Whereas polling routinely invites armchair assessments of presidential performance, objectively assessing presidential performance is no easy task, and the difficulties of such assessment over time compound. In Presidential Performance in the Progressive Era, Fred I. Greenstein and Dale Anderson provide a brief, engaging volume applying Greenstein's framework for evaluating presidents relative to “the Progressive Presidents”: William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.

They argue that the Progressive era, in fact, should be considered the start of the modern presidency, casting McKinley as the first modern president. Although the start of the modern presidency has always been the subject of some debate, Greenstein and Anderson, in this book, place its beginning substantially earlier than Franklin D. Roosevelt, a frequently used dividing line appearing in one of Greenstein's prior works, Leadership in the Modern Presidency. This characterization of McKinley as the first modern president rests on significant developments in the role of the United States on the world stage as well as substantial expansions in media relations and public leadership that emerged during this presidency.

Chapter 1 outlines the approach used throughout the book. For those who may not have read Greenstein's se