What presidential biographies can teach the next chief executive -- and the rest of us

Learning from the masters

By Todd Leopold
CNN Interactive Books Editor

(CNN) -- In the early days of his term, Bill Clinton -- always a voracious reader -- reportedly immersed himself in presidential biographies. David McCullough's "Truman" was a particular favorite at the time; as the years went on, word went out that Edmund Morris' Theodore Roosevelt work was on the president's bedside table, or books about Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson.

After Clinton's reading habits came to light, pundits would try to read them as they might pore over tea leaves. How would these books affect Clinton's style? His programs?

ELECTION 2000 Get all your election results from CNN.com     ALSO What presidential books do historians recommend?     QUICKVOTE Do you think presidents can learn anything by reading biographies and memoirs of other presidents? Yes, you can never learn too much about the presidency No, books are nice, but what counts are leadership abilities and experience View Results

In retrospect, some analysts say, it seems they had virtually no effect at all.

Presidential historian Fred I. Greenstein, the author of "The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from Roosevelt to Clinton," has a story about Clinton's reading habits. "I was in the Clinton White House for a signing ceremony ... and was struck that he had a small library of recent books on the presidency behind his desk. One was a book that discusses the politically costly disorganization of Kennedy's White House," he recalls. "When that book was published Clinton had invited its author to meet with him and never touched on the theme of White House organization, which is one of the weak points of Clinton's leadership."

So how can presidential biographies serve a president? The same way books about any leader can: by putting under a microscope his strengths and weaknesses, offering suggestions on how others handled the great dilemmas of their times.

"A president can discover the secrets of leadership (through presidential biographies)," says Susan Dunn, a professor of the history of ideas at Williams College in Massachusetts, and co-author of the forthcoming "The Three Roosevelts." "The biography of a president can answer the question of 'What were a president's leadership qualities? What was their courage, what were their convictions, what was their character?' "

Biographies of past commanders-in-chief such as Truman and Theodore Roosevelt were the favorite reading materials of Clinton and pundits tried to determine how his subject matter would reflect in his decisions

Dunn has her own bone to pick with the departing president. "What's amazing to me," she continues, "is that Clinton read the biographies of the great presidents and ignored their anti-centrist message. You can't be a great president from the center. Why he didn't pick this up, I don't know."

Presidents make good copy, and that's as attractive to historians as it is to journalists. That's why there are thousands of presidential biographies out there. Some are mythmaking piffle, such as Parson Weems' biography of George Washington. Others are so dense they could be used to build houses.

Until about 25 years ago, staffers' memoirs were respectful of the man in the Oval Office. "These people were proud to serve their great men," says Dunn. "Kennedy's men -- (Ted) Sorensen, (Arthur) Schlesinger -- they loved him. They weren't about to betray him."

Greenstein says that a good presidential biography should offer both a personal narrative on the man and the context of his place in history.

"A successful biography should provide an accurate portrayal of the president's life while getting to the essence of him as a human being," he says. "It should also establish how his personal and political qualities -- and the context in which he found himself -- combined to produce his historical legacy."

Ironically, the person least equipped to do that is usually the president himself, says Vanderbilt professor Erwin C. Hargrove, author of five books on the presidency.

"Presidential memoirs, for which publishers pay obscene fees, are almost always bad," he says. "They are written by factories of staffers and are self-congratulatory."

In recent years, a small cottage industry has formed around ex-cabinet members writing their own memoirs of their time around the White House. Until about 25 years ago, these autobiographies were respectful of the man in the Oval Office. "They were laudatory," says Dunn. "These people were proud to serve their great men. Kennedy's men -- (Ted) Sorensen, (Arthur) Schlesinger -- they loved him. They weren't about to betray him (in their memoirs)."

The tide may have turned with the men of the Nixon administration, many of whom had axes to grind, and has become a veritable Banzai Pipeline with the numbers of Reagan and Clinton staffers determined to put down their version of events.

Still, says Dunn, even these serve a valuable purpose.

President Kennedy was a voracious reader and used past presidents' biographies as teaching lessons

"Historians rely on memoirs. (F.D.R. Treasury Secretary) Henry Morgenthau's work is indispensable for historians," she says. "Some of these works may be accurate, funny, and revealing, especially if they're candid."

Interestingly, almost all works about presidents are biographical and autobiographical. Outside of a handful of thrillers, presidents -- even fictional presidents -- seldom appear as characters in novels. To be fair, Gore Vidal's novels are full of presidents, and Richard Nixon made a dandy character in Robert Coover's "The Public Burning." But they are the exceptions, not the rule.

"Perhaps the role doesn't lend itself to imaginative embellishment," says Greenstein. "Indeed, I am hard pressed to think of any American political novel of great stature."

"There are very few good political novels because serious novelists -- as distinguished from journalists who write popular novels -- know little about politics," adds Hargrove. He observes, however, "that there are a good many 'political' novels set in the military or in academic life," and gives C.P. Snow's "The Masters" as an example.

Staff for Nixon were among the first to write books examining Watergate and the fall of the president

A novelist, at least, is allowed to make things up. Historians have to wade through countless letters, memos, orders, newspaper articles and media coverage -- not to mention previous works -- to write their presidential books.

"There's an overwhelming amount of material," says Dunn. "You have to choose. It's a creative act, and also subjective, so the author of a biography paints his or her own portrait. And you want to make that an interesting read and well written."

If the book is well done, there's no shortage of readers. Certain presidents, such as Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, continue to dazzle in the public mind, and books about them are perennial bestsellers. But there's a hunger to learn about almost every man who has served as chief executive; even multi-volume works, Robert Caro's series on Lyndon Johnson among them, are popular reads.

"There is a continuing market for lives of presidents," says Greenstein. However, he cautions that heft does not necessarily equal greatness. "Often such works reverse the slogan of the New York Times -- publishing all the information that fits rather than all the information that is fit to print in order to illuminate the book's subject."

Dumas Malone details Thomas Jefferson's life in a six-volume biography

Should the new president even bother?

Hargrove suggests that biographies can be an adjunct to a president's learning. But he says chief executives might be better served by books on management. "They must read purposefully about their near-past predecessors with the right questions in mind," he says. "But there are other books they should read about the presidency that would be of greater immediate assistance - about staffing the White House or patterns of decision-making. They don't usually read such stuff and don't even know about it."

And Dunn adds that even the historical record is mixed.

"F.D.R. was not a great reader," she says. "He learned from people and experience. On the other hand, Teddy Roosevelt was a president of the American Historical Association and wrote several books himself.

"The qualities that we look for in a great leader don't come out of books," she adds. "Fire, conviction, character -- that's what matters."

On the literary campaign trail
August 31, 2000

Presidents of the United States
Presidential history
Presidential resources

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.