Reviewed by: The Modern American Presidency Robert J. Spitzer The Modern American Presidency. By Lewis L. Gould. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003; pp xv + 301. $29.95. Arguably the greatest and most protracted intellectual struggle in the study of the American presidency arises from two opposing views of the institution. One view explains the institution largely in terms of the way it has been shaped by the individuals occupying the office. It emphasizes the impact of leadership (surely still the largest and most prolific school of presidency analysis), personality, and unique historical events, among other factors, to explain the institution. In this view, the presidency is composed of the 43 distinct events or cases defined by the individuals who have occupied the Oval Office, even when analysts seek common traits found across administrations. The alternate view is the institutionalist perspective. While this term encompasses an eclectic array of methodologies, they share in common some sense that fundamental institutional traits generally transcend the idiosyncrasies of individual presidents; that the presidential experience is more common than different; that key factors explain fundamental behaviors and outcomes. Lewis L. Gould's new book would seem at first blush to fall in the first category, which is where most presidential historians are to be found. Even though Gould, an emeritus history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, presents a chapter organization that seems to offer little more than a familiar chronological recitation of "modern presidents" from McKinley to Clinton, as laid out in the book's ten chapters (most chapters treat presidents in pairs, except for solo treatments of Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and Clinton), in fact the book offers a great deal more. His analytical focus is decidedly institutional. There is a modern presidency, of course, as distinct from the premodern institution, although traits of the latter are inextricably intertwined with the former. But each president played an identifiable role in advancing the modern institution. Singularly instructive is Gould's first case, William McKinley. Generally considered the last of the premoderns, Gould demonstrates the reverse. In part through the pivotal role of the little-known presidential secretary George B. Cortelyou—think of an Edwardian Karl Rove—McKinley was not, in fact, quite the back porch campaigner and president too often depicted. Yes, McKinley did follow the custom and refrain from personal political campaigning in 1896 and 1900. But just prior to the 1898 midterm elections, he "campaigned" vigorously around the country to defend his post-Spanish-American War plan to retain lands abroad. Thumping vigorously on policy near election time had the desired effect: it "minimized Republican losses in the 1898 elections and built support for McKinley's decision to acquire the Philippine Islands" (8). Largely though Cortelyou, McKinley cultivated positive press coverage, provided White House reporters with indoor quarters (predating Theodore Roosevelt's similar and more [End Page 230] widely touted move), established a White House "War Room" (its contemporary name) to coordinate the Spanish-American War, proliferated telephone and telegraph services in the White House, and increased the staff, among other institutional innovations. In short, he materially expanded and diversified the presidential institution and mission in ways identified with later presidents. It is this story of institutional development across the last 18 presidents that is the core of Gould's narrative. Further, Gould is not out to deify the institution, to somehow resurrect "failed" presidents or to vilify "great" ones. He makes clear from the outset that "[t]o treat the modern presidency as a success story is to falsify the historical record" (xiv). Instead, this book is a highly readable, engagingly written, and nearly engrossing tale of the institutionalization of the twentieth-century presidency, although that analytic approach flags in the treatment of more recent presidents. Two conclusions that emerge from this account are that an institutional analysis underscores evolutionary continuity and that a square reading of that evolution deflates presidential myths and stereotypes, especially those that arise from the usual breezy and dreadful presidential rankings. Thus, Woodrow Wilson's presidency suffered from a degree of institutional breakdown, even before his final, debilitating stroke, that questions the usual rosy assessments. Each of the three presidencies of the 1920s...
Read full abstract
Mar 20, 2024
Jonathan Stavnskær Doucette 
Open Access
