Advice for a New President: From Inside and Out

• Date: 01 September 2009
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2009.02046.x
• Published date: 01 September 2009
• Author: John P. Burke

Advice for a New President: From Inside and Out

John P. Burke is a professor of political

science at the University of Vermont. He is

the author of eight books and more than 40

articles on presidential transitions, decision

making, and White House organization and

management. His most recent work is on the

history of national security decision making

and the role of the National Security Council

advisor:

Honest Broker? The National Security

Advisor and Presidential Decision Making

(Texas A&M University Press, 2009).

E-mail: jpburke@uvm.edu

Hindy Lauer Schachter, Editor

John P. Burke

University of Vermont

Book Reviews

he underestimated). His coauthor, Marc Summerlin,

served as his deputy on the NEC. Both also served in

a similar relationship during Lindsey’s tenure on the

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Lindsey’s hook is a package of memos surreptitiously

smuggled onto the president’s desk on Inauguration

Day 2009.  ey form the core of each chapter and are

preceded by a narrative setting out some of the rel-

evant history and policy background (and often Lind-

sey’s own experiences at the White House—a topic of

interest in its own right). He begins by providing an

account of the development of the White House staf‌f ,

as well as the physical—and in his view, often isolat-

ing, if not corrupting—environs of the West Wing.

He then moves on to the personnel challenges a presi-

dent faces both in hiring and then managing his staf‌f ,

and he especially notes the dif‌f‌i culties in getting the

right advice for presidential decision making: “Who

gets your ear?” His three chapters on going to war and

dealing with terrorism make for an interesting read,

especially on Bush and Iraq. But no new revelations

are of‌f ered. In the remainder of the book, he treats

tax, economic, and a variety of domestic policy pro-

posals. Some of the substantive suggestions are likely

to interest a Republican president (yes, the Bush tax

cuts were a good idea; yes, they should be renewed).

But even a Democratic one will surely benef‌i t from

the description of policy history, process, and current

contextual challenge. Lindsey analyzes the housing

market collapse and the mortgage crisis, and of‌f ers

some cautionary advice on past regulatory responses.

But, unfortunately, the book appeared in print before

the current economic crisis unfolded in its full and

dismal display. Alas, the most important memo a new

president will need to read is missing.

David M. Abshire is another Washington insider,

but more in the mold of the traditional presidential

“wise man” than Lindsey. In the early 1960s, he was

a cofounder of the Center for Strategic and Interna-

tional Studies, served as an assistant secretary of state

under Richard M. Nixon, was the U.S. ambassador

Lawrence B. Lindsey with Marc Summerlin, What a

President Should Know (But Most Learn Too Late):

An Insider’s View on How to Succeed in the Oval

Of‌f‌i ce (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlef‌i eld, 2008).

246 pp. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN: 9780742562226.

David M. Abshire, A Call to Greatness: Challenging

Our Next President (Lanham, MD: Rowman &

Littlef‌i eld, 2008). 200 pp. $17.95 (cloth), ISBN:

9780742562455.

Richard M. Pious, Why Presidents Fail: White House

Decision Making from Eisenhower to Bush II

(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlef‌i eld, 2008). 317

pp. $80.00 (cloth), ISBN: 9780742562844; $27.95

(paper) ISBN: 9780742562851.

Providing advice to princes has a long history.

Machiavelli’s ingratiating ef‌f orts toward the

Medici in  e Prince are most notable, of course.

 e whole enterprise might even be traced back earlier

to Aristotle’s tutelage of the young princeling who

would become Alexander the Great. While these three

newer ef‌f orts lack the broad geopolitical, strategic,

and interpersonal sweep of their forebears, to varying

degrees, they make up in that advice-rendering ef‌f ort

with more contemporary analysis and practical sug-

gestions on the challenges facing presidents, especially

those newly elected.  ey are works that should be of

interest to practitioners as well as academics who are

interested in livening up their syllabi, if not enhancing

their knowledge of the contemporary presidency.

Lawrence B. Lindsey was a key economic advisor

to then-governor George W. Bush during the 2000

campaign and subsequently served as the head of the

White House’s National Economic Council (NEC)

through 2002. If anything, Lindsey deserves a place

at the listening table for his prescient warning that

the Iraq War might conceivably cost considerably

more than the White House publicly forecast. It was

a f‌i nancial projection that much alarmed his Bush as-

sociates (and one, Lindsey notes in his book, that even

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