The Unsustainable Presidency: Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Beyond [Paperback]

The Unsustainable Presidency develops a structural theory of the office by challenging and redefining the twin imperatives upon which the modern chief executive was constructed and by applying the theory to the three most recent presidents: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.Contents Preface 1. Theories of the American Presidency 2. Beyond Institutions-as-Structure: A Deeper Structural Perspective 3. Bill Clinton and the Neoliberal Presidency 4. The Conservative Mirage: George W. Bush and Empire Waning 5. Change You can Believe in? The Barack Obama Presidency 6. Toward a Deep Presidency: Coming to Terms with our Constitutional Catastrophe-in-Chief Endnotes Index

The Unsustainable Presidency is more than a breath of fresh air, it is hurricane of high velocity scholarship that will loosen the foundations of orthodox policy analysis. Grover and Peschek document and analyze the most important and virtually neglected pattern in recent presidential politics: the remarkable continuity of policy during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. In doing so they focus our attention on the 'deep structure' of policy formation, located in the relationships between government and business. The vivid portrait that emerges clarifies the structural constraints that assure that, if normal politics prevail, the application of presidential power will relentlessly conform to the interests and demands of the corporate class. - Michael Schwartz, Professor, SUNY Stony Brook, USA

Maybe it's time to stop kidding ourselves, argue Grover and Peschek in their bracing new study: the endless arguments about strong versus weak presidents miss the broader structural context, the political economy imperatives of modern society and capitalism that animate the entire system the president no less than other political actors. This provocative new work raises necessary questions at a time when solutions seem ever further from our (or presidents') grasp. - Rol“G