The pioneering work of Neustadt in Presidential Power seems to suffer from a case of the legend outgrowing the work itself. This week, most of the authors seem to be put in the position of defending Neustadt’s work, arguing that while many of the criticisms are valid, they miss the point. Jones (2003) attempts to defend Neustadt’s work from a number of criticisms in much the same way that Neustadt examines the presidency, by tracing Neustadt’s personal influences on his work. The major criticisms made by Moe and Skowronek, for example, in Jones’ argument are a matter of attempting to turn Neustadt’s work into something it is not. This is often a case of failing to understand what Neustadt is attempting to explain and what he is analyzing. …show more content…
Indeed, Presidential studies should start from an institutional perspective, and focus less on the President himself. However, Rockman also concludes that “Individual variability is the last thing we should look at, but it may not be the least thing…” (p. 794). The questions, then, seems to be when the personal characteristics or understandings of the President matter, and when they are mitigated by institutional or contextual factors. Rockman offers the general idea that “people matter more when other things matter less,” (p. 793). Though there are still serious questions about when this condition actually occurs. Further, it seems unwise to completely disregard any individual variation within the presidency. Political science often operates at the aggregate, with large-scale trends and empirics taking precedence over micro-level factors. However, rarely in political science is what happens in the mind of one individual so important as when that individual is the President. Thus, these individual differences should naturally matter more in studies of the Presidency than anywhere else in political