Time magazine editors Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy take us inside the relationships between every president since Truman and his predecessors. It was at Ike's inauguration that Truman and former pariah Herbert Hoover met to (re)start the Presidents Club - an informal society for former Presidents. At its core the club continues to operate with two goals in mind; to serve the sitting President - and by extension to continue to serve the country - and to protect the office of the presidency (itself a concept that continues to evolve). How these concerns have been balanced over time has, of course, been dependent upon each man's conception of the office and his continued relationship to it as well as his efforts to shape history's verdict over his own administration. Surprisingly or not, each man seems to have struggled with leaving the Oval Office behind.
The book is, at turns, political gossip and electoral history. How different presidents have thought about and interacted with one-another, is a sort-of holy grail of insider knowledge in the beltway. To the extent that such relationships illuminate our thinking about each man, and about the office, the book works. Seeing the epitome of political animals known as LBJ and Nixon, conspire to work through a potential Vietnam peace process uncovers that strengths and flaws of each man at perhaps the most pivotal moments of their careers (we cannot help but feel robbed of a Johnson-Nixon race). Likewise, the evolution of the relationship between Presidents Clinton and Bush (41) contrasts with each man's time in office and serves as a cause for reflection concerning whether or not they were allowed to give free reign to their better angels while in office. Where the work falls short is when different narratives feel cobbled together and given short shrift. Sometimes the relationships shown seem to be only a brushstroke or two of the larger picture. To the extent that the work is meant to focus on the relationship between a given president and his predecessors, as personalities, this book succeeds. What is needed is a deeper examination of how each man thought of the roles and responsibilities of the office, and to what extent this shaped both their presidencies and post-presidential life. While issues of personality may heavily influence how each related to one another, too easily does the work rely on the force of each man's personality to move the work forward.
