In this presidential year the leadership qualities of occupants of the Oval Office have become yardsticks for aspiring candidates. What profile of qualities, both positive and negative, helps explain the performance of chief executive? Nine eminent political scientists and historians present here their assessments of the leadership styles and organizational talents of presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt through Ronald Reagan. Their anecdotes and insights provide an unprecented opportunity to observe how the running of the office of the president has been changed, subtly and not to subtly, by the management and personal styles of the various incumbents within their historical contexts.

The book vividly depicts each president: Roosevelt, "a real artist in government"; Truman, a strong executive who always managed to appear weak; Eisenhower, who cultivated the image of being "above the fray" of politics but was actually fully occupied with getting political results; Kennedy, who successfully projected the symbolic grandeur of his office; Johnson, a figure from classical tragedy; Nixon, who preferred a corporate to a political mode of operation; Ford, who placed healing the nation's wounds from Vietnam and Watergate above his personal political future; Carter, whose fall was as stunning as his rise was meteoric; Reagan, the folk philosopher.

These acute studies of how the modern presidency has become the first among equals in our tripartite system of government will be invaluable to political scientists, historians, and government officials.  The book's lively presentation and the quotidian impact of the men it describes will make it attractive to everyone interested in how we are governed and in who is doing the governing.