Overreach
Leadership in the Obama Presidency
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- 18,99 €
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- 18,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
How Obama overestimated the power of rhetoric and persuasion during his presidency
When Barack Obama became president, many Americans embraced him as a transformational leader who would fundamentally change the politics and policy of the country. Yet, two years into his administration, the public resisted his calls for support and Congress was deadlocked over many of his major policy proposals. How could this capable new president have difficulty attaining his goals? Did he lack tactical skills?
In Overreach, respected presidential scholar George Edwards argues that the problem was strategic, not tactical. He finds that in President Obama's first two years in office, Obama governed on the premise that he could create opportunities for change by persuading the public and some congressional Republicans to support his major initiatives. As a result, he proposed a large, expensive, and polarizing agenda in the middle of a severe economic crisis. The president's proposals alienated many Americans and led to a severe electoral defeat for the Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, undermining his ability to govern in the remainder of his term.
Edwards shows that the president's frustrations were predictable and the inevitable result of misunderstanding the nature of presidential power. The author demonstrates that the essence of successful presidential leadership is recognizing and exploiting existing opportunities, not in creating them through persuasion. When Obama succeeded in passing important policies, it was by mobilizing Democrats who were already predisposed to back him. Thus, to avoid overreaching, presidents should be alert to the limitations of their power to persuade and rigorously assess the possibilities for obtaining public and congressional support in their environments.
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Obama's team entered office under the assumption that "the recession left public opinion malleable and highly responsive to bold leadership," but this study of Obama's efforts to achieve too much too quickly shows how wrong this belief was. Political scientist Edwards (The Strategic President), a presidency scholar at Texas A&M, points out that given the recession, Bush's massive TARP program, and several industry bailouts, a risk averse public was wary of new governmental initiatives. Using the bruising and barely won battle over health care reform as a case study, he reveals that a plurality of the public never favored it while the president has had difficulty framing the debate against a welter of competing media voices. Edwards's analysis is particularly strong on the collapse of bipartisanship in Congress, and he marshals an impressive amount of data on public opinion and congressional voting records. However, his overall thesis that presidents "are not in strong positions to create opportunities for legislative success" but must use existing opportunities, is not fully fleshed out. He also falls short by ending with a discussion of the 2011 debt ceiling showdown instead of potential ways for Obama's administration to move forward. Despite such omissions, this remains a clear, well-documented study of the limits on presidential power and influence.