The Presidential Difference: Leadership Styles from FDR to Clinton by Fred I. GreensteinReview by: Thomas S. LangstonPolitical Science Quarterly, Vol. 116, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 131-132Published by: The Academy of Political ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2657823 .

Accessed: 18/12/2014 01:42

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The Academy of Political Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toPolitical Science Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 18 Dec 2014 01:42:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Book Reviews

The Presidential Difference: Leadership Styles from FDR to Clinton by Fred I. Greenstein. New York, The Free Press, 2000. 282 pp. $25.00.

Fred Greenstein makes use of a tantalizingly simple counterfactual exercise to delve into the difference it makes who holds the nation's highest office. What difference would it have made, he asks, had Hubert Humphrey, rather than Lyndon Johnson, succeeded John Kennedy in the presidency, or if Richard Nixon had served as president in the 1950s in the place of Dwight Eisenhower?

From such counterfactual starting points, Greenstein develops criteria for analyzing the men who have held the presidency from Franklin Roosevelt through Bill Clinton. Each modern president's execution of the office is consid- ered in terms of public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence.

Naturally, not all of Greenstein's case studies are equally revealing. He is most persuasive in his analysis of Dwight Eisenhower-highly familiar terrain for Greenstein-and Ronald Reagan. Eisenhower is praised for his political skill as a "hidden hand" president, but taken to task for abdicating the presi- dent's role as "Teacher in Chief." The "no hands" organizational style of Ron- ald Reagan is also deftly summarized and its consequences analyzed.

The Kennedy case study, by contrast, leaves fundamental issues unre- solved. Did the cold war heat up in the 1960s because of what Greenstein terms a "lack of mutual understanding" between the superpowers (p. 65)? Maybe, but Greenstein's casual assumption of the truth of this proposition renders un- substantiated the conclusion that Kennedy's presidency suffered from a lack of foreign policy vision. Kennedy arguably had a clear and explicit vision of for- eign policy and military necessity, which he acted upon in Vietnam, setting in motion the policies that Johnson built upon in committing substantial Ameri- can resources to the Vietnam War.

Another small defect is that Greenstein assumes away the potential for applying his approach to the pre-modern presidency, because "until the 1930s, Congress typically took the lead in policymaking, and the programs of the fed- eral government were of modest importance for the nation and the world" (p. 3). To the contrary, applying the same counterfactual reasoning that Greenstein employs, one could quite profitably ask what difference would it have made

Political Science Quarterly Volume 116 Number 1 2001 131

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 18 Dec 2014 01:42:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

132 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

to the nation and the world had Thomas Jefferson, rather than John Adams, succeeded George Washington, or if George Dallas rather than James Polk had been in office in the late 1840s.

These criticisms might easily be considered the price to be paid for a read- able and concise volume. A more serious challenge, however, is that some of the very factors that Greenstein discusses in terms of the individual men who held the presidency may in fact have been determined not so much by personal qualities of the presidents as by the structure of the political environment. At the least, Greenstein's analysis would have benefited from taking up the possi- bility that the changing shape of the political environment that each president faces magnifies or diminishes the importance of particular personal traits. While all presidents surely should have political skill, for example, could any amount of political savvy have rescued Jimmy Carter from failure, given his unenviable status as the head of a Democratic regime on the verge of disinte- gration?

Nevertheless, Greenstein's volume is highly useful on its own terms. The presidency is more than the sum of "executive politics." The Presidential Differ- ence provides numerous insights into why this is so, highlights the enduring value of personal qualities, especially emotional balance, in the person who wields the power of Article II under our Constitution, and provides a template for analysis well worth the attention of scholars, citizens, and even presidents themselves.

THOMAS S. LANGSTON

Tulane University

Transitional Citizens: Voters and What Influences Them in Russia by Timothy J. Colton. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2000. 324 pp. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $24.95.

This neat volume is a thorough statistical analysis of Russian elections by one of the foremost professors of Russian politics. Timothy Colton of Harvard has penetrated into the parliamentary elections in December 1995 and the presi- dential elections in June-July 1996 in a multifaceted regression analysis. With its thematic approach, this book complements the chronological study, How Russia Votes, by Stephen White, Richard Rose, and Ian McAllister.

But Colton has probed deeper, with the assistance of a large survey and sophisticated statistical methods. His presentation of regression results is admi- rably clear. Judiciousness is his trademark, though the reader often wishes that he were more daring. No doubt, this is the best analysis of any Russian election to date. It is likely to set a pattern for electoral analysis of Russia and other postcommunist countries.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 18 Dec 2014 01:42:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions