Reddit reviews Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan

You can't bring up Skowronek and Howe without also mentioning Neustadt, one of the other major presidential scholars. Here's his most famous book.

Influence is all you need in capitalism and our political atmosphere. It's influence all the way down. You think the president has "authority"? Sure, here and there, but he must likewise persuade and influence countless people to get things done.

Presidents often assign this book to their staff to get familiar with White House/Executive branch psychology.

That isn't a hypothetical, that's having no idea about basic functions of government.

Presidential Power - Richard Neustadt
[Presidential Leadership in Political Times] - Stephen Skowronek
[The Presidential Difference] - Fred Greenstein

All good, all easy to find, all explaining in fairly clear detail just how powerful the presidency is, how it works in the real world, and what it can and can not do.

Your rambly bullshit is rambly.

>Examples?

Grant. Taylor. Arthur. Hoover. Arguably Ike (though he is probably the most successful). With the exception of one term as Governor which is well outside of Washington experience that is at the core of it, Bush (2nd).

>Nope. Just not needlessly meddling in places we have nothing to gain from.

Arguable. There is plenty the US can gain from in maintaining global hegemony. Not much that I particularly agree with, but there are benefits. One doesn't need to read much further than Keohane and Nye's work on neoliberal institutionism to see that. However, for me as someone on the opposite side of Trump's political beliefs, I will take an isolationist over a warhawk.

>You're insane if you believe this.

When did I write: "trump will be less effective with the republican senate/congress than Clinton"? You put that in quotes, but I never wrote those words that you're responding to.

As much as people see Obama as having been "stonewalled", he has done more than the vast majority of presidents. When we get beyond our perception of what a president does and looks at the amount of legislation he was able to put through, policies to get enacted, etc., Obama has been amazingly successful at it.

Lastly, whoever wins the Presidency on their first term will, the vast majority of the time, win the house and the senate. It is called the coattails effect. Then, in the mid-term elections, the opposition to the president are the only ones enthused to vote, so it tends to go to the opposition until the second presidential election. Sometimes it bounces back, sometimes it doesn't. It only gets worse on the 2nd mid-term, then finally restarts with a new president.

That's far from a 100% assurance, but that is the trend.

Check out Neustadt on the way the presidency works. It is pretty much the foundational work in the field. And in regards to presidents being able to act with opposition in the legislation, check out Krehbiel. The two together do a pretty good job of describing the way in which a president is able to do things when the opposition controls the legislature, but why it tends to fail for those without a strong political background.