Stephen F. Knott – författare

George W. Bush has been branded the worst president in history and forced to endure accusations that he abused his power while presiding over a “lawless” administration. Stephen Knott, however, contends that Bush has been treated unfairly, especially by presidential historians and the media. He argues that from the beginning scholars abandoned any pretense at objectivity in their critiques and seemed unwilling to place Bush’s actions into a broader historical context.

In this provocative book, Knott offers a measured critique of the professoriate for its misuse of scholarship for partisan political purposes, a defense of the Hamiltonian perspective on the extent and use of executive power, and a rehabilitation of Bush’s reputation from a national security viewpoint. He argues that Bush’s conduct as chief executive was rooted in a tradition extending as far back as George Washington—not an “imperial presidency” but rather an activist one that energetically executed its constitutional prerogatives.

Given that one of the main indictments of Bush focuses on his alleged abuse of presidential war power, Knott takes on academic critics like Sean Wilentz and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and journalists like Charlie Savage to argue instead that Bush conducted the War on Terror in a manner faithful to the Framers’ intent—that in situations involving national security he rightly assumed powers that neither Congress nor the courts can properly restrain. Knott further challenges Bush’s detractors for having applied a relatively recent, revisionist understanding of the Constitution in arguing that Bush’s actions were out of bounds.

Ultimately, Knott makes a worthy case that, while Bush was not necessarily a great president, his national security policies were in keeping with the practices of America’s most revered presidents and, for that reason alone, he deserves a second look by those who have condemned him to the ash heap of history. All readers interested in the presidency and in American history writ large will find Rush to Judgment a deftly argued, perhaps deeply unsettling, yet balanced account of the Bush presidency—and a clarion call for a reexamination of how scholars determine presidential greatness and failure.

The American presidency is not what it once was. Nor, Stephen F. Knott contends, what it was meant to be. Taking on an issue as timely as Donald Trump’s latest tweet and old as the American republic, the distinguished presidential scholar documents the devolution of the American presidency from the neutral, unifying office envisioned by the framers of the Constitution into the demagogic, partisan entity of our day.

The presidency of popular consent, or the majoritarian presidency that we have today, far predates its current incarnation. The executive office as James Madison, George Washington, and Alexander Hamilton conceived it would be a source of national pride and unity, a check on the tyranny of the majority, and a neutral guarantor of the nation’s laws. The Lost Soul of the American Presidency shows how Thomas Jefferson’s “Revolution of 1800” remade the presidency, paving the way for Andrew Jackson to elevate “majority rule” into an unofficial constitutional principle—and contributing to the disenfranchisement, and worse, of African Americans and Native Americans. In Woodrow Wilson, Knott finds a worthy successor to Jefferson and Jackson. More than any of his predecessors, Wilson altered the nation’s expectations of what a president could be expected to achieve, putting in place the political machinery to support a “presidential government.”

As difficult as it might be to recover the lost soul of the American presidency, Knott reminds us of presidents who resisted pandering to public opinion and appealed to our better angels—George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and William Howard Taft, among others—whose presidencies suggest an alternative and offer hope for the future of the nation’s highest office.

Stephen F. Knott has spent his life grappling with the legacy of President John F. Kennedy: JFK was the first president Knott remembers, he worked for Ted Kennedy’s Senate campaign in 1976, and later he worked at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. Moreover, Knott’s scholarly work on the American presidency has wrestled with Kennedy’s time in office and whether his presidency was ultimately a positive or negative one for the country. After initially being a strong Kennedy fan, Knott’s views began to sour during his time at the library, eventually leading him to become a “Reagan Democrat.” The Trump presidency led Knott to revisit JFK, leading him once more to reconsider his views.

Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy offers a nuanced assessment of the thirty-fifth president, whose legacy and impact people continue to debate to this day. Knott examines Kennedy through the lens of five critical issues: his interpretation of presidential power, his approach to civil rights, and his foreign policy toward Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam. Knott also explores JFK’s assassination and the evolving interpretations of his presidency, both highly politicized subject matters. What emerges is a president as complex as the author’s shifting views about him.

The passage of sixty years, from working in the Kennedy Library to a career writing about the American presidency, has given Knott a broader view of Kennedy’s presidency and allowed him to see how both the Left and the Right, and members of the Kennedy family, distorted JFK''s record for their own purposes.

Despite the existence of over forty thousand books dealing with the man and his era, Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy offers something new to say about this brief but important presidency. Knott contends that Kennedy’s presidency, for better or for worse, mattered deeply and that whatever his personal flaws, Kennedy’s lofty rhetoric appealed to what is best in America, without invoking the snarling nativism of his least illustrious successor, Donald Trump.