Presidential Leadership, Illness, and Decision Making

by Rose McDermott

• ISBN13: 9780521882729
• ISBN10: 0521882729
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-12-10
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Examines the impact of medical and psychological illness on foreign policy decision making. Illness provides specific, predictable, and recognizable shifts in attention, time perspective, cognitive capacity, judgment, and emotion, which systematically affect impaired leaders. In particular, this book discusses the ways in which processes related to aging, physical and psychological illness, and addiction influence decision making. This book provides detailed analysis of four cases among the American presidency. Woodrow Wilson's October 1919 stroke affected his behavior during the Senate fight over ratifying the League of Nations. Franklin Roosevelt's severe coronary disease influenced his decisions concerning the conduct of war in the Pacific from 1943-1945 in particular. John Kennedy's illnesses and treatments altered his behavior at the 1961 Vienna conference with Soviet Premier Khrushchev. And Nixon's psychological impairments biased his decisions regarding the covert bombing of Cambodia in 1969-1970.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Aging, Illness, and Addiction	p. 19
The Exacerbation of Personality	p. 45
Leading While Dying	p. 83
Addicted to Power	p. 118
Bordering on Sanity	p. 157
The Twenty-fifth Amendment	p. 197
Presidential Care	p. 219
	p. 243
Notes	p. 263
Bibliography	p. 293
Index	p. 307
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