Title

Presidential ambition : how the presidents gained power, kept power, and got things done

Description

Combining a potent narrative with persuasive and compelling insights, Shenkman reveals that it is not just recent presidents who have been ambitious - and at times frighteningly overambitious, willing to sacrifice their health, family, loyalty, and values as they sought to overcome the obstacles to power - but that they all have. This volcanic ambition, Shenkman shows, has been essential not only in obtaining power but in facing - and attempting to master - the great historical forces that have continually reshaped the United States, from Manifest Destiny and Emancipation to immigration, the Great Depression, and nuclear weapons.As Shenkman describes the lives and careers of the most representative and colorful presidents from Washington to Nixon, he shows that those who succeeded in reaching the White House, whatever their flaws, were complicated human beings, idealistic as well as ambitious. Over time, however, they began to make increasingly troubling compromises, leading to a decline in the moral tone of American politics.What drove politics downward? In a stunning conclusion, Shenkman demonstrates that it wasn't a decline in presidential character that was responsible, but change - the dramatic transformation of the United States from a country of four million in Washington's day to more than a quarter billion today - that made running the country more complicated and difficult. Instead of things getting better and better they got worse and worse as people became used to increasingly promiscuous political practices.

Identifier

781747

006018373X

Creator

Shenkman, Richard

Format

1st ed.

Source

Brian Lamb Booknotes Collection

Gift of Brian Lamb, 2011.

Catalog record

Language

eng

Date

1999

Program air date: March 21, 1999

Publisher

HarperCollins

George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections & Archives

Text

Transcription of Annotations
Notes on front free endpaper and back fly sheet and endpapers. 190s Americans stopped believing p 336. Politics has changed--has gotten worse. Illnesses-Cleveland and several Pres. p228. 225 The media--Cleveland cancer. p 228-Madison, Jackson, Polk, Pierce, Buchanan. P 209 Boses TR, WH Taft, WW, FDR, HT, Hubert H., Chet Arthur- p 194 James Garfield-write Latin and Greek at the same time. Hayes/Tilden. P 181 Grant 1st Pres. to reside over admin. filled with people who wanted to use the government to become rich. Buchanan--bribed member of Congress $30-40,000. Homosexual? Story of Ann Coleman. Franklin Pierce is a drunk/Bernie had lost 2 others. Pres salaries Wash to Johnson $25,000, Grant $50,000. Lamb underlines portions of titles of "Also by Richard Shenkman," and checks and underlines portions of subheadings on chapters/book sections. Notes/Underlinings: Drive, ambition, religion, marrying power/marrying up. "Doubtful qualifications, too dumb." Lamb notes details on why people ran, how many times they ran, what they were willing to do. Firsts. Military. 1824 elections changed. Controversy in early elections. Packaged candidates after 1840. Polk's lies. Lincoln. Grant. Influence of bosses. Celebrity.

Subject

"Presidents--United States--History."

"Ambition."

"Executive power--United States--History."

Relation

Original Booknotes interview

Rights

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