Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan

The Preface to the 1990 edition summarizes the thesis and core insights of the 1960 edition; it then explains how the additional five chapters included in Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (1990) tested them against an additional 30 years of historical development that saw five more individuals occupy the presidency. The Preface closes with a strong endorsement of the book’s original premise 30 years earlier.

Neustadt explains that a core argument of the 1960 book is that the presidency is intentionally designed to be “weak” in the Madisonian structure of the US government. That is, the presidency demands much of its occupant but affords that person relatively little inherent support and capacity to meet those demands.

Accordingly, Neustadt suggests that the primary contribution of the 1960 book was to conceive of the matter facing any president as a question off generating, conserving, and exercising political power in a prospective way. He interrogates the questions facing a president in strategic, forward-looking ways, examining how a president’s choices today are likely to affect his or her power tomorrow.

Neustadt then reviews recent political developments (and the additional chapters discussing them) briefly. For instance, Chapter 10 wrestles with the application of the book’s original framework to Lyndon B.