Abraham Lincoln, and Calvin Coolidge. Another shows how, when his father suffered a stroke, John F. Kennedy lost his most important adviser as the crisis in Cuba loomed. Three essays tell stories about notorious, self-inflicted scandals during the presidencies of Andrew Jackson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. Several of them focus on the effects of disability or illness in the Oval Office -- on Woodrow Wilson's stroke at the end of World War I; Franklin Roosevelt's paralysis while leading the country through the Great Depression and World War II; Ronald Reagan's struggles and changed priorities in the wake of an assassination attempt; and the bearing of depression and personality disorders of one kind or another on the actions Jackson, John Tyler, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon during their crucial years in office. While illuminating a considerable span of American history and providing new and significant analyses of American politics and foreign policy, these fascinating essays remind us about the personal side of presidential leadership, and that tomorrow is promised to no one.

When Life Strikes the President

When Life Strikes the President PDF Author: Jeffrey A. Engel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019065077X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
What happens when life, so to speak, strikes the President of the United States? How do presidents and their families cope with illness, personal loss, and scandal, and how have such personal crises affected a president's ability to lead, shaped presidential decision-making in critical moments, and perhaps even altered the course of events? In asking such questions, the essays in this volume -- written by twelve leading scholars noted for their expertise on their respective subjects -- reveal alternately the frailty, the humanity, and the strength of character of some of America's most controversial presidents. Three of them deal with the death of children--the impact of the loss of a young son on Franklin Pierce, Abraham Lincoln, and Calvin Coolidge. Another shows how, when his father suffered a stroke, John F. Kennedy lost his most important adviser as the crisis in Cuba loomed. Three essays tell stories about notorious, self-inflicted scandals during the presidencies of Andrew Jackson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. Several of them focus on the effects of disability or illness in the Oval Office -- on Woodrow Wilson's stroke at the end of World War I; Franklin Roosevelt's paralysis while leading the country through the Great Depression and World War II; Ronald Reagan's struggles and changed priorities in the wake of an assassination attempt; and the bearing of depression and personality disorders of one kind or another on the actions Jackson, John Tyler, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon during their crucial years in office. While illuminating a considerable span of American history and providing new and significant analyses of American politics and foreign policy, these fascinating essays remind us about the personal side of presidential leadership, and that tomorrow is promised to no one.

Shall We Wake the President?

Shall We Wake the President? PDF Author: Tevi Troy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493024655
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The history of presidential dealings with disasters shows that whatever their ideology, presidents need to be prepared to deal with unexpected crises. In recent years, the expectations have grown as the disasters seem to appear to be coming more frequently. Since 2001, numerous unpredictable crises, including terror attacks, massive storms, and an economic collapse, have shaken Americans to their core. It seems as if technology, for all of its beneficences, also provides mankind with increasingly powerful ways to wreak destruction, including nuclear explosions, bioterror attacks, and cyber-attacks. In addition, instantaneous and incessant communications technologies send us word of disasters taking place anywhere in the nation far more rapidly, giving disasters an immediacy that some may have lacked in the past. In 21st century America, the eyes of the American people look to the president to lead the response to whatever disasters happen to strike. President Obama and his team learned this and were taken aback by the sheer number of crises that a president needed to deal with, including swine flu, BP’s Macondo oil spill, and the Somali pirates who attacked an American ship. Many of these did not quite reach disaster status, but Obama’s reaction to the constant stream of crises was both revealing and unnerving: “Who thought we were going to have to deal with pirates?” In Shall We Wake the President?, Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former senior White House aide and deputy secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services, looks at the evolving role of the president in dealing with disasters, and looks at how our presidents have handled disasters throughout our history. He also looks at the likelihood of similar disasters befalling modern America, and details how smart policies today can help us avoid future crises, or can best react to them should they occur. In addition, he provides information on what individuals can do to prepare for disasters. This book includes sections on how American presidents have dealt with a variety of disasters, including health crises, terror attacks, economic upheaval, bioterror and cyber-attacks, natural disasters, and civil breakdown. In doing so, Shall We Wake the President? will provide lessons from presidents of the past that will inform policy strategies for presidents of the future.

Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?

Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? PDF Author: Tina Cassidy
Publisher: 37 Ink
ISBN: 150117777X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
In this “heroic narrative” (The Wall Street Journal), discover the inspiring and timely account of the complex relationship between leading suffragist Alice Paul and President Woodrow Wilson in her fight for women’s equality. Woodrow Wilson lands in Washington, DC, in March of 1913, a day before he is set to take the presidential oath of office. He is surprised by the modest turnout. The crowds and reporters are blocks away from Union Station, watching a parade of eight thousand suffragists on Pennsylvania Avenue in a first-of-its-kind protest organized by a twenty-five-year-old activist named Alice Paul. The next day, The New York Times calls the procession “one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country.” Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? weaves together two storylines: the trajectories of Alice Paul and Woodrow Wilson, two apparent opposites. Paul’s procession of suffragists resulted in her being granted a face-to-face meeting with President Wilson, one that would lead to many meetings and much discussion, but little progress for women. With no equality in sight and patience wearing thin, Paul organized the first group to ever picket in front of the White House lawn—night and day, through sweltering summer mornings and frigid fall nights. From solitary confinement, hunger strikes, and the psychiatric ward to ever more determined activism, Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? reveals the courageous, near-death journey it took, spearheaded in no small part by Alice Paul’s leadership, to grant women the right to vote in America. “A remarkable tale” (Kirkus Reviews) and a rousing portrait of a little-known feminist heroine, this is an eye-opening exploration of a crucial moment in American history one century before the Women’s March.

When Life Strikes the President

When Life Strikes the President PDF Author: Jeffrey A. Engel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190650753
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Life does not stop simply because someone becomes president. Death, illness, sadness, and scandal affect every president and his family--often during their time in office. Yet the work of the nation and the pressures of the job do not cease simply because a president suffers, though their reaction, suffering, and perseverance often alters the course of American history.

Leadership

Leadership PDF Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1476795932
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
From Pulitzer Prize–winning author and esteemed presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, an invaluable guide to the development and exercise of leadership from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The inspiration for the multipart HISTORY Channel series Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. “After five decades of magisterial output, Doris Kearns Goodwin leads the league of presidential historians” (USA TODAY). In her “inspiring” (The Christian Science Monitor) Leadership, Doris Kearns Goodwin draws upon the four presidents she has studied most closely—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights)—to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking back to their first entries into public life, we encounter them at a time when their paths were filled with confusion, fear, and hope. Leadership tells the story of how they all collided with dramatic reversals that disrupted their lives and threatened to shatter forever their ambitions. Nonetheless, they all emerged fitted to confront the contours and dilemmas of their times. At their best, all four were guided by a sense of moral purpose. At moments of great challenge, they were able to summon their talents to enlarge the opportunities and lives of others. Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader? “If ever our nation needed a short course on presidential leadership, it is now” (The Seattle Times). This seminal work provides an accessible and essential road map for aspiring and established leaders in every field. In today’s polarized world, these stories of authentic leadership in times of apprehension and fracture take on a singular urgency. “Goodwin’s volume deserves much praise—it is insightful, readable, compelling: Her book arrives just in time” (The Boston Globe).

Fourteen Points for the Twenty-First Century

Fourteen Points for the Twenty-First Century PDF Author: Richard H. Immerman
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813179025
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
When the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson declared to Congress that the objective was not merely to bring "a new balance of power," but rather to bring a "just and secure peace" to the world by the end of the conflict. In this famous speech, known as "The Fourteen Points," Wilson offered the world a road map toward a more equitable international system in the midst of unprecedented global conflict, including ideas on the interconnectedness of democracy, trade, and the concept of a forum for peaceably resolving international disputes. Even decades after the end of the First World War, Wilson's ideas remained important and influenced many of his successors. But now, in the twenty-first century, there are forces at work in the world that Wilson could never have imagined, and those forces call for a new plan toward peace. In Fourteen Points for the Twenty-First Century: A Renewed Appeal for Cooperative Internationalism, Richard H. Immerman and Jeffrey A. Engel bring together a diverse group of thinkers who take up Wilson's call for a new world order by exploring fourteen new directions for the twenty-first century. The contributors—scholars, policymakers, entrepreneurs, poets, doctors, and scientists—propose solutions to contemporary challenges such as migration, global warming, health care, food security, and privacy in the digital age. Taken together, these points challenge American leaders and policymakers to champion an international effort, not to make America great again, but to work cooperatively with other nations on the basis of mutual respect.

The Origins of Overthrow

The Origins of Overthrow PDF Author: Payam Ghalehdar
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190695889
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Why has the United States repeatedly engaged in the overthrow of foreign leaders and regimes? Although most regime change interventions have neither furthered US national security nor improved the fate of targeted states, the US has turned to this foreign policy instrument in at least sixteen cases from 1906 to 2011. In The Origins of Overthrow, Payam Ghalehdar explains US-imposed regime change by focusing on its emotional underpinnings. Based on a thorough analysis of the emotional state of five US presidents, he shows how "emotional frustration"-an emotional syndrome that combines hegemonic expectations, perceptions of hatred in target state obstructions, and negative affect-has repeatedly influenced US regime change decisions. When US presidents have been gripped by this emotion, Ghalehdar argues, they have turned to the use of force and targeted perceived sources of obstruction in order to ameliorate their emotional state and discharge frustration. Examining five US regime change episodes in two world regions (Cuba 1906, Nicaragua 1909-12, and the Dominican Republic 1963-65 in the Western hemisphere, and Iran 1979-80, and Iraq 2001-03 in the Middle East), he empirically illustrates the emotional sources of US intervention decisions. A novel explanation for a puzzling phenomenon in US foreign policy, The Origins of Overthrow sheds light on how emotions play a previously overlooked role in US regime change decisions.

Impeachment

Impeachment PDF Author: Jon Meacham
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 1984853791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Four experts on the American presidency examine the first three times impeachment has been invoked—against Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton—and explain what it means today. Impeachment is a double-edged sword. Though it was designed to check tyrants, Thomas Jefferson also called impeachment “the most formidable weapon for the purpose of a dominant faction that was ever contrived.” On the one hand, it nullifies the will of voters, the basic foundation of all representative democracies. On the other, its absence from the Constitution would leave the country vulnerable to despotic leadership. It is rarely used, and with good reason. Only three times has a president’s conduct led to such political disarray as to warrant his potential removal from office, transforming a political crisis into a constitutional one. None has yet succeeded. Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 for failing to kowtow to congressional leaders—and, in a large sense, for failing to be Abraham Lincoln—yet survived his Senate trial. Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974 after the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against him for lying, obstructing justice, and employing his executive power for personal and political gain. Bill Clinton had an affair with a White House intern, but in 1999 he faced trial in the Senate less for that prurient act than for lying under oath about it. In the first book to consider these three presidents alone—and the one thing they have in common—Jeffrey A. Engel, Jon Meacham, Timothy Naftali, and Peter Baker explain that the basis and process of impeachment is more political than legal. The Constitution states that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” leaving room for historical precedent and the temperament of the time to weigh heavily on each case. This book reveals the complicated motives behind each impeachment—never entirely limited to the question of a president’s guilt—and the risks to all sides. Each case depended on factors beyond the president’s behavior: his relationship with Congress, the polarization of the moment, and the power and resilience of the office itself. This is a realist view of impeachment that looks to history for clues about its potential use in the future.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Leadership Studies

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Leadership Studies PDF Author: George R. Goethals
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1071840819
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1981

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Book Description
Leadership Studies is a multi-disciplinary academic exploration of the various aspects of how people get along, and how together they get things done. The fields that contribute to leadership studies include history, political science, psychology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, literature, and behavioral economics. Leadership Studies is also about the ethical dimensions of human behavior. The discipline considers what leadership has been in the past (the historical view), what leadership actually looks like in the present (principally from the perspectives of the behavioral sciences and political science), and what leadership should be (the ethical perspective). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Leadership Studies will present both key concepts and research illuminating leadership and many of the most important events in human history that reveal the nuances of leadership, good and bad. Entries will include topics such as power, charisma, identity, persuasion, personality, social intelligence, gender, justice, unconscious conceptions of leadership, leader-follower relationships, and moral transformation.

To End All Wars, New Edition

To End All Wars, New Edition PDF Author: Thomas Knock
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191611
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
A close look at Woodrow Wilson’s political thought and international diplomacy In the widely acclaimed To End All Wars, Thomas Knock provides an intriguing, often provocative narrative of Woodrow Wilson’s epic quest for a new world order. This book follows Wilson’s thought and diplomacy from his policy toward revolutionary Mexico, through his dramatic call for “Peace without Victory” in World War I, to the Senate’s rejection of the League of Nations. Throughout, Knock reinterprets the origins of internationalism in American politics, sweeping away the view that isolationism was the cause of Wilson’s failure and revealing the role of competing visions of internationalism—conservative and progressive.