Abstract
What does George W. Bush’s style of presidential leadership—his orientation to office and his framing, ordering, and taking of decisions—disclose about his presidency? I approach the question through a simplified version of Richard Neustadt’s framework for the analysis of presidential leadership by consideration of his authority, professional reputation, sense of purpose, and temperament. Documentary records that are relevant and available are thin. Accordingly, we work with what we have: the president’s public statements, which are available electronically from the American Presidency Project Web site (hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara); newspapers and magazines; the memoirs of participants; the records of journalists; and secondary academic literature.
I believe the President’s job is to confront problems, not to pass them on to future Presidents and future generations. That’s the job of a leader. That’s how I have led, and that’s how I will continue to lead.
—George W. Bush, “Remarks at a Victory 2004 Luncheon in Bridgeton, Missouri,” May 14, 2004
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Notes
Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (New York: Free Press, 1990), 203.
Quoted in Charles O. Jones, “Richard E. Neustadt: Public Servant as Scholar,” Annual Review of Political Science, 6, 2003, 11.
Jacob Weisberg, The Bush Tragedy (New York: Random House, 2008), 146;
Ivo H. Daalder and James. M. Lindsay, “Bush’s Foreign Policy Revolution,” in Fred I. Greenstein, ed., The George W. Bush Presidency: An Early Assessment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 202–3.
Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (New York: Twelve, 2008), 341.
Robert Draper, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), x-xi; emphasis in the original.
Michael Freeden, “The Ideology of New Labour,” in Andrew Chadwick and Richard Heffernan, eds., The New Labour Reader (Oxford: Polity, 2003), 44.
James Pfiffner, Power Play: The Bush Presidency and the Constitution (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008), 234.
Charles O. Jones, “Governing Executively: Bush’s Paradoxical Style,” in John C. Fortier and Norman Ornstein, Second Term Blues: How George W. Bush Has Governed (Washington, DC: AEI and Brookings, 2007), 114.
George W. Bush, A Charge to Keep (New York: W. Morrow, 1999), 45.
John Milton Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1983), 171.
James A. Baker, III, and Lee H. Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 4.
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© 2010 Iwan Morgan and Philip John Davies
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Bowles, N. (2010). Bush’s Style of Presidential Leadership. In: Morgan, I., Davies, P.J. (eds) Assessing George W. Bush’s Legacy. The Evolving American Presidency Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230114333_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230114333_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29134-2
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