Acclaimed author, historian and presidential authority Robert Dallek will be sharing his expertise with the public today in his Montgomery Fellow speech as he analyzes the successes and failures of past presidencies and looks toward the nation's future.
Dallek, who will be speaking at 4 p.m. in Filene auditorium, is the author of "Hail to the Chief: the Making and Unmaking of American Presidents," and the best-selling biography on President John F. Kennedy, "An Unfinished Life." In "An Unfinished Life," Dallek revealed Kennedy's health problems for the first time.
As this summer's Montgomery Fellow, Dallek will be at Dartmouth until Aug. 5, visiting history and government classes, and holding lunches and dinners with interested students.
In today's speech Dallek, who is a frequent television and radio commentator on presidential affairs, will reflect on past presidencies as well as what type of leadership the country needs in 2008. He feels the country requires a new, innovative presidential candidate to stoke the fire of national politics. Dallek referred to the change brought on by Kennedy's breaking of the religious barrier when he became the first Catholic president and suggested that a female president would ignite the nation with the change it needs.
"I think when we get a woman as president, it will generate a kind of new excitement about the office, and about new governmental initiatives and reforms," Dallek said. "We'll get, hopefully, a kind of fresh leadership -- a dynamic leadership. It will be a valuable expansion of the presidency."
Dallek emphasized the cycles of American political history, in which the American people tire of the old and want something new and fresh.
These cycles, he said, are the reason why eight-year presidencies are rare and sometimes problematic, as they are led by presidents who are wearing out their welcome.
"You want to generate excitement," he said. "America is about realizing possibilities. The country is pragmatic. It's a country that has a lot of flexibility to it and is willing to try fresh things."
Dallek explained that in his research, he has identified six specific characteristics that have allowed some presidents to succeed brilliantly where others have failed.
He cited vision as the first important characteristic of successful presidents.
"Most effective presidents have a broad-gauged idea, a grand scheme of where they want to lead the country, and they are able to articulate it to people in an understandable way," Dallek said.
He also mentioned political savvy and pragmatism as other essential elements of a successful president, as well as charisma and an understanding of the media.
"It's being a skillful speechmaker, a personality people can be comfortable with," Dallek explained.
According to Dallek, the president also needs to be able to create consensus and a sense of shared national goals in a country that remains extremely diverse regionally, geographically, economically, religiously and racially.
The last two important characteristics, Dallek said, are judgment and credibility.
"A president who loses the trust of the public is a president that is no longer able to govern effectively," he said.
Yet when it comes to evaluating the Bush presidency, Dallek warned that academics will not have a full understanding of the administration's inner workings until decades later.
"It's going to take us 30 to 35 years, until records are open and we can see the inner workings of the Bush White House," he said, citing presidential office files, interviews and memoirs as the best sources of information. "It's 30 to 35 years before you get sufficient access to get a clearer picture."
Dallek touched on the war in Iraq and Bush's attempts at Social Security reform as initiatives that will likely define the Bush administration.
"We'll ask, 'Was it wise to have embarked on that conflict?'" Dallek said of the Iraq War. "'Is it securing the homeland effectively?'"
Dallek has spent three years absorbed in the Nixon-Kissinger administration and will spend another two scouring the archives and pouring over thousands of pages of documents and hundreds of hours of tape.
The critically-acclaimed biographer has come to see his profession as an art, which requires a specific talent for interpretation and judgment.
"You never get the whole story if you [just] consult the public record, if you try to write the history of their presidency from public pronouncements or papers," he said. "Behind the scenes, they talk in some ways you wouldn't believe. It's just so scurrilous!"
Dallek may return to Dartmouth in the fall, once again teaching a government class on the American Presidency. Samantha Lane '06, who took the class last Summer term, characterized it as "rewarding" and "inspiring," and described Dallek as a "brilliant yet humble" professor.
If Dallek does teach in the fall, his class will either be a discussion class limited to approximately 30 students, or a larger lecture class with the capacity for 60 to 70 students.
"I like the idea of having a conversation with students," Dallek said, referring to the discussion-sized class on the American presidency that he taught last summer. "I found it very satisfying to engage in that kind of exchange [with the students]."
A former Guggenheim Fellow and Bancroft Prize winner, Dallek has taught at Boston University, Columbia University, Oxford University and UCLA. Dallek resides in Washington, D.C., where he has been working on his current book, which is tentatively titled "Inside the Nixon-Kissinger White House: the Use and Abuse of Power." It is due for publication in 2007.
