Political scientists associated with the subfield of American Political Development (APD) have recently joined historians in examining presidential leadership in the Progressive Era. But APD scholars, among whose ranks is Peri Arnold, a professor at Notre Dame, are typically more intent than historians on approaching their subjects through a theoretical frame. Arnold observes that numerous studies of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson already exist. However, his claim is that “[f]ew books treat more than one of these presidents, and none attempt a systematic approach to all three within their shared political context. The drama of individual presidential leadership easily overwhelms the impulse to analyze the context in which it occurs” (195).

Arnold starts with context: the distinctive changes at the end of the nineteenth century that brought to a close the “party period” of American politics and launched the Progressive Era. Transformations in the political economy, the class structure, and the media generated mounting demands for national action. The presidency was increasingly the focus of these demands, yet the institution was weak in resources with which to meet them. It is only against this contextual field, Arnold contends, that the variable responses of the three Progressive presidents can be appreciated. Two of them—Roosevelt and Wilson—recognized the novel opportunity for leadership and aggressively reached for additional resources. The third, Taft, sought to be a loyal successor to Roosevelt, but he was too settled in the habits of the receding party period to fully understand how much his predecessor had altered the terms of presidential leadership.

Remaking the Presidency presents two chapters each on Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, the first devoted to the development of leadership style in the pre-presidential years and the second devoted to critical cases of executive leadership in domestic policy. According to Arnold, Roosevelt blazed a path toward the White House that was strikingly different than his Republican predecessors of the Gilded Age. Rather than rising through party orthodoxy and achievements in congressional politics, he combined a talent for leadership in administrative posts with a remarkable flair for self-promotion through political spectacles. Taft's course was completely different: His mindset was judicial, his fidelity to the Republican Party was unshakeable, and his advancement came through solid services in the role of a subordinate. Wilson, long fascinated with the subject of leadership, ascended from the ranks of the professoriate to become president of Princeton and then governor of New Jersey. In both roles, he captivated a national audience by mustering and mastering majority support for progressive reforms, only to falter in both positions once his majority evaporated.

Arnold's chapters on these men's administrations trace the elaboration of their leadership styles in the arena of domestic reform. For Roosevelt, antitrust dramas such as the Northern Securities case allowed him to expand his middle-class political base apart from the Republican majority in Congress, while the initiation of a big-gun battleship fleet demonstrated how he could enlist expertise from officers in the middle ranks to seize executive control over a policy area previously dominated by Congress and the naval brass. Lacking Roosevelt's flair for spectacle and his independent stance toward his party's Old Guard leadership, Taft fumbled the progressive legacy; failing to uphold his pledge of continuity with Roosevelt, his tariff and conservation policies split the party, drove his former hero into opposition, and opened the door for Wilson's election. Wilson was as adept as Roosevelt in grasping how the political context of the Progressive Era created the potential for dynamic presidential leadership. Still, the chief resource he developed for the office was the opposite of Roosevelt's: Rather than establishing independence from a standpatter party complacent after years in power, he mobilized an insurgent party eager for change and guided it skillfully to landmark legislative achievements during his first term.

For scholars or general readers knowledgeable about the histories of these three presidents, the details in the case studies that Arnold presents will not be particularly surprising. Much has already been written, for example, about Roosevelt as a master of public relations or Wilson as a leader of party. Nevertheless, the analytical framework of Remaking the Presidency does, as Arnold promises, cast presidential leadership of the Progressive Era in a fresh light. By highlighting the gulf between the escalating demands on the presidency that the Progressive Era produced and the limitations of the institution, heretofore in the shadow of party politicians in Congress and still devoid of much in the way of staff or analytical capacities, Arnold's approach reveals more fully than before how and why Roosevelt and Wilson remade the presidency. Put differently, the greater attention he pays than previous scholars to structure and context only renders the contributions of individual agents more vivid and creative.

This innovative analysis of presidential leadership in the Progressive Era is brief—it covers the three presidents in barely over two hundred pages—and some might wish that Arnold had undertaken a more comprehensive study. The context of the Progressive Era might have been elaborated with more depth and nuance. Issues of foreign policy in the three administrations might profitably have supplemented the treatment of cases in domestic policy, or have proved a dramatic departure. Still, the brevity of Arnold's work can also be regarded as a virtue, as it keeps the focus on the larger theoretical perspective that is his book's most valuable contribution to scholarship. For political scientists, Remaking the Presidency joins other distinguished works on the presidency in the APD literature by the likes of Stephen Skowronek, Jeffrey Tulis, and Sidney Milkis in demonstrating the richness of insights that have been gleaned from treating the office historically. For historians, the book approaches some much-studied personalities and events in a different light, offering categories for comparative analysis that scholars of the Progressive Era might fruitfully employ to revisit what has often seemed a topic they have thought they know all too well.