PREFACES To the First Edition

This book is a revised version of six lectures given on the Charles R. Walgreen Foundation at the University of Chicago April 23-May 1956. I am grateful to the officers of the Foundation for giving me this opportunity to rethink the thoughts of fifteen years on the Presidency. I am also grateful to James M. Bums, Edward S. Corwin, Arch Dotson, Richard P. Longaker, Alexander J. Morin, Richard E. Neustadt, J. Francis Paschal, John P. Roche, and most of all Mary Crane Rossiter for their help and advice.

March. 1956

To the Second Edition

This book is a revised version of the revised lectures of 1956. In addition to strewing second thoughts all through these pages have tried to bring fresh materials drawn largely from the conduct of the Presidency in the past four years into chapters 1, 2, 4, and 8. I have added new passages on such topics as the process of impeachment and the President s responsibility in the broad field of science and two new chapters on the currently agitated questions.