Book description
A governor's mansion is often the last stop for politicians who plan
to move into the White House. Before Barack Obama was elected
president of the United States, four of his last five predecessors had
been governors. Executive experience at the state level informs
individual presidencies, and, as Saladin M. Ambar argues, the actions
of governors-turned-presidents changed the nature of the presidency
itself long ago. How Governors Built the Modern American
Presidency is the first book to explicitly credit governors with
making the presidency what it is today.
By examining the governorships of such presidential stalwarts as
Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D.
Roosevelt, political scientist Ambar shows how gubernatorial
experience made the difference in establishing modern presidential
practice. The book also delves into the careers of Wisconsin's Bob La
Follette and California's Hiram Johnson, demonstrating how these
governors reshaped the presidency through their activism. As Ambar
reminds readers, governors as far back as Samuel J. Tilden of New
York, who ran against Rutherford Hayes in the controversial
presidential election of 1876, paved the way for a more assertive
national leadership. Ambar explodes the idea that the modern
presidency began after 1945, instead placing its origins squarely in
the Progressive Era.
This innovative study uncovers neglected aspects of the
evolution of the nation's executive branch, placing American governors
at the heart of what the presidency has become-for better or for worse.
"Ambar identifies the origins of the expanded
twentieth-century presidency in late nineteenth-century gubernatorial
leadership. This is the first effort I know of that undertakes a
systematic examination of the relationships between gubernatorial
politics and the emergence of presidential activism in the Progressive
Era and after."-Bruce Miroff, University at Albany-SUNY
Saladin M. Ambar teaches political science at Lehigh University.
