First things first: Miller’s title sets him up for failure. It defies even the murkiest conception of common sense to argue that Americans don’t want a great president. I hazard the guess that it’s impossible to define “great president” in a way that would satisfy most readers.
More substantially, The End of Greatness isn’t a worthwhile read for me because, right up front, Miller acknowledges his endorsement of the “Great Man” theory of historical understanding that was championed initially in the 1840s by the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle. The theory is often cited but it has only quite diminished standing today, as most historians and informed thinkers believe that durable circumstances and the complex dynamics of human interaction have much more impact than “Great Men” on our lives and on history as it unfolds. So, Miller gets started on the wrong foot, and his arguments can’t overcome the narrowness of his analysis.
“Where are the giants of old, the transformers who changed the world and left great legacies?”
Where are the leaders who “will author some incomparable, unparalleled, and ennobling achievement at home or on the world stage, an achievement likely to be seen or remembered as great or transformational?” Miller cites rebellions and revolutions as “crucibles for emerging leaders.”
He can’t escape defining “greatness” and offers: “defined generally as incomparable and unparalleled achievement that is nation- or even world-altering.” A couple pages later he digs the hole deeper when he equates greatness with military, political, economic and “soft” power. Incredibly, Miller declares “Greatness in the presidency may be rare, but it is both real and measurable,” and he temptingly alludes to “traces of greatness” in several contemporary presidents, while arguing “Greatness in the presidency is too rare to be relevant in our modern times.”
Miller makes it official on page 10: Lincoln was one of the great presidents. Lincoln once dismissed another man’s argument by saying “it won’t scour,” as 19th century farmers said that a plow “won’t scour” when it failed to easily let the clods slide off the plowshare.
I think Miller’s thesis “won’t scour.” He mistakenly asserts that a few great leaders should get much of the credit for history’s “transformations.” He frames his arguments with words that can’t be acceptably, explicitly defined on the grand historical scale that he uses: what is and what isn’t, specifically and unarguably, a “great legacy”? a “transformation”? an “unparalleled achievement”? a “trace of greatness”?
Miller relies on great big categories and a deceptive positive spin to discuss a little idea, and to make a gratuitous point that really can’t be proved or disproved.(1)
Full disclosure: I didn’t read the whole book. The Introduction stopped me cold.
More on my blogs:
http://barleyliterate.blogspot.com/
http://historybottomlines.blogspot.com/ ( )

While Americans revere former Presidents who they consider to have been great, they seek to elect their successors in the same mold then are upset that those they elect don’t measure up. In THE END OF GREATNESS, Aaron David Miller tells why the chances of another George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt occupying The White House are practically nil. His writing style is clear and easy to understand. He forms his arguments carefully and with precision.
We have a lot of great artists, athletes, entertainers, scientists, and entrepreneurs. We boast that we have among the most Nobel Prize winners. But the approval level of Congress is at a record low. Now, according to Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, the Senate has “ideologues and charlatans.” There were an abundance of great leaders among the county’s Founding Fathers when the population was 4 million adults There are now more than 300 million. Where are the great leaders? We look for our heroes among entertainers and celebrities.
There are many factors contributing to this situation. We look for leaders to solve all problems quickly but are wary of the power that would facilitate that. In Aaron David Miller’s opinion, “[E]ffective leaders intuit what the times make possible and the, if truly skillful, exploit and enlarge that opportunity and help change the politics that sustain it.” Today, no country has a great, transformative leader. In addition, today’s events and crises do not encourage the their development.
In order to be great, a President needs three things: Three Cs: crisis that severely threatens US for a sustained period; character; unique public and private aspects that drive effective leadership, capacity (to choose the right advisors). Without crisis, little sense of urgency or opportunity. Consensus-driven moves slowly, awkwardly, and much of the time not at all.
The world and country has changed and so have we....Greatness is too risky and dangerous to be desirable...The search raises our expectations and theirs, skews their performance, and leads to an impossible standard that can only frustrate and disappoint.
More recent Presidents had more responsibilities and faced more public expectations. The public feels more entitled and expects more. Unrealistic campaign promises feeds that but backfire when they are not kept. “Our modern day challenges...tend to divide rather than unite us.” In addition, we tend to vote for personalities rather than issues. In a recent Presidential contest, people said they voted for one candidate because he was the type of person they could see sitting down and sharing some beers. A number of years ago, a candidate was rejected by the voters because he was too intellectual.
Since the end of the Cold War, domestic matters top the agenda where there is less latitude to maneuver. Political parties lost influence over nominations and campaigns. Media and money more important. It is no longer possible to be private and withhold information from Congress. The Greats knew how to work the system and give ideas time to develop. Today we want answers immediately, even if they are not accurate or fully developed, and then complain about them.
“Media gets excited too and often, with little knowledge of history, decides to confer unmerited titles and impossible roles upon new presidents who are only too ready to receive them.” Reduced expectations (e/.g. George W. Bush) often work to the president’s advantage.
For President Obama, the job was too big and expectations too high. Convinced he was living in historic times, he raised expectations further by seeking to transform both American politics, and policies without fully understanding that neither the times nor the political environment would support dramatic change. Lead to disappointment because he failed to live up to the expectations of both his supporters and himself.
Great presidents see where the currents of the times are flowing, and then, within certain parameters, they work to determine if they can possibly redirect those currents when a crisis or an exceptional moment affords them the opportunity
“In 1934, the government was us” Theodore Marmor and Jerry Mashow. “We had shared circumstances, shared risks, and shared obligations. Today the government is the other....stands between us and the realization of our individual ambitions.”
I received a copy of this wonderful book from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. ( )

This is a very good book that discusses the concept of "greatness" as it applies to presidents. Miller identifies the three truly great presidents (Washington, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt) and the five presidents who were "almost" great (Jefferson, Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson and Truman).

As far as the "why America ... doesn't want ... another great president," Miller means this pragmatically and prudentially. The truly great presidents are considered great because they confronted crises that threatened the existence of the nation. It would be much nicer not to need a great president if that is the price we have to pay to give one the chance to prove he (or she) is great.

If the book suffers from anything, it is that it was clearly written in spurts. There is far too much repetition of certain themes (we only need to be told that Lincoln ended slavery in the U.S. once - not once or twice in every chapter; we don't need to be told the same details repeatedly). I don't think this kind of error would arise in a book that was written conscientiously as a whole.

In general, this is a readable, interesting and informative account of American history. Worth the read, if you can get past the repetitions. ( )

We argue, endlessly and enthusiastically, about “the greatest” examples of things we care about. Untold hours have been spent, over countless rounds of drinks, debating who was the greatest midfielder, the greatest novelist, the greatest political orator, the greatest character actor, the greatest whatever. We have these arguments because they take us deep into the details of subjects we’re passionate about: Bench or Fisk? Beatles or Stones? Betty or Veronica? They’re fun, in part, because they don’t have a unique, objective solution; there are too many variables, too many ways to weight them, and too much room for intangibles.

Aaron David Miller’s The End of Greatness doesn’t so much engage in the evergreen “greatest American presidents” debate as attempt to bury it. Miller argues, uncontroversially, that that the list of great chief executives begins with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. He goes on, however, to contend that the list also ends there: That they are the only three presidents worthy of being called “truly great,” and that changing political and historical realities make it unlikely that there will be a fourth.

Miller develops his argument in careful, step-by-step fashion and bolsters it with great slabs of American Political History 101 detail. The intent of this approach is, I think, to split he difference between “scholarly” and “popular” . . . to make the book rigorous enough to be taken seriously by specialists (to make it more than just another “Top 10 American Presidents” piece), but keep it accessible enough to be read by a wide audience who know the names but not the careers behind them. The effect, unfortunately, is something else entirely. The abundant historical and political background is pitched at a level that fans of Robert Dallek and Doris Kearns Goodwin, or loyal viewers of The American Experience—the core audience for this book—are likely to find tedious. Readers who haven’t thought much about American political history since their 11th-grade U. S. history class, who might welcome the background material, will likely lose patience with the slow-and-deliberate pacing of Miller’s argument (which leaves the impression that this book could have been a long magazine article).

Miller, for all his carefully developed and meticulously bolstered arguments, seems prone to arbitrary judgments. He acknowledges that James Polk achieved, in his one term, all four of the (substantial) goals he had promised to pursue if elected—and then bars him from the ranks of the great because one-term presidents’ accomplishment can’t match those of two-termers. How do we know they can’t? In effect, because Miller declares it so. Why does Lyndon Johnson’s bungling of Vietnam disqualify him from greatness when Franklin Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme and authorization of wartime internment camps for Japanese-American not disqualify him? Why was World War II (which did not directly threaten America) a greater crisis than the Cold War (which, especially with the advent of ballistic missiles, did), and thus more capable of producing a great president? Miller gives reasons, but they are thin and unsatisfying—rhetorical fig leaves to cover the yet another instance of: “because my gut tells me so.”

I don’t begrudge Miller his gut instincts, or his reliance on them to draw fine distinctions and break ties. We all do that, when we argue about greatness—it’s part of the game. What frustrates me about The End of Greatness is its implied claim to be doing something more scholarly and sophisticated. As smart, deeply informed, and passionate as Miller is, I found myself wishing he’d unbent a little, filled a glass, and joined the rest of us in amiable argument. ( )

To speculate on the end of presidential greatness, one needs to understand the standard by which we judge it. Aaron David Miller spends the majority of the book doing exactly that. Specifically, The End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President is mostly a biography of three of the greatest presidents in American history: Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington. And according to Miller, these are THE undisputed top three.

We learn of the circumstances under which these three men assumed the office of the presidency, and it soon becomes clear that greatness cannot be orchestrated. As if there was any doubt. So much depends on the external factors of the age, which are nearly always external threats.

I recommend The End of Greatness on the strength of these mini-biographies alone. There are mentions of other notable presidents—Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt for example—who were great men, but who inherited stakes that weren't nearly as high as the big three. There's also a discussion of the originally perceived greatness of our current president, Barack Obama, and how greatness has so far eluded him. Maybe time will tell.

We live in a digital age where the lives and deeds of anyone public are extensively recorded and astonishingly personal. When our revered heroes of the modern age don't have the luxury of elusiveness, then greatness will have to evolve to mean something more. ( )