"Great Debates" The End of Greatness: Will America Have (or Do We Need) Another Great President?

The American presidency is the centerpiece of the U.S. political system, the symbol of our government to the nation and the world, and the most visible figure in U.S. politics. Over the course of our country’s history, several presidents maintained an extraordinarily high profile and wielded great power – among them George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt – but what actually makes a president “great?” Is greatness defined by creating new powers for the office and new programs for the federal government, or getting the federal government out of the way of Americans’ freedom to pursue happiness in their own ways? Is America facing an “end of greatness,” where we are more presidency-dependent than ever, but the president’s capacity to deliver is rapidly diminishing? Or are we experiencing a void of heroic and inspirational presidents, with the increasingly polarized nature of politics preventing the rise of another truly great leader?

In anticipation of the 2016 presidential election campaign, the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia and the Independence National Historical Park hosted a conversation on the executive office itself and discuss the type of president America really needs in the Oval Office. In this discussion, we asked the questions: Should we, as citizens, continue to aspire to “greatness” in our only nationally elected office—and what does that mean, anyway?

Sharing their views on the American presidency were David Eisenhower, director of the Institute for Public Service at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and Aaron David Miller, vice president for New Initiatives and a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and a former U.S.-Middle East negotiator who’s advised Republican and Democratic Secretaries of State. Mr. Eisenhower is the grandson of President Dwight Eisenhower and the son-in-law of President Richard Nixon, and the author Eisenhower at War 1943-1945, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Dr. Miller is the author of the just published, The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President.