Imperfect Presidents: Tales of Presidential Misadventure and Triumph
Cullen (Born in the USA) unmasks  the major mistakes of 11 American presidents. Some of his choices are  predictable, such as FDR's fumble in trying to subvert the judiciary. Other  choices seem quirky. Lincoln's greatest error? Arrogantly criticizing Methodist  minister Peter Cartwright when the future president was a young man. Clinton's  real misstep was not his failure to keep his pants zipped, but his health care  plan. Cullen overreaches when he suggests that this political disaster was  linked to Clinton's sexual shenanigans: in Cullen's view, Clinton delegated  health care reform to his wife "in part [as] an act of personal atonement for  marital infidelity." Cullen singles out the invasion of Iraq as the current  president's grossest blunder, with his mishandling of Katrina a close second. A  few of the portraits are redemptive. LBJ, who engaged in electoral fraud to get  elected to the Senate in 1948, later signed the Voting Rights Act into law.  Cullen's grand conclusion takes the tone of a tedious inspirational speech and  trades in clichés ("Effective governance is a two-way street") as he  pedantically explains that what really matters is not who the president is, but  "who the people are" and what presidential behavior the American electorate  will accept. This is a sadly thin contribution to presidential history. B&w  illus.(Mar.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.