In the fourth edition of Organizing the Presidency, Stephen Hess and James Pfiffner argue that the successes and failures of presidents from Roosevelt to Trump have resulted in large part from how the president deployed and used White House staffers and other top officials responsible for carrying out Oval Office policy.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated president in March 1933, the White House staff numbered fewer than fifty people. Since then, as the United States became a world power and both the foreign and domestic duties of the president grew more complex, the White House staff has increased dramatically.
Organizing the Presidency, now in its fourth edition, asks how best to manage a presidency that itself has become a bureaucracy. Stephen Hess joins with James P. Pfiffner to survey how presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Donald Trump have organized their administrations and guided the changing responsibilities of executive branch jobs and their relationships with one another, with Capitol Hill, and with the permanent government. The authors also describe the variety of people who have filled these positions and the intentions of the presidents who appointed them.
