The Future Bookshelf: The President of George Stephanopoulos’s Dreams
"The Future Bookshelf" is a weekly feature highlighting upcoming or recently signed books with a Washington connection. Tune in each week for a new installment, author interviews, and deal gossip.
In his 1999 memoir of the Clinton White House, All Too Human,George Stephanopoulos wrote at length about his former boss’s blemishes—his indecision, his emotional rampages, his questionable personal life. For all of President Bill Clinton’s political charm and idealistic ambition, his former right-hand man spelled out in the clearest of terms one of the frustrating realities of politics and every other human enterprise: They’re undertaken by flawed people.
In contemporary times, media access and technological advances have made this especially evident. Every slip of the foot or tongue is caught on tape and played out for weeks on TV, radio, and the Internet.
Former Senator George Allen’s ill-fated racial slur last fall—echoed in sound bites for weeks afterward—played a big part in his defeat by Jim Webb last November. Footage of Senator Joe Biden’s embarrassing comments to reporters about Indian-Americans and Dunkin’ Donuts was posted on YouTube days before he announced his presidential bid. And many wonder if a politician as prone to inappropriateness as Senator John McCain—he once joked at a Republican fundraiser that Janet Reno was Chelsea Clinton’s father—can make it to November without a major faux pas.
Technology has captured the humanness of public figures while raising our expectations of politicians to a super-human level. What if we’d had the same technology, access to information, and sensibilities during Andrew Jackson’s or Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency? Imagine the banter in the backrooms of the Hermitage or the jokes cracked on TR’s famed hikes through Rock Creek Park.
The fact is that our most lauded presidents were great to the extent that they triumphed despite ignoble tendencies and personality flaws.
In last year’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom,Conrad Black exposed FDR’s opportunism and implacability, even as he placed him right below, if not in the same league as, Abraham Lincoln as our greatest president.
Lincoln’s emotional struggles, as documented in Joshua Wolf Shenk’sLincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness do little to undermine his achievement. Rather, they make Lincoln’s achievements more astounding.
History’s hands hold in their grasp no perfect men. We’ve never elected one and never will, but if we could, what would the perfect president look and act like?
That’s the question taken up in Stephanopoulos’s The Perfect President, to be published by Hyperion next spring. Todd Brewster, who cowrote In Search of America and The Century with Peter Jennings, will lend a hand.
Stephanopoulos—now broadcast royalty as host of ABC’s Sunday show This Week—will cull through the presidents, “examining the often surprising characteristics that have contributed to presidential greatness.”
What would your perfect president be like? Mine would command respect like George Washington. He—or she—would employ the thoughtfulness of the first John Adams, have Thomas Jefferson’s ingenuity, and be as stubborn as Andrew Jackson when stubbornness is required. At other times, he’d be as humble as Gerald Ford.
My president would have a story like Lincoln’s and, like Lincoln, would use the podium to pack a precise and eloquent punch. He’d have the vigor of the first Roosevelt and the same fearlessness in the face of domestic and international disaster as the second.
He’d have a nickname as catchy as Ike, hair like John F. Kennedy’s, a laugh like Ronald Reagan’s. And he’d be as likable as Clinton.
It’s a given that such a candidate won’t be on the ballot in 2008. But maybe we’ll find one or two with a few of our greatest presidents’ hallmarks. This person won’t be perfect, but imperfection has never been the ultimate bar to greatness.
Other recent Washington-related book deals:
PublicAffairs will turn the Washington Post series “Being a Black Man: At the Corner of Progress and Peril” into a book of the same name this August. The series—which ran mostly in the second half of 2006 and included stories by Steven A. Holmes, Richard Morin, and Sari Horwitz, to name a few—drew criticism from Bill Cosby for painting too bright a picture. The Post reported, among other findings, that 6 in 10 African-American men had said it was a “good time” to be a black man in the United States. Local writer Edward P. Jones, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Known World, will write the book’s introduction.
Romesh Ratnesar, an editor and writer at Time, will analyze Ronald Reagan’s most famous speech in Tear Down This Wall: A City, a President and the Speech that Ended the Cold War (Simon & Schuster). Ratnesar will draw from interviews with those who helped write the iconic 1987 address and with those who witnessed it in West Berlin.
Don’t Miss Another Big Story—Get Our Weekend Newsletter
Our most popular stories of the week, sent every Saturday.
The Future Bookshelf: The President of George Stephanopoulos’s Dreams
"The Future Bookshelf" is a weekly feature highlighting upcoming or recently signed books with a Washington connection. Tune in each week for a new installment, author interviews, and deal gossip.
In his 1999 memoir of the Clinton White House, All Too Human, George Stephanopoulos wrote at length about his former boss’s blemishes—his indecision, his emotional rampages, his questionable personal life. For all of President Bill Clinton’s political charm and idealistic ambition, his former right-hand man spelled out in the clearest of terms one of the frustrating realities of politics and every other human enterprise: They’re undertaken by flawed people.
In contemporary times, media access and technological advances have made this especially evident. Every slip of the foot or tongue is caught on tape and played out for weeks on TV, radio, and the Internet.
Former Senator George Allen’s ill-fated racial slur last fall—echoed in sound bites for weeks afterward—played a big part in his defeat by Jim Webb last November. Footage of Senator Joe Biden’s embarrassing comments to reporters about Indian-Americans and Dunkin’ Donuts was posted on YouTube days before he announced his presidential bid. And many wonder if a politician as prone to inappropriateness as Senator John McCain—he once joked at a Republican fundraiser that Janet Reno was Chelsea Clinton’s father—can make it to November without a major faux pas.
Technology has captured the humanness of public figures while raising our expectations of politicians to a super-human level. What if we’d had the same technology, access to information, and sensibilities during Andrew Jackson’s or Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency? Imagine the banter in the backrooms of the Hermitage or the jokes cracked on TR’s famed hikes through Rock Creek Park.
The fact is that our most lauded presidents were great to the extent that they triumphed despite ignoble tendencies and personality flaws.
In last year’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, Conrad Black exposed FDR’s opportunism and implacability, even as he placed him right below, if not in the same league as, Abraham Lincoln as our greatest president.
Lincoln’s emotional struggles, as documented in Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness do little to undermine his achievement. Rather, they make Lincoln’s achievements more astounding.
History’s hands hold in their grasp no perfect men. We’ve never elected one and never will, but if we could, what would the perfect president look and act like?
That’s the question taken up in Stephanopoulos’s The Perfect President, to be published by Hyperion next spring. Todd Brewster, who cowrote In Search of America and The Century with Peter Jennings, will lend a hand.
Stephanopoulos—now broadcast royalty as host of ABC’s Sunday show This Week—will cull through the presidents, “examining the often surprising characteristics that have contributed to presidential greatness.”
What would your perfect president be like? Mine would command respect like George Washington. He—or she—would employ the thoughtfulness of the first John Adams, have Thomas Jefferson’s ingenuity, and be as stubborn as Andrew Jackson when stubbornness is required. At other times, he’d be as humble as Gerald Ford.
My president would have a story like Lincoln’s and, like Lincoln, would use the podium to pack a precise and eloquent punch. He’d have the vigor of the first Roosevelt and the same fearlessness in the face of domestic and international disaster as the second.
He’d have a nickname as catchy as Ike, hair like John F. Kennedy’s, a laugh like Ronald Reagan’s. And he’d be as likable as Clinton.
It’s a given that such a candidate won’t be on the ballot in 2008. But maybe we’ll find one or two with a few of our greatest presidents’ hallmarks. This person won’t be perfect, but imperfection has never been the ultimate bar to greatness.
Other recent Washington-related book deals:
PublicAffairs will turn the Washington Post series “Being a Black Man: At the Corner of Progress and Peril” into a book of the same name this August. The series—which ran mostly in the second half of 2006 and included stories by Steven A. Holmes, Richard Morin, and Sari Horwitz, to name a few—drew criticism from Bill Cosby for painting too bright a picture. The Post reported, among other findings, that 6 in 10 African-American men had said it was a “good time” to be a black man in the United States. Local writer Edward P. Jones, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Known World, will write the book’s introduction.
Romesh Ratnesar, an editor and writer at Time, will analyze Ronald Reagan’s most famous speech in Tear Down This Wall: A City, a President and the Speech that Ended the Cold War (Simon & Schuster). Ratnesar will draw from interviews with those who helped write the iconic 1987 address and with those who witnessed it in West Berlin.
Don’t Miss Another Big Story—Get Our Weekend Newsletter
Our most popular stories of the week, sent every Saturday.
Most Popular in News & Politics
Trump Hotel Employees Reveal What It Was Really Like Catering to the Right Wing Elite
Washington’s Most Influential People
Report Claims NFL Investigation Recommends Dan Snyder Be Forced to Sell
American Idol Is Facing Backlash Over Claudia Conway’s Audition
March 4 Isn’t the Only Date on the QAnon Calendar
Washingtonian Magazine
March 2021: The Influencers
View IssueSubscribe
Get Us on Social
Get Us on Social
Related
Video From Fall Real Estate Market Update With Local Leaders
Washingtonian Real Estate Virtual Happy Hour
Videos from Washingtonian’s Wellness Day
Washingtonian Real Estate Virtual Happy Hour
More from News & Politics
A New DC Program Lets Housebound Seniors Sign Up for Zoom Sessions with Rescue Animals
Axios Political Reporter Alexi McCammond is Teen Vogue’s New Editor
Report Claims NFL Investigation Recommends Dan Snyder Be Forced to Sell
Today’s Vaccine Signup Was Messy Again. Next Week Doesn’t Look Promising.
A DC Experiment in Direct Cash Transfers to Fight Poverty
The Capitol Police’s Request to Retain the National Guard Took DC Officials by Surprise
DC’s Covid Vaccine Appointments Were Filled in Under 10 Minutes This Morning
Chasten Buttigieg and Doug Emhoff Hung Out on Capitol Hill Yesterday