"Finally, with Ivan Eland's Eleven Presidents we have the much-needed book that deals directly with what Gary Gregg calls the 'cult of the presidency'--the obsession with the notion that Presidents can solve all of our problems from the White House by just raising the debt ceiling over and over again. The constant overpromising of Presidents and presidential candidates has enshrined the panacea of government deliverance from all of our problems. Or what William F. Buckley, Jr., in addressing Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, called 'the myth of salvation by brick and mortar.' Eleven Presidents examines the counterpoint to the notion that Presidents can stop the rise of the oceans with the assertion that presidents can return to limited government. Bill Clinton asserted in a State of the Union address that 'the era of big government, as we've known it, is over,' but since then the national debt has gone up by trillions, not merely hundreds of billions, of dollars. Reagan truly believed that the size and scope of the federal government could be scaled back, but then he proceeded to let stand the new Department of Education despite promising to abolish it.

Similarly, George W. Bush promised not to engage in 'nation-building' but then proceeded to enter into one of the nation's most grandiose nation building projects in history with the war in Iraq. The great promise to return to limited government, as Elands demonstrates, has met with little success. Republican presidents far outnumber Democrats in the promise of a return to limited government, but their rhetoric has far outweighed the reality of their accomplishments. This book is sobering and enlightening in showing the gap between the mostly Republican promise of limited government and the seemingly inexorable march toward the Leviathan state. The book is a welcome addition to the literature on the presidency. It reminds the reader of William Howard Taft's words: 'The President cannot make clouds rain or crops grow.' We can add to the list, that presidents, for the most part, seem incapable of scaling back the growth of the federal government and returning to some semblance of constitutional restraint.

" -- Phillip G. H enderson, Professor of Politics, Catholic University of America; author, Managing the Presidency: The Eisenhower Legacy-From Kennedy to Reagan ; editor, The Presidency Then and Now.