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At the beginning of the century, the majority of Americans were satisfied with the way things were going in the United States. And then a slow decline began, seemingly uninterrupted by changes in party or achievements by the White House. As the campaigning for the next president begins, the question we ask ourselves now is who will be the most competent leader? In Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again , Elaine Kamarck asks another important question: When did Americans lose faith in their leaders? And how can they get it back?Kamarack argues that presidents today spent too much time talking, and not enough time governing. After decades of "imperial" and "rhetorical" presidencies, we are in need of a "managerial" president. In her fully readable and accessible book, she explains the difficulties of governing in our modern political landscape, and offers examples and recommendations of how our next president can not only recreate faith in leadership, but also run a competent, successful administration.

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CHOICE Review

In the Broadway musical Hamilton, George Washington tells Alexander Hamilton, who is fulminating about Congress's failure to adopt his proposal for a national bank, "Winning was easy. Governing's harder." Kamarck (Brookings Institution) presents a handful of case studies of presidential governance failures that illustrate how recent presidents' distance from and inattention to the executive establishment have caused the loss of lives, the decline of presidential popularity, and the growth of Americans' distrust of government. Kamarck argues that the requirements of "the permanent campaign" have led presidents to court the public to the point that they now often treat "the government [they] lead [as] an afterthought--until it takes down [their] presidency." Kamarck is at times guilty of overstating her case (e.g., the erosion of public trust in government has been driven by a number of factors other than conspicuous management failures), and she fails to explain policy implementation struggles prior to the permanent campaign (e.g., the Social Security rollout was so rocky, the columnist Walter Lippmann blamed it for the 1937-38 recession). This small volume does, however, make a big point: presidents need to talk less and govern more. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers; lower- and upper-division undergraduates. --Ronald P. Seyb, Skidmore College

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Elaine C. Kamarck is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at Brookings and the founding director of the Center for Effective Public Management. She is also on the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She is a public sector scholar with wide experience in government, academia, and politics. Kamarck is an expert on government innovation and reform in the United States, OECD countries, and developing countries. In addition, she focuses her research on the presidential nomination system and American politics and has worked in several American presidential campaigns.