Presidential Leadership in Feeble Times Explaining Executive Power in the Gilded Age

Do presidents matter for America's economic performance? We tend to stereotype the Gilded Age presidents of the late nineteenth century as weak. We also assume that the American people were intellectually misguided about the economy and the government's role in it during this era. And we generally dismiss the Gilded Age macro-economy as boring--little interesting or important happened. Instead, the micro-economics of the business world was where the action was located. More broadly, many economists and political scientists believe that individual presidents do not matter much, even in the twenty-first century. Institutional constraints and historical circumstance dictate success or failure; the White House is just along for the ride.

In Presidential Leadership in Feeble Times, Mark Zachary Taylor shows that all of this is mistaken. Taylor tells the story of three decades of Gilded Age economic upheaval with a focus on presidential leadership--why did some presidents crash and burn, while others prospered? It turns out that neither education nor experience mattered much. Nor did brains, personal ethics, or party affiliation. Instead, differences in presidential vision and leadership style had dramatic consequences. And even in this unlikely period, presidents powerfully affected national economic performance and their success came from surprising sources, with important lessons for us today.

Mark Zachary Taylor is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. With a background in strategic consulting, he specializes in political economy, international relations, and comparative politics. He is the author of The Politics of Innovation, and has published research in Foreign Affairs, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, and Harvard International Review.

Preface
Acknowledgements
A Note on Abbreviations, Data, and Sources

1. Introduction

2. The Puzzle of the Presidents and the Economy during the Gilded Age

3. Prelude: The Civil War

Interlude: Into the 1870s

4. Ulysses S. Grant, First Term: "A great soldier might be a baby politician," 1869-1873

5. Ulysses S. Grant, Second Term: Panic, Depression, and The Dawn of the Gilded Age, 1873-1877

6. Rutherford B. Hayes and the Great Economic Boom, 1877-1881

Interlude: Into the 1880s

7. James A. Garfield and the Economy of 1881

8. Chester Arthur and the Smoldering Depression of 1881-1885

9. Grover Cleveland: Strict Constitutionalism and the Challenge of Recession, 1885-1889

Interlude: Into the 1890s

10. Benjamin Harrison-Patriot and Partisan: Planting the Seeds of Crisis, 1889-1893

11. Grover Cleveland Returns: The Great Depression of 1893-1897

12. William McKinley and the Developmental State, 1897-1901

13. Conclusions

Appendix: Estimating the Presidents' Economic Performance-Data, Sources, and Methods
Notes
References
Index