Who Talked to the President When? A Study Of Lyndon B. Johnson

Bibliographic Data

ID5002917
AuthorsJames J Best (corresponding author)
Year1988
Volume103
Issue3
Pages531-545
Publication date1988-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Science Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3195 • E-ISSN: 1538-165X
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2150762
OpenAlexW2319363207
LanguageEN
Citations received6

Some of the most important decisions that a president makes involve choosing the people with whom he surrounds himself and with whom he talks on a regular basis. Hugh Heclo notes, Apart from matters of style, the president's main area of discretion is the choice as to what personalities he will deal with directly in the everyday running of the office.' Certainly the choice of Cabinet members and White House staff are among the first and most important decisions that a newly-elected president makes. The president's interaction with these people and others, official and unofficial, determine the . . meaning [that] is given to the world and creates the reality toward which persons act.2 For that reason the president's choices of whom to interact with are important: they structure his view of reality and help shape his response to that real world. If presidential choices of interaction partners are important, those choices must be studied so we can better understand how a president structures his environment. Much of the writing on whom presidents talk with has been unsystematic, often impressionistic. For example, James Anderson provides insider vignettes about presidential staff members across a number of administrations, while Robert E. Denton and Dan F. Hahn provide data-free analysis of the manipulative relational

Political science · Public Administration · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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