Since mid-century, America has witnessed an ominous decline in presidential leadership, culminating in the failing presidency of George W. Bush today. How did this happen? In Running Alone, the distinguished political scientist and leadership expert James MacGregor Burns finds the origin of the problem in John F. Kennedy's presidential style--and its influence on his successors in the Oval Office. Kennedy rejected collective leadership in favor of a highly personalized executive branch, run by a small group of hand-picked advisors. His successors followed his lead; each in his own way ran and governed alone, exploiting the party base while often ignoring party platforms and party needs. Burns charts the decline of genuine leadership in the Oval Office and offers practical proposals for restoring the kind of transforming leadership that this country so desperately needs. With unsurpassed knowledge of American history and politics, Burns shows us the way forward....

In Transforming Leadership, Burns illuminates the evolution of leadership structures, from the chieftains of tribal African societies, through Europe's absolute monarchies, to the blossoming of the Enlightenment's ideals of liberty and happiness during the American Revolution. Along the way he looks at key breakthroughs in leadership and the towering leaders who attempted to transform their worlds-Elizabeth I, Washington, Jefferson, Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Gorbachev, and others. Culminating in a bold and innovative plan to address the greatest global leadership challenge of the twenty-first century, the long-intractable problem of global poverty, Transforming Leadership will arouse discussion and controversy in classrooms and boardrooms throughout the country....

One of America's leading historians on the role of leadership in American history....

evolutionary hero, founding president, and first citizen of the young republic, George Washington was the most illustrious public man of his time, a man whose image today is the result of the careful grooming of his public persona to include the themes of character, self-sacrifice, and destiny. As Washington sought to interpret the Constitution's assignment of powers to the executive branch and to establish precedent for future leaders, he relied on his key advisers and looked to form consensus as the guiding principle of government. His is a legacy of a successful experiment in collective leadership, great initiatives in establishing a strong executive branch, and the formulation of innovative and lasting economic and foreign policies. James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn also trace the arc of Washington's increasing dissatisfaction with public life and the seeds of dissent and political parties that, ironically, grew from his insistence on consensus. In this compelling and balanced biography, Burns and Dunn give us a rich portrait of the man behind the carefully crafted mythology....