Presidential Leadership: Can We Ever Elect Another Washington, Lincoln, or FDR?
Jeffrey Engel / Southern Methodist University
Can our Republic be saved? Does it need to be?
The United States has faced three great existential crises in our long history. Each time a great leader emerged to see us through. George Washington unified a fractious new nation. Abraham Lincoln saved the Union almost three generations later. Three generations after that it was Franklin Roosevelt’s turn, faced with a Great Depression and global war. Their genius and savvy saved the United States, but three generations after FDR we face profound questions about national unity, and its survival. Professor Jeffrey Engel is one of the country’s foremost experts on Presidents and their leadership styles, and he feels History may show us through – and perhaps reveal another presidential “great” along the way.
Jeffrey Engel is the founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. He has taught at Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Haverford College, and taught history and public policy at Texas A&M University. He has authored/edited thirteen books on American foreign policy, most recently, When the World Seemed New: George H. Bush and the Surprisingly Peaceful End of the Cold War.