Each president brings to the White House a distinct set of personal characteristics and a preferred leadership style, but just how much have individual presidents shaped domestic policy? To understand and assess what factors determine one president's success and another's limited accomplishments, it is important to examine both the individual's leadership roles and the circumstances which shape their opportunities for success. This new book systematically examines the first terms of every president from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to William Jefferson Clinton and assesses the leadership style, the policy agenda, and the "political opportunity" of each. Each president's success in effecting landmark legislation and other policy change is measured and evaluated.

William W. Lammers and Michael A. Genovese look at how different levels of opportunity affect leadership and how each president played the political hands he was dealt. By dividing presidents along opportunity lines, Lammers and Genovese assess how skillful each president was in the art of presidential leadership, what strategies and tactics they employed to achieve their goals, and the policy legacies left by each.

Part I. The High Opportunity Presidents
Chapter 1. Strategies for Assessing Presidents
Chapter 2. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Artful Leadership During Hard Times
Chapter 3. Lyndon B. Johnson: Legislative Leadership and a Credibility Gap
Chapter 4. Ronald Reagan: One Big Year

Part II. The Moderate Opportunity Presidents
Chapter 5. Harry S. Truman: A Broker with Beliefs
Chapter 6. Dwight D. Eisenhower: A Skilled Centrist
Chapter 7. John F. Kennedy: A Quest for Heroic Leadership

Part III. The Low Opportunity Presidents
Chapter 8. Richard Nixon: An Activist with an Enemies List
Chapter 9. Jimmy Carter: An Outsider's Pursuit of "Trustee" Leadership
Chapter 10. George Bush: A Reluctant Guardian
Chapter 11. Bill Clinton: A Perpetual Campaigner Under Seige

Part IV. Conclusion
Chapter 12. Opportunities, Challenges, and Skills: Comparing the Presidents
Select Bibliography

"This is an elegant, even magisterial work on the presidency that combines theoretical sophistication with engaging presidential storytelling. Students as well as scholars will appreciate this fine book."

- Robert J. Spitzer, SUNY Cortland

William W. Lammers was Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California. He was an authority on presidential politics and federal policies toward the aging, and he dedicated his research to American political processes and public policy formation. He was the author of Presidential Politics: Patterns and Prospects (1976) and Public Policy and the Aging (1983), as well as numerous other publications.

Michael A. Genovese is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute for Leadership at Loyola Marymount University. He has written many books, including The Paradoxes of the American Presidency (1998) co-authored with Thomas E. Cronin, and the forthcoming A Splendid Misery: The Rise and Fall of Presidential Power (2000). He has won over a dozen university and national teaching awards and frequently appears as a political commentator on local and national television.