Presidential Leadership: Politics and Policy Making

This classic text on the American presidency analyzes the institution and the presidents who hold the office through the key lens of leadership. Edwards, Mayer, and Wayne explain the leadership dilemma presidents face and their institutional, political, and personal capacities to meet it. Two models of presidential leadership help us understand the institution: one in which a strong president dominates the political environment as a director of change, and another in which the president performs a more limited role as facilitator of change. Each model provides an insightful perspectives to better understand leadership in the modern presidency and to evaluate the performance of individual presidents.

With no simple formula for presidential success, and no partisan perspective driving the analysis, the authors help us understand that presidents and citizens alike must understand the nature of presidential leadership in a pluralistic system in which separate institutions share powers.

This fully revised thirteenth edition is fully updated through the Biden administration, with recent policy developments, the 2022 midterm elections, changes to the media environment, and the latest data.

George C. Edwards III is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies Emeritus at Texas A&M University. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Oxford and has held appointments at Oxford, Sciences Po Paris, the US Military Academy, Peking University, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the University of London. A leading scholar of the presidency, he has written or edited twenty-seven books on American politics. He was also the editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly for 24 years and general editor of the Oxford Handbook of American Politics series. Professor Edwards has served as president of the Presidency Research Section of the American Political Science Association, which has named its annual dissertation prize in his honor and awarded him its Career Service Award. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, he has received the Decoration for Distinguished Civilian Service from the US Army and the Pi Sigma Alpha Prize from the Southern Political Science Association. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Edwards applies his scholarship to practical issues of governing, including advising other countries on their constitutions, presidencies, building democratic national party systems, elections, and democracy generally. He has also authored numerous studies for US presidential transitions.

Kenneth R. Mayer is a professor of political science and an affiliate faculty member at the Robert M. LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author or editor of twenty-two books, including With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power, which won the Richard E. Neustadt Award from the Presidency and Executive Politics section of the American Political Science Association for the best book on the American presidency. He was the inaugural Fulbright distinguished chair in political science at Australian National University and the first distinguished chair position in the Pacific region. He returned to Australia as part of the US State Department Public Speaker Program to give a nationwide series of lectures on the 2012 presidential election. An award-winning teacher, he also regularly serves as an expert witness on voting rights, campaign finance, and redistricting cases in both state and federal courts.

Stephen J. Wayne is a well-known author and lecturer on American presidents and the presidency. As a professor of government at Georgetown University, he taught courses on the American presidency, US elections, and psychology and politics. A presidential and a Washington-based “insider” for more than fifty years, Wayne has written or edited twelve books, many in multiple editions, and authored numerous articles, chapters, and reviews that have appeared in professional journals, scholarly compilations, newspapers, and magazines. In addition to Presidential Leadership, his best-known works include Personality and Politics: Obama for and against Himself, Is This Any Way to Run a Democratic Election? and The Road to the White House, now in its twelfth edition. His latest book is The Biden Presidency: Politics, Policy, and Polarization. Professor Wayne is frequently quoted by White House journalists, regularly appears on television and radio news shows, and has been interviewed in documentaries on the presidency and political leadership. He lectures widely at home and abroad to international visitors, college students, federal executives, and business leaders. He has testified before Congress on the subjects of presidential elections and governance and before the Democratic Party and Republican Party advisory committees on the presidential nomination processes.