The Decent and Just but Decisive and Guileful Leader

Opinion polls suggest that Americans want an honest and trustworthy yet tough and forceful leader with a touch of ruthlessness.

"...we demand a double-edged personality....the sinister as well as the sincere, President Mean and President Nice....The public in this case really seems to want a kindhearted son of a bitch".

The Programmatic but Pragmatic Leader

"We want both a programmatic (committed on the issues and with a detailed program) and pragmatic (flexible and open, adjustable) person in the White House".

The Innovative and Inventive Yet Majoritarian and Responsive Leader

"We want our presidents to provide bold, innovative leadership and at the same time respond faithfully to public-opinion majorities".

"To talk about high ideals is one thing...But the public resists being led to far in any one direction".

"Most of our presidents have been conservatives or at best "pragmatic liberals" who have seldom ventured much beyond the crowd".

The Inspirational but Don't Promise More than You Can Deliver Leader

"We ask our presidents to raise hopes, to educate, to inspire. But too much inspiration will invariably lead to dashed hopes, disillusionment and cynicism".

"Do presidents overpromise because they are congenital optimists or because they are pushed into it by the demanding public? Surely the answer is a mixture of both".

The Open and Sharing but Courageous and Independent Leader

"Americans long for dynamic, aggressive presidents even if they do cut some corners....the country in fact yearns for a hero in the White House".

"Some scholars suggest that the less popular presidents were often our greatest leaders. We honor mediocre presidents during their incumbency".

Taking the Presidency Out of Politics

"A president is expected to be above politics in some respects and highly political in others. A president is never supposed to act with his eye on the next election; he's not supposed to favor any particular group or party. Nor is he supposed to wheel and deal or twist too many arms. That's politics and that's bad".

"A president separated from, or somehow above, politics might easily become a president who doesn't listen to the people, doesn't respond to majority sentiment or pay attention to views that may be diverse, intense, or at variance with his own. A president immunized to politics would be a president who would too easily become isolated from the processes of government and removed from the thoughts and aspirations of his people".

The Common Man Who Gives an Uncommon Performance

"It has been said that the American people crave to be governed by a president who is greater than anyone else but not better than anyone else. We are inconsistent; we want our president to be one of the folks but also something special".

The National Unifier--National Divider

"...our longing for a president to push us together again and yet to be a forceful priority setter, budget manager, and executive leader. The two tasks are near opposites".

"Our nation remains one of the few in the world that calls upon its chief executive to serve also as its symbolic, ceremonial head of state".

"We have designed a presidential job description, however, that impels our contemporary presidents to act as national dividers. Presidents must necessarily divide when they act as the leaders of their political parties, when they set priorities that advantage certain goals and groups at the expense of others, when they forge and lead political coalitions, when they move out ahead of public opinion and assume the role of national educators, and when they choose one set of advisers over another".

The Longer He Is There, the Less We Like Him

"Simply stated, the more we know of a president, or the more we observe his presidency, the less we approve of him. Familiarity breeds discontent. Research on public support of presidents indicates that approval peaks soon after a president takes office and then slides downward until it bottoms out in the latter half of the four year term".

"Peace and prosperity can help stem the pleasant tide of ingratitude... For other presidents, however, their eventual downslide in popularity was due nearly as much to the public's inflated expectations as to the president's actions".

The Reassuring the Public While Accentuating a Sense of Crisis Leader

"Presidents are simultaneously asked to build a lasting peace and at the same time maintain United States superiority as the number one superpower".

"This paradox, in a sense, is the inevitable outgrowth of our belief system that is based on both laissez-faireism (fear of big government and the desire to be left alone) and interventionism (reliance on the strength and authority of the United States govern-ment to solve national and international problems".

"We expect our president...to solve the entire scope of our problems by mustering all the powers and strengths to which his office entitles him--and then some--but we are unwilling to allow him to infringe upon our rights in any significant way. We don't especially like calls for sacrifice".

The Active in Some Areas and at Some Times but Passive in Other Areas or at Other Times Leader

"There are times when we want our president to be engaged actively in doing certain things, and there are other occasions when we would like him to sit back and let things run their course. But different people will disagree on whether the times demand presidential passivity or activity".

"...it is clear that the president is constrained by the dominant national mood or climate of expectations. Sometimes the coming of a new, colorful president can help recast or shift the national mood. More often, however, the national mood responds to major events, to challenges, to times of testing".

What It Takes to Become President May Not Be What Is Needed to Govern the Nation

"To win a presidential election takes ambition, ambiguity, luck, and masterful public relations strategies. To govern the nation plainly requires all of these. However, it may well be that too much ambition, too much ambiguity, and too heavily a reliance on phony public-relations tricks actually undermine the integrity and legitimacy of the presidency".

"To win the presidency many of our presidents (Lincoln, Kennedy, and Carter come to mind) had to talk as more progressive or even populist than they actually felt; to be effective in the job they felt compelled to act as more conservative than they wanted to".