Assignment
In 6-8 pages develop an argument about the key factors determining successful
presidential leadership in the modern era (FDR forward). Your argument should be
deeply rooted in the scholarly literature on the presidency. Develop your argument in
more detail by exploring two cases where a president attempted to provide leadership in
some way. The cases that you select should be narrow (e.g. FDR and the passage of the
Social Security Act rather than FDR and the New Deal). You only have a few short pages
to discuss each case and it is better to be an inch wide and a mile deep than a mile wide
and an inch deep. I think that the easiest way to do this would be to choose a policy or
action widely viewed as a historical success and another that is widely viewed as a
historical failure (e.g. Truman’s Marshall Plan and Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia).
However, you do not need to follow this mold. You could also compare two successes or
two failures.
