Where Power Stops: The Making and Unmaking of Presidents and Prime Ministers

by David Runciman

Lyndon Baines Johnson, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, Theresa May, and Donald each had different motivations, methods, and paths, but they all sought the highest office. And yet when they reached their goal, they often found that the power they had imagined was illusory. Their sweeping visions of reform faltered. They faced bureaucratic obstructions, but often the biggest obstruction was their own character.

However, their personalities could help them as much as hurt them. Arguably the most successful of them, LBJ showed little indication that he supported what he is best known for - the Civil Rights Act - but his grit, resolve, and brute political skill saw him bend Congress to his will.

David Runciman tackles the limitations of high office and how the personal histories of those who achieved the very pinnacles of power helped to define their successes and failures in office. These portraits show what characters are most effective in these offices. Could this be a blueprint for good and effective leadership in an age lacking good leaders?

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Essays, Biography

240 pages, Paperback

Published March 26, 2020

About the author

David Runciman teaches politics at Cambridge.

He writes regularly about politics and current affairs for a wide range of publications including the London Review of Books. The author of several books, he also hosted the widely-acclaimed podcast Talking Politics, along with the series ‘History of Ideas’. Past Present Future* is his new weekly podcast, where he is exploring the history of ideas from politics to philosophy, culture to technology.

*Ideas from the past, questions about the present, shaping the future.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended if you know what to expect* and like the sound of it. This is a revised collection of David Runciman's essays on US and UK political leaders, each originally published in the LRB. The theme supposed to tie them together is Runciman's contention that, rather than political office revealing the 'true' character of a leader, in fact the leader offers us an opportunity to probe the nature and limits of the office. Honestly, I'm not convinced that this amounts to much more than a convenient way to package and present these essays as a book. But the style is smooth and gently entertaining, and there are enough nuggets of what feels like insight, to make this an enjoyable and possibly worthwhile read.

(I say 'read', but in fact I listened to the audiobook, which is narrated unsurprisingly well (though slowly; I would probably have been annoyed if I had to listen to it at 1x speed) by Runciman himself. This episode of the Talking Politics podcast gives a good idea of what listening to the audiobook is like: https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.co...)

Not recommended if you're looking for something meaty, or if you're allergic to anything resembling 'horse-race' and/or personality-based political coverage. Policy questions are sidenotes here, used only to illustrate points about the character of a leader, their political triumphs and missteps, or the constraints and potentials of their office. And Runciman isn't entirely above the occasional authoritative but ill-supported and arguably facile pronouncement. I may have found this annoying if I weren't more or less in his target audience, i.e. milquetoast left-liberal with intellectual pretensions but a taste for comforting certainties. (I think I'm giving the wrong impression at this point; it's not an especially ideological or partisan book, and Runciman is both wryly sceptical and capable of generosity when talking about politicians of any persuasion.)

*I actually didn't know that this was an essay collection until it came up in the afterword, but I did have my suspicions along the way. Some of the chapters feel very much like LRB-style book reviews.

[laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have rated this a 4 or maybe a 5 if not for the book's title and foreword, which seemed to promise a cohesive account of the limits of leadership. Runciman's story was an ambitious one: that lesdership does not reveal the character of the leader, but it is the character of the leader that pulls back the curtain on the realities of the institution of the presidency or premiership.

But it turned out, that promise was not followed through by the book itself. I'm getting this a lot in non-fiction lately. A common problem?

This was a collection of unrelated essays. These essays were not well (or at all, in some cases) linked to the promised thesis, and even went some way towards disproving it. The analyses of Clinton, Obama and Blair, especially, seemed implicitly based on the idea that the institution of leadership reveals more about the personality that occupies it.

Maybe I am just like Blair, looking for a master theory to neatly explain all the murk. But that is exactly what Runciman foreshadowed, and exactly what he failed to evidence in the following chapters.

I also lost of a bit of respect for Runciman for the shades of sexism in this book. He's a great commentator, and I've not picked such things up from him in his other writings or podcasts, but they are present here. His discussion of Margaret Thatcher, much as i dislike her, and Monica Lewinsky were incredibly gendered and at times misogynistic. This was remarkably un-self-aware for such a learned guy.

Disappointed, overall.

[Alex Wilkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Runciman's thesis, adapted from an observation of Robert Caro's about Lyndon Johnson (that power reveals the character of the person holding office), is that the character of a politician reveals the limits of a polictial office, as a 'barium dye, passing through the corridors of power and illuminating the hidden pasages and concealed blockages that would otherwise be almost impossible for an outsider to detect.'

He stretches this analogy throughout ten collected essays: first establishing the character of the politician, then situating them within the political climate of the time, then showing the limits of that office and how the obstacles were, or were not, circumvented.

It's an appealing idea, to analyse ex post facto a political era and shine a light on the inadequacies of the political systems, and Runciman does draw out some interesting conclusions (over a stunningly wide range of eras and geographical scale), but there is always a gnawing feeling that the essays were written without thought of this overarching idea.

Even the introduction, which flits between highlighting different morality tales (the political imposter that sees behind the curtain and realises there is not as much power as imagined; the politico that spends too much behind the curtain and forgets that the public is watching; the leader who rails against the institutions in a blind range at the lack of power; the politician turned war hawk, that relies on foreign interference to create action), to then saying that this book is not about morality tales, seems confused.

Each essay as it stands alone contains nuggets of truth, and Runciman writes well (if a little verbose). But they feel more like pointers to go and explore those political figures themselves. Like Caro's analysis of LBJ? Then go read it! Like Ben Rhodes' analysis of Obama's presidency? Then go read that! The lack of an overarching theme means there is often no incentive to try and draw inferences between Runciman's essays, and even when inferences are crowbarred in, as in the introduction, they feel flimsy.

Where Power Stops is rich in historical detail, and Runciman's views are succintly and, sometimes, eloquently expressed, but it doesn't feel like the sort of book you will learn much from - there are too many conclusions, and too few solid themes.

One point that Runciman raises at the end of his introduction, that he surely could not have known as he wrote the essays over a number of years, is that the question now is not 'where power stops,' but what the balance is of power between the public and the instutions that govern. We live in an age of populism, and the calculus of what a leader needs to do has shifted unimaginably from ten years ago, let alone the 1960s in which LBJ was operating. That isn't a mark against the book, but it makes it a different sort of artefact - it's less of a guidebook to the current political situation, and more of a trip through history, to a time and a place that exists no longer.

[Gabriel Stein · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing

This could have been an interesting book. It isn’t and the main reasons are because 1) it is very superficial in its portraits; and 2) the author’s prejudice/views are obvious on almost every page. Don’t bother.

[Neil Spark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Readers will gain an insight and understanding of modern western political leadership from this collection of profiles. They include former US presidents Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama and UK prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.

Runciman argues these profiles tell us more about the office the subjects held rather than the subjects themselves.

Lyndon Johnson was the consummate – though conviction-free – politician. Robert Caro has written a seminal – and many would say consummate – biographical series of Johnson, still to be completed. Caro argues the higher Johnson rose in political office, the more we “get to see the person behind the political mask”. Caro agrees power corrupts but it also “reveals”. Runciman has the opposite view: the presidency didn’t reveal truths about Johnson but he revealed truths about the presidency.

“The person who arrives at the summit of politics is recognisably the same as the person who comes down from it,” Runciman writes. “Who they really are is set well in advance. What changes are the circumstances in which they find themselves and their expectation of what can be done while they are there.”

These profiles are eye-openers. To be human is to be flawed and political leaders’ flaws are more profound. Runciman includes a chapter on those who didn’t make it which includes US Democratic Party presidential hopeful John Edwards

These profiles were originally published in the London Review of Books and have been updated and changed for the book.

[Mai Lene · Rating 3 out of 5]

The topic of Runciman’s book is a classical structure/agency debate: Do our surroundings shape us or do we shape our surroundings? Runciman’s message is that agency shapes structure. The person having a position defines the position and reveals the power that comes with is.

It is an interesting argument, and I am inclined to disagree and say that the structure also shapes the agency. It is more like a circle than a one-way “relationship”.

However, it is not the slight disagreement that makes me give the book three star and only a lukewarm review. The problem is that the argument is not a red thread in this book. It is rarely mentioned after the introduction. The book seems more like an excuse to republish LRB essays summing up biographies about American and British leaders.

The book is very well-written, and as a person who is over average interested in politics I enjoy reading about presidents and prime ministers and how they have handled being in office. But there is not much more to it than that: an overview of presidents and prime ministers from LBJ to Trump, and that is a bit disappointing.

[Jakub Dovcik · Rating 3 out of 5]

First a disclaimer: I work for the subject of two of the chapters and have been working in the broader area of translating politics into policy for a couple of years now. So I am definitely biased in many respects.

I was hoping - based on the introduction and description - that this book would be a detailed study of the limits of executive authority and how inadequate most institutions at the centres of government are for the tasks they ought to be performing.

Unfortunately, this is a semi-psychological analysis -albeit an interesting, well-written and enjoyable one - of some great biographies of a number of political leaders. I have read a number of those books and for some, like Runciman’s analysis of Caro’s books on LBJ, it was relatively predictable and uninsightful (not to say that I did not enjoy it, always love a good study on the political genius of LBJ). For others, like the studies on Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton or Theresa May, I learned a lot. A study on John Edwards was an interesting curiosity.

Runciman’s shtick is essentially that politics is a very different area of life than anything else (which at times feels like a watered-down version of Carl Schmitt’s concept of the political), which is often misunderstood, even by leaders themselves and is inherently about the allocation and the use of power. This is all good and well, but for the most part, he focuses too much on the personalities and individual attributes of the leaders he studies and very little on the actual structure - institutional or personal - of how they were trying to accomplish something. There is actually almost nothing on the policy side of these leaders’ agendas and Runciman generally does not seem too interested in evaluating it himself.

There are a number of points he seems to be trying to get across - leadership is not just about single-minded focus on one thing because then leaders get too obsessed about it but they also cannot be or seem to be as aloof as Obama was. Everyone is worried about scandals, but few handle them well and most importantly, getting to the top and accomplishing something is mostly about outlasting the other contenders for the job. Interesting points within the contexts of the studies.

There are some really fascinating bits - like how little Clinton mentioned George Stephanopoulos in his own memoirs (sad to hear, as I am a fan of Stephanopoulos’ All Too Human), how much he saw politics as a game, or how utterly pragmatic was Margaret Thatcher about ideas and ideologies (and how weak she was against James Callaghan before the Winter of Discontent).

But finally, his analysis of Tony Blair is extremely limited by this exact normative understanding of political trade (with the usual bit that he focused on foreign policy because in domestic terms he could not work around Brown, which contradicts all his work on public service reform from the Delivery Unit, which Runciman takes another chapter to critique as an approach, in a rather cynical way). If one ever speaks to or interacts with Blair, one always gets a sense that he is deeply interested in how the world would look differently if his policy ideas were implemented - in that sense Runciman’s arguments that Tony needs to ‘grip’ things and finds connections are correct and quite insightful, but the narrative gives an impression of him caring more about the power struggles getting there rather than the concepts of his policy programme. Tony Blair, more than any politician I have experienced (although have never met Bill Clinton) thinks about what to do with power - because that is the essence of governing.

But Runciman is not interested in that. His focus is on the traits that make these leaders ‘successful’ - even though we do not read much about what that actually means besides accomplishing something specific he picks, like passing the Civil Rights Act or getting Brexit done. Success is some kind of political accomplishment, even without looking at what it means. But that is not what government is all about and Runciman’s seeming disregard for the actual effects of policies on individual people at the expense of playing, or should I rather say, talking politics, is short-sighted.

Yes, it is interesting to read about how Gordon Brown was looking for his ‘bands of brothers’, yes it is interesting to understand the personalities of Thatcher and May and how they shaped their approaches to politics within their parties. But that does not answer the exam question from the title or from what the book sets to explain in the beginning.

[Jon Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

The fairly random nature of modern leaders of the US and UK chosen here can be explained by what the theme promised by the title conceals: it’s a collection of political book reviews, covering the majestic sweep of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon B Johnson to cash in biographies of Theresa May and Bob Woodward’s office gossip account of Trump’s first year in office. Although these have been revised since, it does sometimes feel like Runciman is stretching to fit some of these to his theme, and particularly when he tries to refute Caro’s ably demonstrated four volume proof that power is revealing of character.

Instead, Runciman pursues his own counter-theory: that the exercise of power tells us something about the office. It’s an entirely reasonable position to take, and that he covers Blair, Brown and May plus Obama and Trump here enables him to build a convincing thesis. The trouble is that the nature of biography works against him: power does reveal what motivates people and their reasons for going into office. It may already be there in their natures and evident, but equally his May article is probably the finest piece here (with only the first Blair piece coming close): it’s deeply revealing of how her personality, virtues and limitations fed into the mess of Brexit becoming intractable. The ghosts of Cameron and Osborne haunt that piece: it’s a shame that there’s no piece to fill the sizeable gap of the early 2010s (and equally that there’s nothing on, say, Dead Certain to fill the yawning gap on George W Bush’s presidency).

Indeed the one piece not on an office holder feels badly out of place. Where everything else is concerned with great office, the piece on John Edwards feels lesser: even at the time of publication he was barely an afterthought in the 2008 campaign. It’s an example of how the madness of loyalty can engulf staffers but it’s nothing that isn’t covered by the Obama or Trump chapters.

In the end it’s most valuable as a counterpoint to Caro, an amendment to a theory rather than a refutation: it’s a thoughtful but necessarily slight piece on a subject which feels like it deserves a more substantial work.

[Joseph Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

What goods things I'd heard about David Runciman. How intellectually impoverished I now find out he is. This book does, admittedly, have an interesting theme: that individual leaders illuminate the limits of the offices they hold. And yet the whole of the book focusses on the individuals, not the office. This crystallised for me towards the end of the book, when Runciman claims Theresa May's failure to secure the passage of her Brexit deal illuminates the limits of prime ministerial power. And yet, in the very same paragraph, he goes on to recount the story of how Boris Johnson - in an even more difficult position than May, having lost his parliamentary majority - went on to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement and win the Tories their greatest majority since 1987. If anything, this shows not the limits of the office, but the extent to which the personality of the individual shapes the prime ministership. So Robert Caro, whom Runciman sets out to disprove, is right: power does, in fact, reveal. In May's case, it revealed her unsuitability to be prime minister; and in Johnson's, the effectiveness of his blustering style in the context of a hung Parliament. Barring the fact that he inadvertently disproves his own argument, too, it is painfully obvious that Runciman's book was never planned to be, well, a book. It's just a collection of essays that he's tried retrospectively to lend some coherence to via the theme of power revealing the limits of the office. Indeed, the individual essays, though readable, are hardly earth-shattering. They give a fairly superficial account of the presidencies and premierships of American and British leaders ranging all the way from Lyndon Johnson to David Cameron, and beyond. If you know anything much about politics, you're unlikely to find much that is useful here. So, in sum, I'm disappointed: Runciman is one of the most overrated academics I know of.

[Richard Parfitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good, interesting and engaging book, but it doesn't fully deliver on what is promised.

I read this book having enjoyed Runciman's podcast Talking Politics for some time, and the ability he demonstrates in the podcast to step back, get away from the immediacy of partisan politics, and assess matters with a longer term perspective are evident throughout Where Power Stops.

Runciman starts with Lyndon B Johnson and works his way through most (not all) of the American Presidents and British Prime Ministers since. Setting up the essays to follow, Runciman states his intention to assess how politicians deal with the limits of their power. In particular, he talks about the manifest sense of destiny that Heads of Government bring with them and how that rubs up against the checks, balances, and frustrations of actual government.

The chapters on Lyndon Johnson and Tony Blair, in many ways, are the most interesting. Runciman's assessment of the failures in Blair's personality that limited his achievements, particularly his tentativeness with Gordon Brown, are interesting (if, at times, assertive). Likewise his scepticism about the effectiveness of Blair's delivery units.

The issue with the book is that the assessment of power's limits (where power stops) never really happens. In practice, this book is primarily a critique of political memoir, its conventions and its dishonesty. Runciman expends a great deal of energy analysing Presidential and Prime Ministerial memoirs, discounting the specifics of anecdotes and railing against the defensiveness of authors. What he doesn't do particularly is assess what they achieved in office. The result is that the book feels at times rather cynical. No Prime Minister or President gets a particularly positive review. Gordon Brown is afforded a few positive words, but for the most part this book considers every one of its subjects to be deluded, ineffective, and failed.

[Roland Glotzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book which is essentially a sequence of essays about US Presidents (from Lyndon Johnson to Donald Trump)and British Prime Ministers (from Margaret Thatcher to Theresa May) and one contender for the US Presidency John Edwards who was not successful. It shows politics and the limits of power even as leader of a country to get things done which are as much the result of intellect, leadership and personality. It reads more as performance appraisals of the incumbents than biographies and is insightful in that respect. The book which was written before the 2020 US elections was also prescient in anticipating that if the results hinged on a few swing states that it was likely that Trump with his disregard for democracy was probably going to challenge it.

[Leo Berenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where Power Stops: The Making and Unmaking of Presidents and Prime Ministers is a very compelling look into the personalities of political leaders and those who surround them. Using a variety of accounts (ranging from complimentary to ones that could be charitably described as “hatchet jobs”) of leaders from both the US and UK, David Runciman explores what has driven some of the most influential political leaders of the modern era to success and, ultimately, to failure. The book does an excellent job of pulling from many different sources to paint a picture of how politicians like Margaret Thatcher or Bill Clinton think, and by the end of the book’s extremely short length I felt I understood each leader in a new way. If you’re looking for a light read that will provide some interesting context to the decisions of major political figures (even if said context most likely won’t change what you think about them), I’d definitely recommend Where Power Stops.

Rating: 4.5/5

[Stephen King · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of essays which were originally published in the London Review of Books by David Runciman. These are well drawn portraits of US and U.K. leaders and the personality traits which directed their time in office and which made them successful and which also ultimately were their downfall. From LBJ to Trump and covering Blair, Brown and Cameron and May, these bring fresh insights to their time in office.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting series of political vignettes, first published as essays in the LRB. Runciman's overarching argument, that politicians' personalities do not change in office but rather illuminate the character of that office, is interesting but hardly sufficient to tie the book together. Overall this works better when the pretense of a book is removed and it is seen for what it is: a series of interesting essays.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong series of essays that posit that individual prime ministers and presidents shape their surroundings through their character and sheer force of will and that the personal convictions and actions of each figure analysed determine the power they are able to wield. Fascinating (and highly debatable) is the argument that Runciman puts forth that the characteristics that drive these individuals to power are also the reason they run out of it.

[Ciara McCombe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great in-depth analysis of influential prime ministers in Britain as well as presidents in America which makes this an excellent read for students of Politics.
Although frustrating at times to see male PMs being taken as individuals and the over genderisation of Margaret Thatcher resulting in some pretty poor analysis of her at times.

[Ben King-Beck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely entertaining with the quite a few interesting insights on power, though it often felt a bit breezy and forgettable.

Though I'm definitely glad I read this one rather than any of the books he reviews

[Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Runciman, a clear member of the British elite, is extremely good at getting into the minds of the people a few rungs up from him who literally run the country.

[Jamie Barker · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent analysis about how power is shaped by those who hold it and not the other way around.

[Owen McArdle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a huge amount of overall narrative from.profile to profile but an interesting overview of each of the politicians named and the way they used power.

[Russell Chee · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's okay, I enjoy Runciman's style of writing very much but it does feel a little sectional; it sets out a grand thesis at the beginning and then very rarely sticks to it. I also thought that the author was clearly more comfortable in discussing British leaders than elsewhere, and it did feel a little gendered at times.

[Colin Maclennan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of essays first published in the London Review of Books.

[Sahil Handa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious, insightful.