Rockwell applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, The Presidency and the American State: Leadership and Decision Making in the Adams, Grant, and Taft Administrations, and reported the following:
This is the second time I’ve been invited to take the Page 99 Test, and to Ford Madox Ford’s credit this is the second time that my page 99 reveals quite a bit about my book.Learn more about The Presidency and the American State at the University of Virginia Press website.
Page 99 of The Presidency and the American State finds the book’s discussion in transition. The page concludes a discussion of Presdent Ulysses S. Grant’s use of public communication to head off an effort to move the nation’s capital to St. Louis. Grant used a speech to firefighters outside the White House to publicize his commitment to keeping the capital in Washington, DC. Page 99 challenges scholarship about the rhetorical presidency, in particular studies that argue that nineteenth-century presidents rarely used public rhetoric to influence policy.
The end of page 99 turns to Grant’s domestic policy agenda and his approach to leadership and decision making. I quote Grant, from his Memoirs: “I had never looked at a [textbook] copy of tactics from the time of my graduation [from West Point].... I found no trouble in giving commands that would take my regiment where I wanted it to go and carry it round all obstacles.”
The first part of page 99 captures a main theme of the book: Presidents Grant, John Quincy Adams, and William Howard Taft pursued their objectives through the extensive use of what are too often believed to be characteristically “modern” tools—public communication, legislative and administrative leadership, and unilateral executive action. After his speech to the firefighters, for example, Grant successfully pressured Congress to fund new construction in DC, and he appointed like-minded administrative leaders to oversee the effort.
The second part of page 99 captures the book’s other main theme: different approaches to presidential leadership and decision making. Grant is what I call a “principled innovator,” driven by his values and beliefs about what was right—and how best to achieve it—moreso than by the dictates of established tactics, rules, and procedures. John Quincy Adams, by contrast, was deeply committed to laws, rules, and procedures as guides to action—what I call a “procedurist.” President Adams relied on established protocols to push effectively for internal improvements, to staunchly uphold federal treaties with Native nations against encroachment by state leaders, and to fight slavery.
William Howard Taft was what I call a synthesist. He combined principled innovation to tackle new issues in the Progressive Era even as he worked to build new laws and procedures to govern action in the future. President Taft secured enduring innovations in personal and corporate taxation, campaign finance reform, conservation, and many other issues. Taft was an indispensable figure in setting the foundation for the American century.
Page 99 thus nicely captures the core of my book’s findings about the relationship between the robust American state and the vibrant presidency before the New Deal.
The Page 99 Test: Indian Affairs and the Administrative State in the Nineteenth Century.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
