Departments

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leadership

  • 8/21/2022

    President as Change Agent: Breakers vs. Builders

    by Michael A. Genovese

    While Joe Biden has recently enjoyed policy successes that point toward a revival of the Democrats' political fortunes, his brand of change is handicapped by a lack of excitement. Will Americans ultimately choose a "disruptor" over an incrementalist? 

  • SOURCE: The Bulwark
    2/22/2021

    How George Washington Didn’t Lead

    Historians Lindsay Chervinsky, Noemie Emery, David Head and Craig Bruce Smith offer reflections in a virtual forum on the first president's leadership.

  • SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
    10/29/2020

    Meeting Gorbachev, Fleeing Imelda

    by Astrid S. Tuminez

    The contrasting political fortunes of Mikhail Gorbachev and Imelda Marcos offer a warning that public-spirited leadership is not always rewarded as much as naked personal ambition. 

  • SOURCE: LA Progressive
    5/9/2020

    Two Studies in Folly a Century Apart

    by Walter G. Moss

    The example of General Douglas Haig, whose disastrous decisions in World War I caused needless death, should be a cautionary example to our "war president" in battling the Coronavirus.   

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    5-22-13

    Joseph Nye: Do Presidents Really Steer Foreign Policy?

    Joseph S. Nye Jr. is a University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard. This article and the accompanying sidebar are adapted from his upcoming book, Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era.The 21st century began with an extraordinary imbalance in world power. The United States was the only country able to project military force globally; it represented more than a quarter of the world economy, and had the world’s leading soft-power resources in its universities and entertainment industry. America’s primacy appeared well established.Americans seemed to like this situation. In the 2012 presidential campaign, both major-party candidates insisted that American power was not in decline, and vowed that they would maintain American primacy. But how much are such promises within the ability of presidents to keep? Was presidential leadership ever essential to the establishment of American primacy, or was that primacy an accident of history that would have occurred regardless of who occupied the Oval Office?

  • In Defense of Transactional Presidents

    by Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

    Five presidents: Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter. Taken in 1991.Many people assume that leaders with transformational objectives and an inspirational style are better or more ethical than leaders with more modest objectives and a transactional style. We tend to think of Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan as more impressive than Dwight Eisenhower or George H. W. Bush. Leadership theorists often dismiss transactional leaders as mere “managers.” But that is a mistake.