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It’s interesting to learn how the office of the president of the United States came to be and how it has changed over time, mostly due to Congress’s neglect. I have been reading about the Founding Fathers and the important documents they produced that have guided this country. So when I saw an interview with John Dickerson about his book The Hardest Job in the World, it piqued my interest, and after watching the discussion, I decided to purchase the book. I’m glad I did.

The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency by John Dickerson was a fascinating book. The author is an American journalist, and his excellent writing and research skills were on full display. The book falls into the category of politics and government, but I would absolutely include history because of the amount of historical fact included as he describes the office of the presidency and the responsibilities associated with this high office.

The book contains about 629 pages, including a robust 21-page introduction, a 50-page bibliography, and a 75-page notes section. The main content is divided into three parts: The Office of the Presidency, Presidential Campaigns, and The Way We Live Now.

I think we Americans tend to know snippets of facts about different presidents throughout history and their contributions to the country, but this book gives readers an opportunity to put it all together and follow the transformation of the office from the first president, George Washington, onward.

The main theme throughout the book is how the office of the presidency has changed from what the Founding Fathers intended. We are definitely seeing the consequences of that departure now. I’m not sure whether this country will ever attempt a sort of reset to bring the presidency back to its original intent, but I hope we do for the sake of the country.

About the book, the author states the following:

«What you are about to read is an account of the office and how it has evolved over the years to become misshapen, and how our own expectations of it have become warped as well. This book is also an effort to change the way we think about the presidency…” (p. xxx)

This book spoke my “love language” (time management and organization) when I read the following in the introduction:

«Successful presidents live in Quadrants One and Two, farm out Quadrant Three to their teams, and brace themselves against incursions from Quadrant Four.” (p. xviii)

The reference is to the Eisenhower time-management matrix, which is divided into four quadrants:
Quadrant 1: Urgent/Important
Quadrant 2: Not Urgent/Important (leaders should spend most of their time here)
Quadrant 3: Urgent/Not Important
Quadrant 4: Not Urgent/Not Important

Quadrant 4 is where a leader wastes time changing the names of buildings, taking over golf courses, serving as master of ceremonies, and so on. For a leader with the hardest job in the world, lingering in Quadrant 4 is a sad commentary on his or her leadership abilities.

I found this part particularly insightful:

«We are in an age when our presidential candidates go through no apprenticeship process to test whether they have governing qualities. Previous experience in Washington is seen as a liability, but it should be considered an asset. When authenticity and campaign performance become the entire metric for judging whether a candidate should be elevated to such a high-stakes job, we’re not simply judging a book by its cover—we’re judging a bomb-defusing manual by its cover. We can’t afford to pick our central political player through such a defective system.” (p. xxvii)

With that said, here are some highlights from the book:

«Franklin Roosevelt initiated legislation, whereas before, presidents had only implemented policy that had been established by Congress.” (p. 7)

«‘More and more legislative authority is delegated to the executive branch every year,’ complained Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska in a floor speech in September 2018. ‘Both parties do it. The legislature is impotent. The legislature is weak.’ The decline of legislative activity has left America ‘increasingly governed by negotiation between the imperial presidency and whichever philosopher-king has the swing vote on the [Supreme Court],’ wrote New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. No one is happy with the outcome, but no one seems to know how to restore the balance.” (p. 14)

«It’s not just that a president faces new challenges, says General David Petraeus, he also captains a disordered ship. ‘In Washington, D.C. the center has been hollowed out of Congress because of party primaries, gerrymandering, vast amounts of money (some of it not accountable), the lack of civics education – all different sorts of issues that have led us to a point where the government shuts down and many of the budgets are not approved in time for the start of the fiscal year,’ he says. ‘If we’re going to do better around the world, we need to do better at home.’” (p. 32)

«The shift in the presidential first responder expectation started during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. LBJ believed in a stronger connection between the people and their president…’I’m interested in the whole man,’ he said. ‘I am concerned about what the people, using their government as a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.’ Johnson wasn’t just being empathetic. he used his public role and the comforting hand of government to build political power.” (p. 41)

«A president’s power to console comes from a ceremonial reverence Americans grant their presidents. To deserve the reverence, a president must act as steward of the dignity and stature of the office. In short, a president must be presidential. What does it meant to be presidential? Basically, to act in keeping with our highest expectations of the office.” (p. 65)

«Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.” —John Adams (p. 66)

«As Jeffrey Tulis, the author of The Rhetorical Presidency, points out, the founders rejected ‘frequent popular appeals’ because a president who governed that way would undermined deliberation and lead to bad public policy. If a president whipped up the crowd, ‘the passions…not the reason, of the public would sit in judgment,’ wrote Madison in Federalist No. 49. ‘But it is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government.’” (p. 71)

«Members of Congress represent the diversity and breadth of America. Durable solutions to the toughest problems can come only through a system that passes laws informed by that diversity and in which the process makes everyone feel heard whether they win or lose. A president acting alone can’t replicate that diversity of representation. If they act unilaterally, they’re likely to galvanize their political rivals. Not does a president have Congress’s tools to address vital issues…When Congress does not address central questions on issues like healthcare, immigration, and economic policy, it lengthens the president’s to-do list.” (p. 117)

«The framers chose to allow Congress to override the president, but for much of the early republic, presidents deferred to that branch’s powers. When William Henry Harrison ran for president in 1840 he did not talk about policy, because, he said, to do so would encroach on Congress’s prerogative. Congress made the laws and the president simply executed them.” (p. 141)

«Each branch of government in the separation of powers system would be aligned so that while the executive, judicial, and legislative branches might grind against each other, the collective interlocking nature of the system would allow that those branches’ pushing against each other would keep the system running. «The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department,’ wrote James Madison, ‘consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.’” (p. 147)

«To be successful, a president must do more than just disrupt the regular order of things. That may be what their voters are satisfied with, but greatness lies in replacing it with a better alternative.” (p. 220)

«As news outlets proliferated and technology provided twenty-four-hour coverage, White house staffers had to field more queries. At the same time standards of the journalism declined. Instead of asking the White House only about stories that had a possible basis in fact, some reporters started pushing lower-grade stuff…The change in the news cycle has had the greatest impact on discipline, or been the greatest invitation to a lack of discipline, in the presidency.” (p. 244)

«John Kennedy…when he made his pitch for the importance of the primary election system, he quoted Lord Bryce, a British academic and politician who wrote a three-volume history of American politics published in 1888…What Kennedy did not say is that Bryce argue that the process for electing presidents focused too much on political victory and not enough on what it took to do the job. As a result, mediocre men of average intelligence blundered into a post for which they were unprepared.” (pp. 271–272)

«The founders discussed the method for picking presidents at the Constitutional Convention, but they could do not better that to settle on the clumsy workaround of the Electoral College, cobbled together in a rush to overcome an impasse in discussions and to accommodate southern slave states. As William Grayson, who participated in the Virginia ratifying convention, put it, the Electoral College was ‘rather founded on accident, than any principle of government.’” (p. 272)

«As early as the election on 1800, electors gave up on the idea of being philosophers picking the best of their lot. They picked based on faction and made their choices based on political advantage, not reason.” (p. 273)

«‘Modern presidents have lost the balance required for good leadership,’ writes Elaine Kamarck in Why Presidents Fail; ‘they spend so much time talking that they mistake talking for doing.’ The time devoted to communications could be spent building alliances with Congress and with foreign and national leaders.” (p. 304)

«Epitome of what the framers wanted in a president. The Historian Richard McCormick defines that standard this way: ‘The ideal candidate in a republic was a man who, through his dedicated and disinterested public service, acquired a reputation for probity and integrity and accepted the call of his fellow citizen to successively higher office.’” (p. 316)

«Jefferson believed a well-informed electorate was necessary for the country’s survival. James Madison expressed a similar view…The two were talking about more than just public familiarity with candidates’ position papers. To be vigilant citizens, Jefferson argued, voters had to study history in order to understand the corrupting influence of human weakness.” (p. 327)

The conclusion of the book offers several insightful points:

«We must no longer confuse good campaigning skills with good governing skills…Governing requires ruthless prioritization based on the idea that everyone can’t have everything at the same time, including the president’s attention.” (p. 427)

«Campaigns push us to define presidential qualities in absolutes…Defining attributes by absolutes stops us from thinking more intelligently about the office and what it really requires. It also makes us the willing dupes of candidates and their handlers…Instead, we should think about presidential skills like honesty, political awareness, and decisiveness on a continuum.” (p. 428)

«National security challenges should occupy more of our time because they come in an area of the presidency where the chief executive has the most unchecked power and where the stakes are the highest.” (p. 434)

«We should be looking to others institutions – Congress, state and local government – and looking at the electoral process that picks those lawmakers. Those are the institutions where we can effectively address many of our national challenges.» (p. 443)

«Congress must reassert itself again, taking the lead in writing legislation to meet great national needs and at least weighing in on enormous questions like war and peace.” (p. 444)

«When the hardest job in the world slips off its standards, we should all hear that as a warning.” (p. 466)

The Hardest Job in the World was a great read, and I highly recommend it. It was illuminating to see how the presidency has changed over time and how we, the people, have lowered the standards of that office by failing to use reason when electing leaders. This did not happen overnight; it is the accumulation of poor decisions made by voters over the last three or four decades, culminating in what we see today.

There is always hope that we can correct the course. I believe—and I agree with the author—that it starts with taking a closer look at Congress and state governments, those institutions closer to the people, and making a conscious choice to elect the very best candidates. We need leaders with a holistic view, not ones constrained by party lenses. We need them to govern thoughtfully and for all people, not just those who agree with them.

This book provides much of what we need to start that conversation—but we must take our responsibility seriously. We must educate ourselves and use reason, not campaign slogans or talking points, when electing presidents if we want this country to survive.

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About the Author:¹

Award-winning journalist and author John Dickerson is co-anchor of the» CBS Evening News» and chief political analyst for CBS News. Dickerson leads the Network’s election coverage and political special reports. He received the Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency and the David Broder Award for political reporting. A native Washingtonian, Dickerson graduated with distinction from the University of Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in English and a specialty in American studies.

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