“Do presidents matter for America’s economic performance?” (2) is the simple question that Mark Zachary Taylor, professor of political science at Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy, aims to answer in his case study of the Gilded Age presidency. In the opening chapter, Taylor employs quantitative analysis of various macroeconomic indicators to assess the trajectory of American economic development during the Gilded Age. The author then examines the Gilded Age presidents to evaluate whether and how their actions in office influenced these outcomes. Taylor guides readers from Grant to McKinley, dedicating one chapter to each presidential term. He provides comprehensive overviews of each president’s background, with particular attention to their formal education, especially in economics, before detailing their rise to the presidency, their economic policies, and their impact on American development. Reflecting the economic priorities of the era, monetary and tariff policy feature prominently. As one might expect from such an overarching study, this book contains little original source work but instead synthesizes the existing scholarship, which Taylor has thoroughly reviewed.
Four additional overview chapters contextualize these presidential case studies in the broader economic development of the United States during the late nineteenth century. Saturated with extensive statistical data, these chapters recount the rapid expansion of industrial capitalism, particularly in the American North and Northwest, while also highlighting significant advancements in export-oriented agriculture, technological innovations, and the growing prominence of economics as an academic discipline. Taylor is particularly sensitive to the extreme volatility of the Gilded Age economy, documenting the well-known Panics of 1873 and 1893, as well as lesser-known yet significant downturns, such as the “Smoldering Depression” of the early 1880s and the recession of 1887–1888.
Ultimately, Taylor presents four key findings. First, he highlights the frequency and significance of recurring economic crises and their importance for Gilded Age presidents’ economic policies. Second, he emphasizes the role of presidential vision – how presidents interpreted and exercised their authority – in shaping their economic impact. Third, he finds that skilled coalition builders were more successful at persuading Congress to pass the legislation they favored. Fourth, Taylor argues convincingly that a president’s ability to gain and maintain the public’s trust, broadly understood as the general public’s confidence in a leader’s capacity to solve a crisis, mattered more for economic performance than his previous economic experience, his technical understanding of macroeconomics, or even the nature of specific policies.
Taylor’s presidential chapters read as case studies of individual presidents’ economic impact and contain numerous interesting observations that cannot all be summarized here. To give just two examples, Taylor’s rectification of Garfield, whose resolute refinancing of the federal debt had a significant impact despite his short term in office, and his interpretation of Harrison, whose demonstrative commitment to an active economic policy may have delayed the onset of the Panic of 1893, are insightful and offer ample impulses for further research.
Taylor is refreshingly frank about his research objective and the political science methodology that informs his approach. His emphasis on individual historical actors, his serious consideration of their agency, and his general openness to discussing historical events in their often complex and ambiguous messiness – unusual in political science – make his work accessible to historians and offer significant potential for interdisciplinary dialogue. Nevertheless, many historians will disagree with some of his basic methodological premises. For example, his belief in the “relative objectivity” of historical statistics (10–11), as well as his general aim not “to advance any particular political, economic, or theoretical agenda” by letting “the economic data do the talking” or letting “the historical evidence speak for itself” (viii–ix) are overly optimistic and – especially to a German historian’s ear – sound suspiciously like the naivety of nineteenth-century Rankean historicism.
In addition, Taylor’s rather uncritical application of transtemporal research categories such as “presidential leadership,” “trust,” or “vision,” and his overt aim to deduce general “lessons for presidential leadership,” are likely to be met with skepticism by historians (154). Taylor explicitly argues “that successful leadership in all times may come down to the vital importance of vision, action, coalitions, and trust-building” (356). However, beyond a superficial discussion of the allegedly “very similar political and economic conditions” under which presidents of the Gilded Age and the twenty-first century operated, Taylor assumes rather than explains how such far-reaching inferences can be justified (9). Understandably, concerns about presentism, teleology, and anachronism may not be as central to political scientists as they are to historians. Still, a more thorough discussion of shifting presidential powers and the evolving meaning and discursively constructed – and thus historically contingent nature of terms like “leadership” – would have helped Taylor in defending such far-reaching claims.
Taylor is also overly insistent on the novelty of his account in disproving the common perception of Gilded Age presidents as largely insignificant and ineffective political players. The theme of disproving this perception is introduced in the opening pages, recurs throughout the book, and is stressed again in the final chapter. Given that Taylor’s analysis mostly builds on historiography that has already moved beyond the cliché of the inconsequential “bearded presidents” (as Taylor also acknowledges in a corresponding note), his repeated emphasis on the novelty of his challenge to it seems somewhat misplaced (383n3). The book also contains some spelling errors that could have easily been resolved in a more thorough copyediting process.
Overall, Taylor’s ambitious book represents a valuable addition to the existing literature. It is a skillful synthesis of prior studies on individual Gilded Age presidents and their economic policies into a dense, insightful, and very readable overview. Historians of the Gilded Age will find it to be a valuable reference work. Most notably, Taylor deserves praise for producing a book that transcends conventional disciplinary boundaries. Beyond its insights into individual presidents, their economic policies, and the Gilded Age presidency in general, Crisis Managers in Chief might also encourage both political scientists and historians to reconsider their own established methods and perspectives. This book is a significant achievement.
