Mr. Bardaglio raises some very interesting and significant points with regard to FDR. Thank you for the Lippman reminder. I wish more folks would look at all of Lippman's writings. But I do think the FDR comments illustrate more about Mr. Lippman's agendas than the actual quality and experience of FDR. And of course, Mr. Truman was not a "Bidenesque" VP. My fondness for FDR, with all the well documented blemishes, falls back to my grandparents and uncles and parents, who lived throug the real Depression and that awful war and campaigned for FDR and then Harry Truman, and never ceased to stop talking about either decades later. I have found much to admire in Mr. Lippman but also much to not agree with. I do think Mr. Obama is most troubling, however; one cannot imagine FDR or Truman or Eisenhower sitting throuh decades of rants by disturbed ministers or associations with "retired" terrorists. We do live in a different world, of course, but there must be some basics of "depth" even in an age of superficiality. I would be pleased if the next years of this administration proves me wrong.

Dr. Troy, have you read the book by Michael Gerson, former Bush aide, that Peter Baker, then still with the WaPo, describes in this article from 2007? http://shrinkster.com/180c ?

I've often wondered how GWB might have done as President and as steward of his party had he had a different VP and different team of advisors. W clearly had principles (the recent account in TIME of his pardon decision was fascinating. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1912297,00.html

But so many of his surrogates and supporters, including in the blogosphere, appeared to give off a vibe of being afraid of the American people as a whole. When W's poll numbers started going down, I kept thinking "you need people on your team who can signal fundamental liking of and respect for Americans, including those who are not affiliated with your party! You needed their votes to get elected, remember? That includes signalling comfort with dissent and with engagement. That's the best way to signal confidence in your vision and to garner abd hold on to broad support." That this was missing may have affected his efforts at goverance.

I felt badly at times that W lacked key spokesmen who could step up and reach out that way on his behalf. As a former archivist as well as historian, I'll be curious to see what future revelatios from the Bush Presidential Library show about the issues and conflicts that Gerson mentions. Initially, of course, historians will have to turn largely to memoirs and he said/she said accounts. Release of such paper trail that may exist on such issues will take time.

Dr. Troy: When I posted my comment about the 2008 election above, I had not yet clicked on the link to Mr. Kabaservice's article. I've now read it. Looks as if I am going to have to order your book and to read it. (I enjoyed your Reagan book, BTW.)

As you know from our previous exchanges here on HNN, when I was younger, I used to self identify as a conservative Republican. Since around 1989, I have been an Independent, unaffiliated with either party.

I gather your book focuses on leading from the center. Do you get into changes in Washington and in the political culture since Nixon's day? (I recently saw a Nixon associate muse about whether or not Nixon could get his party's nomination now.) As a nation, we still trail a lot of baggage from that time. As you know, Nixon served as President during the Vietnam War, a very tumultuous period in our history.

I voted for Nixon (1972 was the first election in which I was eligible to vote). At the time, I enjoyed Spiro Agnew's speeches, with their red meat rhetoric (some of which was supplied by speechwriter Pat Buchanan). I find that my retrospective view of them is quite different than it was while I was young. The turmoil over Vietnam at its core came from the inability of the Johnson and the Nixon administration to convince a majority of of the U.S. public that fighting a war there was worth sacrificing the lives of young Americans. As I worked with the Nixon tapes as a NARA employee during the 1980s, I gave a lot of thought to Agnew's speeches. I've come to regard the "blame the press" undertone in some of Agnew’s speeches as fundamentally unmanly. It comes from a different place than the sentiments embodied in Dwight Eisenhower’s “in the event of failure” prepared for D-day.

Mr. Kabaservice mentions how difficult it can be for politicians to do anything other than to say "mistakes were made." Blame shifting is much more common than acceptance of individual responsibility for judgments made, actions taken. This is so different from what happens to most ordinary Americans, many of whom sit face to face with a boss once a year and discuss their performance and how it fits in with a company's goals or an agency's strategic plan.

I think one thing that distinguishes moderate voters from those on the right or the left is the extent to which that they are drawn to people who project the ability to deal. I don't necessarily mean make deals, although that often is a necessary part of governance in a country which values democratic principles. By people who can deal, I mean leaders who seem balanced at the core, self aware enough to recognize where they fit in, willing to accept responsibility, as Ike, a moderate, was. And who are not drawn to reach instinctively for cudgels to bash others over the consequences of their own decisions. That doesn't mean they don't offer robust defenses of their actions, program, and policies. It's just that they speak moderately, from a place which respects accountability and responsibility for their own role, rather than from a fundamental place of grievance and victimization. That is what I now find missing in re-considering Agnew's speeches.

Do you get into that in your book? The exit poll numbers for 2008 on party identification and ideological leanings suggest that neither candidate could have won by appealing solely to his party’s base. That means it is very challenging to get the calibration right. Fiery rhetoric and red meat appeals that can work with a party’s base (right or left) may leave moderates cold or to be a turn off in general elections. But to win primaries, candidates have to craft their appeals to the base, which is most likely to turn out for caucuses and primaries. The trick is to win nomination, then election, then govern in a way that attracts the votes of enough of the party faithful and the moderates and Independents when it comes time for re-election. Does your book focus mostly on governance or does it get into the election process?

Wow, if President Obama suffers from "real intellectual shallowness," then what do we make of the fellow who was in the White House just before him? There are lots of valid criticisms that can be made of Obama but "intellectual shallowness" is one of the weakest, especially relative to recent occupants of the office.

Hmmm...Mr. Wolberg seems to admire FDR for his "greatness" and strong stands on the issues of his day. I wonder if he recalls Walter Lippmann's observation of FDR immediately following the Democratic convention in 1932: "He is pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President." Lippman also insisted that FDR was nothing but "an amiable boy scout."

The take-away here, at least for me, is that a rush to judgment this early in Obama's presidency could be a big mistake. We gave George W. Bush eight years; Barack Obama hasn't even been in office 8 months. Time will tell who the better president is, no matter what Mr. Wolberg asserts.