The Presidential Leadership Style of Bill Clinton: An Early Appraisal

Abstract

My aim in what follows is to delineate the leadership of President Bill Clintonthat is, the outer pattern of his political behaviorso far as it has been evident in the first year of his presidency. It is outside of my scope to speculate in any extended way about Clinton's interior qualities-. Nevertheless, the aphorism style is the man serves as a warning that it is not possible to take account of an individual's characteristic mode of action without some reference to its inner wellsprings. Any analysis of Bill Clinton's White House performance must surely come to grips with the puzzle of how and why such an intrinsically attractive individual with such advanced political skills can have presided over an administration that got off to such a conspicuously uneven start and should stand so low in the esteem of the American people. I will proceed in something of a trait-psychological fashion, enumerating various of the more conspicuous qualities Clinton brings to his presidency, reflecting on how they fit into the larger pattern of his leadership, and comparing his leadership to that of various of his predecessors.