The President and His Inner Circle (review)

The introduction of Thomas Preston's book concisely sums up the questions that he is asking throughout his study. Preston asks, "Can subjective, impressionistic accounts of presidential personality and style be replaced by approaches allowing for clear and consistent measurement and comparison across presidents?" Can a model be developed for predicting presidential behavior? His answer is that a model can be developed, and in chapter 1 he does so, adding to the growing body of literature on both presidential personality and presidential leadership style.

Preston examines one major foreign policy crisis during the administrations of six modern presidents: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. These foreign policy crises are the Korean War for Truman, Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam for Eisenhower, the Cuban Missile Crisis for Kennedy, the partial bombing halt in 1967-68 in Vietnam for Johnson, the Gulf War for Bush, and Haiti for Clinton. Each case study creates for Preston a data set on management style, including such variables as whether the president has significant foreign policy experience, frames issues himself or relies on advisors to do so, and uses an informal or formal advisory structure.

The data set from each foreign policy crisis provides Preston a clear picture of differences in management styles among the presidencies he studied. According to Preston, these differences fall within four categories that identify how presidents react to crises. Presidents can be directors, magistrates, administrators, or delegators. Directors are presidents with a high need for power and high prior policy experience; magistrates also have a high need for power but have low prior policy experience. Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower are examples of directors for their handling of both domestic and foreign policy. In contrast are presidents with a low need for power and high prior policy experience or a low need for power and also a low prior policy experience. President Clinton is an example of an administrator in domestic policy but a delegator in foreign policy, while President Bush is an example of an administrator in foreign policy but a delegator in domestic policy. Preston assumes that management styles can be different for foreign and domestic policy, which allows him to place presidents in one or more categories.

Preston's understanding of how presidents use their advisory structures in managing crisis is drawn from an impressive list of primary sources. Not only did Preston use a broad range of archival material from presidential libraries, but he interviewed a number of White House staff members, including Walt Rostow, McGeorge Bundy, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Paul Nitze, Harry McPherson, George Christian, and numerous others. His conclusions are based not only on the written record from presidential archives, but also from participants of each decision-making team. The strength of Preston's work lies in the breadth of material that he has included in his study from primary sources, most particularly the information culled from the White House staff who were part of the decision-making team. He also has examined a vast array of literature, ranging from political psychology (particularly his work with Margaret Hermann) to political leadership and management.

The model that Preston creates is reminiscent of that created by James David Barber in 1972 (The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House) in which Barber uses strictly personality and background to predict performance in the White House. Barber's four-part categorization places presidents as active-positive, active-negative, passive-positive, and passive-negative. Barber argues that the best way to assess how a president will manage decision making is by looking at how his character and worldview were shaped during childhood. For Barber, presidential decision making can be traced to traits individuals learn in their childhoods, such as conflict avoidance, mastery of detail, and energy and enthusiasm for...