Abstract
The US post-presidency has grown in significance as an American political institution in tandem with the rise of the modern presidency. The majority of nineteenth-century presidents faded from national life after completing their tenure. Sometimes this was a result of their age and infirmity. More often, it reflected their limited impact on America’s development in an office that had not acquired the leadership significance of modern times. The post-presidential activities of early twentieth-century presidents Theodore Roosevelt (third-party presidential candidate in 1912), William Taft (Supreme Court Chief Justice 1921–30), and Herbert Hoover (conservative critic of the New Deal) marked something of a transition in the role of former presidents. However, this trio’s continued engagement in national affairs after leaving the White House owed more to personal ambition than to institutional status as former presidents. It was the emergence of the modern presidency in the crucible of economic crisis in the 1930s and global crisis in the 1940s that laid the essential foundations for the development of the modern post-presidency after the Second World War.
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© 2012 Iwan Morgan
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Morgan, I. (2012). After the White House: The Modern US Post-Presidency. In: Theakston, K., de Vries, J. (eds) Former Leaders in Modern Democracies. Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137265319_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137265319_2
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