presidency

The Hardest Job in the World

by John Dickerson

What if the problem isn’t the president—it’s the presidency?

Donald Trump and the Limits of the Reality TV Presidency

He isn’t the first president to understand the power of television. But he is alone in not grasping its limits.

For Trump, a Year of Reinventing the Presidency

In ways that were once unimaginable, President Trump has discarded the conventions and norms established by his predecessors. Will that change the institution permanently?

Will Donald Trump Destroy the Presidency?

by Jack Goldsmith

He disdains the rule of law. He’s trampling norms of presidential behavior. And he’s bringing vital institutions down with him.

A Brief History of Presidential Inaugurations

by Rick Shenkman

From the mordant to the dramatic.

Here's Where to Turn If You Have a Question About Presidents of the United States

by Mark Hallum

The American Presidency Project draws researchers of different demographics to its site with a massive easy-to-use archive.

Have You Got a Shot at Being Elected President? The 1 in 10 Million Odds (Or Worse)

by Cody J. Foster

How can it be that so many American presidents are related to one another?

How Big a Job is the Presidency?

by Jeff Shesol

The Presidency is shrinking again.

America's Real Problem: Too Much Bipartisanship

by Julian Zelizer

Consensus views encapsulate what's really wrong in Washington.

Beware an Unchecked President

by Jacob S. Hacker and Oona A. Hathaway

The solution to a dysfunctional Congress is not for Obama to govern the country all by himself.

End Presidential Term Limits!

by Jonathan Zimmerman

Two-term presidents don't fear voters like they should.

George Washington's Flexible Constitutionalism

by Harlow Giles Unger

The next time someone complains Barack Obama is acting unconstitutionally, remember, that's how George Washington gave the office of president its powers.

The President Should Take the Lead in Crafting Legislation

by Glenn Speer

Just ask Messrs. Wilson and Johnson.

Gary Gallagher joins UVa Miller Center, will lead lecture series on presidency

Leading Civil War historian and University of Virginia professor Gary W. Gallagher has joined U.Va.’s Miller Center as a senior faculty associate. Gallagher has written and edited more than 30 books on the Civil War.Gallagher will supervise the Center’s Historical Presidency lecture series, a new initiative that will offer perspective on how presidential leadership has evolved over time. The theme for the 2013-14 academic year will be “The American Presidency and the Crises of the Nineteenth Century.” Speakers will focus on moments of national crisis that provide good vantage points from which to perceive the strength and weaknesses of leaders and political institutions.“Gary Gallagher is one of the nation’s pre-eminent scholars of the Civil War and the nineteenth century,” said William I. Hitchcock, the Miller Center’s director of research and scholarship. “In fact he is a national treasure, and known to thousands of U.Va. students for his thrilling lectures on the Civil War era. We are extremely fortunate to have him join our ranks, and to take up the leadership of this exciting presidential lecture series.”

Al Kamen: A Step Back on Cabinet Diversity

Al Kamen writes for the Washington Post.Important segments of President Obama’s base have been hammering him for not appointing enough Latinos and African Americans — and no gays — to his second-term Cabinet.Thirty-two years ago, when Ronald Reagan’s first-term team was coming together, the Cabinet included one woman, U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, and one African American, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Samuel Pierce.But the number of women and minorities increased later in Reagan’s term, and he named the first Hispanic Cabinet member.Quick Loop Quiz! Who was that person?Ah, you guessed it: Education Secretary Lauro Cavazos....

Hacker releases paintings by GWB

Guccifer, the notorious hacker who shared George W. Bush’s magnificent nude portraits with the rest of the world, is at it again, having released six more paintings in Bush’s seemingly expanding collection. Since images of the paintings first surfaced, the nation has learned that the former president is also an accomplished dog painter, having painted more than 50 dogs....

Presidential fun facts

In Defense of Transactional Presidents

by Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

Five presidents: Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter. Taken in 1991.Many people assume that leaders with transformational objectives and an inspirational style are better or more ethical than leaders with more modest objectives and a transactional style. We tend to think of Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan as more impressive than Dwight Eisenhower or George H. W. Bush. Leadership theorists often dismiss transactional leaders as mere “managers.” But that is a mistake.

Robert O. Self: Have We Reached a Political Realignment Yet?

Robert O. Self is a professor of history at Brown and the author, most recently, of “All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s.”BARACK OBAMA has arrived at a historical moment enjoyed by only one other Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt: he gets to deliver a second Inaugural Address.The second inaugurals we remember bear witness to political realignment. The words of Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, in particular, testify to the closing of one era and the opening of another. In 1936 and 1984, Roosevelt and Reagan each won big. Their triumphs consolidated political transformations that had been building for some time and allowed their respective parties to reset the nation’s political center of gravity.Without the benefit of historical distance, how do we judge whether we are in the midst of such a realignment? Are the country’s deepest political instincts undergoing fundamental change? Coming up with an answer is not easy....

Jonathan Zimmerman: Americans Want a Good Inauguration Show -- Corporate Funding or Not

Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of history and education at New York University and is currently teaching a three-week course at NYU’s campus in Abu Dhabi. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press).On March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson walked from a nearby boardinghouse to the Capitol to be inaugurated as the third president of the United States. His two predecessors, George Washington and John Adams, had arrived at their own inaugurations by stagecoach, clad in elegant suits.But Jefferson went on foot, wearing the clothes “of a plain citizen without any distinctive badge of office,” as a Virginia newspaper reported. Jefferson swore his presidential oath, gave a brief speech, and then walked back to have dinner with his fellow boarders.