The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents
From Wilson to Obama

What makes a president great?Academics, journalists, and popular historians agree: our greatest presidents are the ones who confronted a national crisis and mobilized the entire nation to face it. Thats the conventional wisdom. The chief executives who are celebrated in textbooks and placed in the top echelon of presidents in surveys of experts are the bold leadersthe Woodrow Wilsons and Franklin Rooseveltswho reshaped the United States in line with their grand vision for America. Unfortunately, along the way, these great presidents inevitably expanded governmentand shrank our liberties. As the twentiethcentury presidency has grown far beyond the bounds the Founders established for the office, the idea that our chief executive is obliged to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States has become a distant memory. Historian and celebrated Reagan biographer Steven F. Hayward reminds us that the Founders had an entirely different idea of greatness in the presidential office. The personal ambitions, populist appeals, and bribes paid to the voters with their own money that most modern presidents engage in would strike them as instances of the demagoguery they most fearedone of the great dangers to the peoples liberty that they wrote the Constitution explicitly to guard against. The Founders, in contrast to todays historians, expected great presidents to be champions of the limited government established by the Constitution. Working from that almost forgotten standard of presidential greatness, Steven Hayward offers a fascinating offthebeatentrack tour through the modern presidency, from the Progressive Eras Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama. Along the way he serves up fresh historical insights, recalls forgotten anecdotes, celebrates undervalued presidents who took important stands in defense of the Constitution, and points the way to a revival of truly constitutional government in America.