The Presidents Club: Inside The World's Most Exclusive Fraternity (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
I personally recommended this book to my friends who are and had taken up International Studies. This book did not fail to amaze me as it gave me an insights on how some presidents under this club reacted towards each other in lieu with their ideological beliefs.It also gave me a hindsight of how one's perspective, as an individual, be able to affect the course of history.With this book, as a nonAmerican reader, I learned a lot of facts about different presidents since I only knew Richard Nixon, Bush the Father, Bush the Son, Clinton, and Obama only before readif this book.Hopefully there would be another series! Presidential candidates often run on a platform of distancing themselves from the man in office, attacking his policies and actions, promising to do things differently, better. Or they deliberately align themselves with him, painting themselves as his natural successor, his protege, only to begin to edge themselves out from the long shadow cast once in office. But one thing, Gibbs and Duffy argue, is common to all of those who become President themselves - they find it a lonely, isolating position, and only a few other men can really understand what they're going through - and it's the very same men they have been deliberately avoiding or cultivating.Relationships with everyone change once a man becomes President - with his family, friends, staff, voters - and perhaps most particularly of all with the other men who bear the title of President. This book is a truly fascinating read, charting the relationships between all of the Presidents since Truman and Hoover first formed what they jokingly called 'the Presidents Club'. Cooperation, competition and consolation form the hallmark of this Club, and it's interesting to see how different presidents have relied on their predecessors in different ways - to lend political support, to influence voters, to give advice and guidance, to take on tricky extra-governmental missions, to serve as a sounding board, or even just as a friend who has been there.Some Presidents could let go, content to fade into the background and serve when called upon, like Eisenhower, Truman, Ford, or the Bushes. Others were bored and restless, inserting themselves into events on the world stage whether they were wanted or not, like Carter and Clinton. Others were paranoid and anguished in their retirement, obsessed with how history would see them, unable and unwilling to let go, like Johnson. And then there was Nixon...I really enjoyed this book, enjoyed reading about a side of Presidential life that is rarely written about. Much time, paper and ink is devoted to how a man becomes President and what he does whilst in office, but to paraphrase Shakespeare, for some Presidents, nothing became their Presidency like the leaving of it. That transition and how they handle being an ex-President is often more revealing than anything else, about how a man whose life has been devoted to politics handles being on the other side of the most powerful office in the world.Having read this book I came away with a new respect for Truman, Ford and both Bushes, and a little less for Eisenhower, Carter and Reagan - and let's face it, the portrayal of Nixon only confirmed much of what history thinks of him already. Definitely worth a read for anyone interested in Presidential history!
What do You think about The Presidents Club: Inside The World's Most Exclusive Fraternity (2012)?
Enlightening insights into what our presidents face and how their predecessors can help them.
—aeshu
Very well written, well researched. Was an enjoyable, educational read!
—Bubbly02
Learned about history in an enjoyable way.
—Sarahlynn254
