Mr. Suri explores the presidency by analyzing some of the country’s most consequential chief executives. What emerges from his account is a narrative of evolution, from George Washington’s 'fatherly mode of executive leadership' to FDR’s expansive 'superpower presidency' and beyond to our most recent leaders ... It’s an intriguing thesis—and a debatable one. True, a crisis of governance has chewed up some recent presidents, but is the problem the presidency or the presidents? Perhaps we simply haven’t found a chief executive, yet, who can handle the modern requirements of the office. Mr. Suri’s case is further marred by historically questionable pronouncements ... Yes, the country is only just muddling through these days, and maybe Mr. Suri’s thesis about a broken presidency explains much of the problem. History tells us, though, that America will surmount its current crisis through bold and imaginative leadership—or it won’t surmount it at all.
Suri is long on diagnosis and short on cure, but he does have a few suggestions for rethinking and resizing the presidency, the most novel of which would add an elected "prime minister" to share the presidential burden. Imagine getting that constitutional amendment passed today. Still, Suri makes a strong case for one more national conversation we need to have.
Jeremi Suri’s succinct and original volume, The Impossible Presidency, lacks the fortuitous timing of Schlesinger’s book ... Suri, a professor of history at the University of Texas, here studies a series of chief executives in a sporadically revisionist effort to trace what he considers to be the 'rise and fall of America’s highest office' ...argues that after reaching its apex with F.D.R., the presidency fell under a shadow that endures to this day because 'the continued increase in presidential power exceeded executive capacity' ... Sticking to the main theme of his book, Suri contends that the voters who had to choose a chief executive last November found the job 'too big, and ultimately too demanding'...hence decided that 'no one could master the modern presidency,' opting instead for 'a brash personality who rejected the entire history of the office, to blow it all up.'
The smart and engaging first half of the book tracks the rise of the presidency, beginning with its origins as a radical new idea ... There’s an element of truth to Suri’s argument. But by focusing on the presidents and their schedules, Suri overlooks the many changes underway in the country and the world outside the White House. As a result, by the time we get to Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Obama, Suri’s presidential portraits seem less clear-sighted ... There’s no doubt that the office of the presidency has changed since the nation’s earliest days, and Suri’s effort to trace its long expansion is worthwhile and important. But the truth may be that the country has grown too big, diverse and messy for one man or woman to represent it.
While good biographies of individual presidents are easily come by, engrossing studies of the office’s evolving nature and reach are rare. Even so, he isn’t the first political scientist whose worthwhile insights end up falling victim to his preordained schema ... Aside from the misjudgment of treating JFK/LBJ and then Clinton/Obama as conjoined twins, which is wrongheaded coming and going, too many intervening figures are left out because they don’t fit Suri’s argument ... He also can’t resist the urge to be prescriptive, at whatever cost to his own frequent intelligence about the untidy way circumstance makes hash of such formulas ... As perceptive as The Impossible Presidency often is about the executive branch’s past, Suri’s guesses about the job’s future aren’t any better than anyone else’s — aside, maybe, from those of us who decided on Election Night 2016 that guesswork is a fool’s errand anyhow.
...Suri opines that the best use of presidential power is to confine it to a limited set of military, political, and economic objectives, even while noting that presidential power has grown so substantially in the post–World War II era that the office invites redefinition, inasmuch as 'democratic leadership requires a vibrant fact-based public sphere, and trusted anchors for informed policy discussions'—things that are notable today for their apparent absence. Lively and well-grounded, offering good measures by which to judge our best and worst presidents and their methods of governing.
