By Rylie Oswald Al-Awhad
Welcome to the University Press of Kansas’s third week of Election Season with UPK. This week’s post features UPK’s reading essentials for books about the presidency and vice presidency in the United States.
Roadblocked by Heath Brown
Heath Brown’s Roadblocked is a revelatory look at the seventy days between the election and the inauguration. It focuses on the ways the Biden-Harris transition team sought help and advice to overcome these obstacles. Informed by over 125 exclusive interviews with members of the transition team and a wide cast of other stakeholders, Brown takes readers deep inside the 2020 presidential transition. Roadblocked is also a gripping history of US presidential transitions over the past half century. It compares the transition teams of the last four administrations.
Excerpt featured in Rolling Stone.
“The Trump-Biden transition was like no other in American presidential history. Heath Brown combines political science theory; a new data set on interest groups and their strategies for gaining access to incoming administrations; and a clear, engaging writing style to provide a highly readable and interesting look at this most unusual period in American politics. Roadblocked will take its place among the best scholarship on presidential transitions.”—Daniel E. Ponder, author of Presidential Leverage: Presidents, Approval, and the American State
The Shifting 21st Century Presidency by Tevi Troy
The role and range of the American presidency has undergone significant changes in the twenty-first century, with George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and now Joe Biden transforming the office in distinct ways. Many but not all of these changes stem from the numerous crises of this young century: 9/11 and the resulting war on terror, Hurricane Katrina, the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the social unrest of 2020.
“Today, the American presidency is the first among equals in our reformulated constitutional form of government. This book, with its first-class series of contributors, offers a comprehensive look at a presidency transformed. From presidential transitions, to policymaking, to the changed relationships between Congress and the White House, and the relationship between presidents and publics, this book is a timely contribution to the scholarly literature. A must-read!”—John Kenneth White, author of Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism
The Heir Apparent Presidency by Donald A. Zinman
It was during the Depression, with the Republican regime in disarray, that Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office with a mandate to change the role of government. His was one of the presidencies that transformed the political system. But what of the successors of such transformative figures? The members and supporters of the new regime who are expected to carry forward the policies and politics of those they replace? It is these “heir apparent” presidents, impossibly tasked with backward-looking progress, that Donald Zinman considers in this incisive look at the curious trajectories of political power.
“Don Zinman has written an excellent book examining the leadership dilemmas faced by presidents who succeed the great regime builders in American politics. It can’t be easy being the president who follows Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan, and Zinman’s analysis explains why. Working comfortably in the political time paradigm established by Stephen Skowronek over two decades ago, Zinman’s work represents a genuine contribution to our understanding of the place of ‘heir apparent presidents’ in American history. Readers who see more in common with presidents across various eras will appreciate this survey of problematic administrations. It turns out that Madison and Van Buren have a lot to teach Truman and Bush.”—David A. Crockett, author of Running against the Grain: How Opposition Presidents Win the White House
Presidential Lightning Rods by Richard J. Ellis
H. R. Haldeman, President Nixon’s former chief of staff, is said to have boasted: “Every president needs a son of a bitch, and I’m Nixon’s. I’m his buffer and I’m his bastard. I get done what he wants done and I take the heat instead of him.”
Richard Ellis explores the phenomenon of presidential “lightning rods”—cabinet officials who “take the heat” instead of their bosses. Whether by intent or circumstance, these officials divert criticism and blame away from their presidents. The phenomenon is so common that it’s assumed to be an essential item in every president’s managerial toolbox. But, Ellis argues, such assumptions can oversimplify our understanding of this tool.
“Ellis explores an important—but often misunderstood—tool in a president’s kit-bag of political and strategic management. ‘When to take the blame?’ and ‘Who is to take the blame?’ are crucial questions all recent presidents have faced and will continue to face. Ellis provides an interesting and timely analysis of the ‘lightning rod’ phenomenon.”—John P. Burke, author of The Institutional Presidency
The Unorthodox Presidency of Donald J. Trump by Paul E. Rutledge and Chapman Rackaway
The Unorthodox Presidency of Donald J. Trump explores the myriad ways in which candidate, and then president, Trump exemplifies a nontraditional version of US politics. As a candidate he eschewed the norms of campaign procedure, and, in the worst cases, human decency, in favor of a rough-and-tumble, take-no-prisoners approach that appealed to those who felt marginalized in a changing society. Though the constitutional design of the presidency has seen political outsiders rise to the office of the presidency before and maintain stability, never before has a candidate so alien to political norms risen to the highest office.
The presidency of Donald Trump represents the most significant challenge in the history of the United States. Can the constitutional design and boundaries on the office of the presidency survive the test of an occupant who is antithetical to everything in its past? The editors and their contributors highlight how Trump’s actions present direct challenges to the US presidency. They focus on the potential for permanent effects of the Trump presidency on the Oval Office.
“It is impossible to do justice to all the insights, arguments, and analysis in this volume’s chapters in such a sort review . . . but this volume offers a fascinating initial assessment of the Trump presidency.”—Perspectives on Politics
Executive Privilege by Mark J. Rozell and Mitchel A. Sollenberger
Executive Privilege is widely considered the best history and analysis of executive privilege and the limits of presidential power.
This fourth edition is revised and updated to include the Obama administrations and over half of the Trump administration. The new edition includes President Obama’s failure to live up to the high expectations of his campaign promises. It also includes President Trump’s controversies: the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the proposed addition of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, and the ongoing inquiry into White House security clearances.
“For an American people who (apparently) must be their president’s keeper, this book is essential reading.”—Rhetoric & Public Affairs
The White House Vice Presidency by Joel K. Goldstein
“I am nothing, but I may be everything,” John Adams, the first vice president, wrote of his office. For most of American history, the “nothing” part of Adams’s formulation accurately captured the importance of the vice presidency. But a job that once was “not worth a bucket of warm spit,” according to John Nance Garner, became critical to the governing of the country on an ongoing basis. It is this dramatic development of the nation’s second office that Joel K. Goldstein traces and explains in The White House Vice Presidency.
“Based on a close reading of available archival materials; memoirs; newspapers; the secondary source literature in history, political science, and the law; presidential oral history projects; and published primary sources, The White House Vice Presidency is a well-researched, thoughtful, and nuanced treatment of a crucial turning point in the history of American governance.”—Political Science Quarterly
