Why Presidents Fail: White House Decision Making from Eisenhower to Bush II Review

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Why Presidents Fail: White House Decision Making from Eisenhower to Bush II ReviewThis is a very well written, researched, and constructed book. I've always found politics such an ugly thing that I have never wanted to look further than the front page or nightly news about the goings-ons of the currant administrations. Plus who are you going to believe? They're all liars imo. And everything is so complicated and convoluted, I'm sure intentionally, that it discourages detailed thorough inspection. Mr. Pious tho sifts out the facts and presents them in a clean, clear manner. Easily digestible. I would say all currant and future presidential candidates should read this book so as to learn from others mistakes. But I'm afraid they'd use it as a how-to guide - how NOT to get caught.
I'm left, as I was before reading this book, with the feeling that running the United States of America has become nothing but a game between the dems and gop. A money making game for the insiders, a losing game for all the rest. It's amazing how obsessed the presidents and the people around them can be and what they are willing to do to acheive a goal (usually a wrong one) even in the face of daming evidence that to continue is wrong wrong wrong. They mine the law books in order to skirt the laws, coverup the presidents involment...... throw billions of tax dollars down black holes then have the nerve to ask for more.
From the cover:
Presidents are surrounded by political strategists and White House counsel who presumably know enough to avoid making the same mistakes as their predecessors. Why, then, do the same kinds of presidential failures occur over and over again? Why Presidents Fail answers this question by examining presidential fiascos, quagmires, and risky business - the kind of failure that led President Kennedy to groan after the Bay of Pigs invasion, "How could I have been so stupid?"
In this book, Richard M. Pious looks at nine cases that have become defining events in presidencies from Dwight D. Eisenhower and the U-2 fights to George W. Bush and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He uses these cases to draw generalizations about presidential power, authority, rationality, and legitimacy, and he raises questions about the limits of presidential decision making, many of which fly in the face of the conventional wisdom about the modern presidency.
Contents page:
IntroductionPresidential Fiascoes
1Reputation: Eisenhower and the U-2 Flights
2Power Stakes: Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs
3Compellence: Johnson and the Vietnam Escalation
4Command and Control: Ford and the Mayaguez
5Rhetoric: Carter and the Malaise Speech
6Prerogative Power: Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair
7Gamesmanship: Bush 41 and the Budget Summit
8Program Innovation: Clinton and Health Care
9Parallel Governance: Bush and Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction
10Presidents Unbound: Crises of Authority and Legitimacy
11Risk and Resilience: Toward a White House Learning Curve
Another book by Mr. Pious I might read is The War on Terrorism and the Rule of Law.
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Persuading Congress: A Practical Guide to Parlaying an Understanding of Congressional Folkways and Dynamics into Successful Advocacy on Capitol Hill: ... from Congress: Candid Advice for Executives Review

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Persuading Congress: A Practical Guide to Parlaying an Understanding of Congressional Folkways and Dynamics into Successful Advocacy on Capitol Hill: ... from Congress: Candid Advice for Executives ReviewIn a city crowded with people and groups clamoring to tell you "how Washington Works," I think this book does a very good job of cutting through the jargon and the nonsense and providing a clear, concise, and supremely practical guide to understanding and working with Congress. The author obviously has a lot of experience operating at a high, inside, level in the Legislative Branch, and he succeeds in distilling that knowledge down to the most important points and conveying them in an accessible and logical way to the reader. It's like getting an in-person briefing or personal memo from a seasoned Washington hand showing you the ropes. Although geared primarily toward business executives and others with interests pending before the House or Senate, I found the book to still contain insight for anyone interested in what motivates legislators or wondering how to get their attention and help. If you are a business leader or other busy person who wants or needs the bottom line on Congress, this is a good place to start.Persuading Congress: A Practical Guide to Parlaying an Understanding of Congressional Folkways and Dynamics into Successful Advocacy on Capitol Hill: ... from Congress: Candid Advice for Executives Overview

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Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights Review

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Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights Review"Was you ever bit by a dead bee?" is the question Eddie (Walter Brennan) likes to ask in the Bogart-Bacall movie To Have and Have Not. The answer is "Yes Indeed!" as Molly Ivins shows in her posthumous book. But I don't really think of her as a bee, but maybe a Texas-size horsefly biting the backsides of those who would erode our freedoms, or perhaps a vigilant bulldog protecting the tree of liberty. Perhaps also "The wronging of rights and the righting of wrongs" might be appropriate here.
This is a book of episodes, stories about instances of where the Bill of Rights comes under assault. Many of the basic tales are familiar, but many are not, and putting these stories together helps give a better picture of the whole: we've been seeing a piecemeal erosion of freedoms done in the name of freedom. There has been no sudden assault on the tree of liberty by a dozen men with chainsaws, but rather more subtle attacks--slashes with hatchets done in the night. But Molly was never willing to accept any kind of assault. When you read the stories you realize that many of the instances didn't seem like such a big deal at the time--but they were to Molly. She quotes Niemoller's comment about Hitler: Hitler went after the communists, then the Jews, then the Catholics, and each time he didn't speak up because he wasn't one of them. Then when they came for him there was no one left to speak up for him. The same thing, of course, occurred under Stalin, and Molly reminds us that when we watch others having freedoms eroded and do nothing, we are in danger ourselves--that was her passionate concern, and it's one of her primary concerns in this book.
Molly is outraged by a lot of the things that are happening, but she has always been a writer of charm and humor. She writes of how war protesters in Crawford, Texas, were (are) regarded as essentially being terrorists, and how the police chief said that if someone walked down the street alone with a political button on his or her shirt that he didn't agree with, then he could arrest them for illegal protest. There is also a lengthy piece about a reporter in San Francisco who spent 199 days in jail for refusing to testify and turn over video footage. (This is not a tale I recall ever hearing of). During a disturbance, a taillight on a police cruiser was broken. Police departments get federal grants, and so the Feds got involved. The Feds insisted that the reporter testify about what he had seen and turn over all video footage. It sounds nonsensical, trivial, and a supremely idiotic waste of time for the Feds to get involved over a taillight, but the reporter still spent 6 months in jail, and Molly was outraged.
"We had to destroy it in order to save it" is a phrase we sometimes hear in wars, but even though it isn't being phrased quite that bluntly, it is being said about freedoms. Molly's book is about this: she's been our champion and stalwart defender, our watchdog. We'll miss her insights, her humor, and her outrage at wronged rights.Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights Overview

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The Reporter's Handbook: An Investigator's Guide To Documents and Techniques Review

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The Reporter's Handbook: An Investigator's Guide To Documents and Techniques ReviewI have been recommending this book for years at writers conferences where I am give lectures on romantic suspense. This book is also great for anyone thinking about becoming an reporter, a young person looking for a career or a person who just wants who know that is involved in investigative reporting. This is a great step by step book that is extremely researched. My recommendation, buy it!The Reporter's Handbook: An Investigator's Guide To Documents and Techniques Overview

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The Making of the President 1968 (Landmark Political) Review

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The Making of the President 1968 (Landmark Political) ReviewTheodore White's considerable acumen and access to the corridors of power made him a worthy chronicler of the 1960 and 1964 presidential campaigns, but his tone of genteel liberalism made him seem an anachronism by 1968, the year of the Tet offensive, race riots, and the generation gap. But his "The Making Of The President - 1968" may be the best of his election chronicles precisely because of White's position at the nexus of one of America's great culture clashes.
It was the year Vice President Hubert Humphrey tried to shake off the cold grip of his unpopular boss, Lyndon Johnson, and run as his own man, while Richard Nixon sought to convince the electorate he was new and improved from the 1960 figure they rejected. Which one would be more successful?
There's not a lot of tension in the contest itself. White's readers knew who won, as do you. But White does shine in the wealth of detail he offers on the race, his philosophical analysis of shifting attitudes, and a cast of unique characters including the racist third-party candidate George Wallace, prickly peace advocate Eugene McCarthy, and hapless George Romney, an early GOP frontrunner of whom another Republican comments: "Watching George Romney run for the presidency was like watching a duck try to make love to a football."
There was tragedy in the 1968 race, too, most especially the murder of Democrat Sen. Robert Kennedy after his win in the California primary. White dedicates the book to Bobby and Jack Kennedy, and it's clear the reporter's heart was broken by what happened to them. Yet he manages to stand back and give an objective account of Kennedy's foreshortened run.
White seems to be everywhere, with Kennedy and his family at a California home the night before his assassination, with Humphrey at the Democratic convention in Chicago the night the town blew up in rioting and tear gas, with Nixon on Election Eve, flying over the nation as Nixon stares out a airplane window "as if by looking down and concentrating he could pull in more votes."
Nixon comes off well in this book. 1968 was his year, and White gives him his due. Perhaps White bought too much into Nixon's new public image; time showed those demons inside him were not dead but resting. But Nixon was also a figure of great dimension and brilliance, and White provides expert testimony for that. Plus Nixon best articulated a position on one core issue, law-and-order, which White and many other concerned observers, liberal though they were, could see America needed more of in 1968. Claiming this issue for his own gained Nixon the support of much of the moderate middle, the "silent majority" he spoke of on the stump.
White does have an ornate style that may bore some, and there's a lengthy postscript on what it all meant which was probably already outdated by the time the book was published. But "The Making Of The President - 1968" is by no means an outdated book. It's instead a primordial account of national politics as we now know them, with its sharp divides along racial, class, and ideological grounds, where the old ways, for better and worse, were being changed forever and the politicians were struggling to keep up. It should be required reading for political science majors; it's worthwhile reading for any citizen.
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