Looking beyond the individual office holders to the office itself, this Fourth Edition of Vital Statistics on the Presidency covers George Washington’s tenure through the 2012 election. The book’s expansive view of the presidency allows readers to recognize major themes across administrations and to reach overall conclusions about the nature of the institution and its future. The illuminating data is put into context by thoughtful essays explaining key statistical patterns, making this edition an intriguing and comprehensive reference to important patterns throughout the history of the presidency.

While the presidency has always been a political office, the distinction between campaigning and governing has become increasingly blurred in recent years. Yet no one until now has documented the phenomenon of the "permanent campaign" and analyzed its impact on the executive office. In this eye-opening book, Brendan Doherty provides empirical evidence of the growing focus by American presidents on electoral concerns throughout their terms in office, clearly demonstrating that we can no longer assume that the time a president spends campaigning for reelection can be separated from the time he spends governing. To track the evolving relationship between campaigning and governing, Doherty examines the strategic choices that presidents make and what those choices reveal about presidential priorities. He focuses on the rise in presidential fundraising and the targeting of key electoral states throughout a president's term in office-illustrating that recent presidents have disproportionately visited those states that are important to their political prospects while largely neglecting those without electoral payoff. He also shows how decisions about electoral matters previously made by party officials are now made by voter-conscious operatives within the White House. Doherty analyzes what these changing dynamics portend for the nature of presidential leadership, contending that while such strategies can at times strengthen a president's hand, they can also undermine his role as a unifying national leader, heighten public cynicism, and limit prospects for bipartisan compromise. He further shows how trends in presidential fundraising undermine the conventional understanding of the predatory relationship between the president and his party. Drawing on new systematic evidence of presidential fundraising and travel, archival research at presidential libraries, and accounts by presidents and their aides, Doherty musters a mountain of evidence to offer an objective, comprehensive argument about the causes, indicators, and implications of the rise of the permanent campaign as no previous book has done-an evenhanded account that seeks to disparage no individual president. Concise and accessible, The Rise of the President's Permanent Campaign engages crucially important questions about the development of the presidency-as well as larger normative questions about what we want in a leader-as it challenges the convention in political science that has long kept most scholarship on presidential campaigns separate from the study of the presidency itself.

A collection of essays that reevaluates Richard Neustadt's place in presidential studies and shows that, while Neustadt's classic work remains a beacon for the study of the presidency, it no longer offers a reliable roadmap embodying the consensus among contemporary scholars.

Rev. ed. of: Vital statistics on Congress / Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann, Michael J. Malbin. 1984-1985 ed. c1984.

A comprehensive overview of the president's policy-making role and the way this role structures the president's interaction with other institutions of government. The book concludes with a discussion of the issues of accountability and policy leadership.

Table of contents

Analyzes annual report on current state of U.S. economy.

Examines how the president balances the competing demands of leading his political party and leading the nation.

When a president’s governing philosophy is out of step with the dominant ideology of the culture, his options for leadership are much different FROM those of a leader more in sync with the times. Such opposition leaders face distinctive challenges and opportunities for effectiveness. They should be judged by different standards, argues political scientist David Crockett. Crockett has analyzed presidents from Whig times through the Clinton presidency to develop a model for understanding presidential success and the strategies that are appropriate to the circumstances. Focusing on the terms of TWELVE opposition presidents, Crockett details the approaches they have taken to maximize their own goals and maintain political power. He illustrates vividly how these leaders must balance personal and partisan success and he lays out the relationship between personality or character and the larger political context. All opposition presidents face roughly the same type of leadership situation governing in an era in which they do not control the power to define politics but Crockett’s broad historical perspective demonstrates that they do not all handle this situation in the same way. Studying the presidency in such a political context enables Crockett to break free of the one-size-fits-all model of presidential leadership. Leadership strategies are contingent and context-bound, and the wise president understands the constraints history places on his leadership. In the case of opposition presidents, history demonstrates that pursuing a path of moderation is far healthier than launching a frontal assault on the governing party. It is healthier for the president and his party and healthier for the political system as a whole. Breaking free of the standard focus on post-World War II presidencies, this historically rich, analytically sophisticated, and extremely readable volume offers challenging understandings of presidential effectiveness. Students of American politics will join scholars of the presidency in welcoming its innovative and tightly argued perspectives.