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Presidential history
The early years of our republic produced dozens of great leaders. A historian explains how men like Adams and Jefferson were selected for public office, and tells why the machinery that raised them became obsolete.
THERE IS NO clear consensus on what constitutes greatness, nor are there any objective criteria for measuring it—but when we look at holders of high public offices and at the current field of candidates, we know it is missing.
Was the murdered President one of our best, a man of “vigor, rationality, and noble vision” or was he “an optical illusion,” “an expensively programmed waxwork”? A noted historian examines the mottled evolution of his reputation.
The murder of John F. Kennedy twenty years ago last month occasioned an overwhelming sense of grief that may be without parallel in our history.
From the End of the Earth to the Oval Office
“To be President of the United States,” wrote Harry Truman, “is to be lonely, very lonely.
For TR, the nation s highest office was never a burden; he loved the job, and Americans loved him for loving it
One summer brought excitement and glory to the young secretary of a political leader. How could he know that the next one would brim with tragedy?
To begin with, the Presidential libraries do not look like what they are. Each one is, in fact, a miniature Office of Public Records.
To what extent did greatness inhere in the man, and to what degree was it a product of the situation?
Seldom has an eminent man been more conscious of his place in history than was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He regarded history as an imposing drama and himself as a conspicuous actor.
In San Francisco Warren G. Harding lay dead, and the nation was without a Chief Executive. In the early morning hours, by the light of a flickering oil lamp, an elderly Vermonter swore in his son as the thirtieth President of the United States
Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson’s right-hand man, was a master of political intrigue who let nothing block his one unwavering ambition—the Presidency. But sometimes he was too smart for his own good
The great tragedy of the twenty-eighth President as witnessed by his loyal lieutenant, the thirty-first.
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