Richard Nixon considered establishing a strong peacetime economy 
one of his most important political objectives. Using Richard E. 
Neustadt's analytical framework of presidential power, Nigel Bowles 
develops five case studies around President Nixon's economic 
policies. Bowles's insightful analysis helps us understand the 
sources of Nixon's authority and power, as well as his use of both.

    For each of the cases, Bowles considers the president's 
bargaining advantages: his constitutional and statutory authority, 
presidential reputation, popular prestige, and personal qualities. He 
then answers Neustadt's twin questions: "What was the president's 
inheritance?" and "What was his legacy?"

    The cases Bowles has chosen represent fiscal policy, wage and 
price policy, international monetary policy, and domestic monetary 
policy. Through these analyses, Bowles offers new perspectives on 
Nixon's use of authority and power; his dealings with and views of 
senior politicians and power-brokers; his ruthlessness and political 
ingenuity; the ways his experiences as congressman, senator, and 
vice president shaped his approach to the presidency; and his 
subordination of other objectives to his drive for re-election in 1972.

    Nixon's Business is the first book to make systematic use of 
Neustadt's crucial framework in understanding a specific 
presidency. It is also the first to analyze empirically the components 
of Nixon's authority and power and the first to demonstrate the 
implications of both for understanding the institution of the United 
States Presidency.

_________________________________________________________

NIGEL BOWLES is Balfour Fellow in Politics and Director of 
Rothermere American Institute, Oxford University. He is the author of 
The White House and Capitol Hill and The Government and Politics of 
the United States.


The Presidency and Leadership, A Joseph V. Hughes, Jr., and
Holly O. Hughes Book


What people are saying about this book

"Assessments and reassessments of Richard Nixon as man, as 
politician, and president are legion, so it is a remarkable achievement 
on the part of Oxford University's Nigel Bowles to have come up with a 
precise, subtle and utterly original take on an important and largely 
ignored aspect of Nixon's performance in the  White House: his 
economic policy. . . . He looks at it, not through Nixon's eyes, as he 
puts it, but from where Nixon sat. With a grip on the sources of many 
kinds that is evidence of massive and shrewd scholarly effort, he 
illustrates the sheer intelligence of Nixon's use of his political and 
institutional resources."—Godfrey  Hodgson, Oxford University

". . . a significant contribution to scholarship on the Nixon period and 
on the presidency more generally."—M. Stephen Weatherford, University 
of California–Santa Barbara

"Nixon's Business is an intellectual gem . . ."—Fred. I. Greenstein, 
Professor of Politics Emeritus, Princeton University

"Nigel Bowles makes a major contribution to the emergence at long last 
of a true scholarly literature focused on presidential power."—Nelson W. 
Polsby, Heller Professor of Political Science, University of California–
Berkeley