Richard Neustadt

In he combined a skill at retail politics with a conceptual grasp of policy I don't think we've seen.

Remember, did you ever meet Richard Neustadt, the presidential historian?

Yeah, of course.

I knew him.

I don't think there's been any dramatization yet of the Trump White House.

Remember, if you really study presidential power and presidential politics, Richard Neustadt, he was a political scientist, a professor at Harvard.

He wrote a great, great book on presidential power.

And usually the presidents take a cabinet model.

So let me tell you, one of the most interesting ones, I share it with everybody who goes through our programming on any of our academies.

So one of the most famous presidential advisors in history is Richard Neustadt.

He worked for Kennedy and Johnson and Truman.

And he's got a quote.

But I have to say, originally, I thought I would look at legislatures because I had worked in the Massachusetts State Senate.

And so when I got back to grad school, I got sucked in actually almost immediately into a seminar that was being taught as sort of a one-off by a pillar of the scholarly community when it comes to the presidency, a guy named Richard Neustadt.

who had worked for Harry Truman, had worked in the Bureau of the Budget, gave advice to everybody up through, I want to say, Ronald Reagan, practically.

And he had he was retired almost or sort of anyway, and had been lured in to co-teaching a class with a guy who became a co-author of mine, Matt Dickinson, who teaches up at Middlebury.

Where else might you recommend anybody start if they want to learn more about presidential power.

Let me throw a few things out real quick.

I mentioned Richard Neustadt, his book written originally in 1960 and revised as late as 1990.

It's called Presidential Power.