Even transformative presidents do not entirely achieve their agendas before leaving office. The preservation and completion of their goals, and correction of any mistakes, generally depend upon the work of a successor who is a true heir apparent, that is, a subsequent president who shares the predecessor’s policy commitments and pledges to build on the legacy bestowed. A perceived heir-apparent president may inherit supporters, but inheriting them comes at a price. Heir apparency “also imposes constraints and deep expectations that may be very hard to meet” (p. 3). The bequeathed supporters may prove fickle, especially if circumstances dictate course corrections, and the successor may suffer by comparison, as is often a follower’s fate. Heir-apparent presidents may be caught between the political need to service and defend the predecessor’s legacy and establishing their own historical footprint.

In this well-written and insightful book, Donald A. Zinman explores the dilemmas of heir-apparent presidents who are closely linked “to their very Herculean predecessors” (p. 11) and, accordingly, face challenges and possibilities quite different from those presented to regime builders, the more remote regime articulators, and regime critics. Zinman defines the heir-apparent presidents as those who succeed transformative presidents. The heirs apparent (and associated regime builders) whom Zinman considers are James Madison (Thomas Jefferson), Martin Van Buren (Andrew Jackson), Ulysses S. Grant (Abraham Lincoln), Harry S. Truman (Franklin D. Roosevelt), and George H. W. Bush (Ronald Reagan). Zinman argues that status as an heir apparent shapes strategic behavior, committing the successor to “three approaches: maintaining continuity, expanding the commitments of the governing regime, and correcting administrative deficiencies and unforeseen consequences from the predecessor’s policies” (p. 16)—and sometimes blending all three.

Zinman shares the premise of Stephen Skowronek that presidencies from different and distant time periods offer lessons for individual and institutional behavior in modern times. He adopts a case-study methodology that leading presidential scholars, such as Richard Neustadt, James David Barber, Fred I. Greenstein, Richard Pious, and Skowronek, among others, have effectively used in their classic works. The book frames its five case studies with an introduction, a conceptual chapter, and a conclusion. Although the promise of continuity furnishes a successful initial strategy for heirs apparent, Zinman finds that the need to mitigate the inevitable political erosion and “to be more than just custodians” drives heirs apparent to “expand commitments” and to “repair flaws in the policies of the governing regime” (p. 154).

The five heirs apparent are not all cut from the same pattern, and generally this diversity enhances Zinman’s contribution. Madison and Van Buren were close political allies of their presidents, and Bush became part of Reagan’s inner circle as his loyal vice president, whereas Truman was peripheral during his short vice presidency. Madison, Van Buren, and Bush were elected to follow their presidents, Truman assumed office upon FDR’s death and was later elected, and Grant was not even Lincoln’s immediate successor but rather was elected following Andrew Johnson’s term after Lincoln’s assassination. Truman left office 20 years after Roosevelt’s presidency began, whereas the Reagan-Bush tenures lasted only 12 years, with the other three spanning 16 years. Zinman plausibly argues that Grant, not Johnson (who was not a Republican and whom Republicans impeached and almost convicted), was Lincoln’s true heir. As such, Grant’s presidency offered opportunities not only to continue, expand, and correct Lincoln’s commitments but also to respond to those of an intervening president unlike the others, thereby somewhat distinguishing the context he confronted.

The case studies usefully show the combination of continuing, expanding, and correcting that the heirs apparent follow. One wonders how differently the regime builders would have acted in the same context. Such an inquiry is, of course, largely conjectural, yet some such consideration might help tease out the different positions of regime builders and heirs apparent. Some heirs apparent, such as Madison, Van Buren, and Bush served while their predecessors were alive, whereas Grant and Truman followed deceased regime builders. Some attention might have been given to efforts to manage the relationship with the predecessor, or his living surrogates.

Zinman’s decision to limit his case studies to presidents who followed regime builders leaves more questions. Although the presidencies of John Adams and William Howard Taft shared “many of the phenomena” of heir-apparent presidencies, Zinman excludes them from his case studies because “neither succeeded a regime builder” (p. 27); Adams operated “in an era that lacked a strong political party structure” (p. 27), and Taft was associated with Republican Progressivism, which modified long-standing Republican regimes.

Yet Adams and Taft, like the five presidents Zinman studies, had been associated with, and served in the shadow of, dominant presidents who are among the greats or near greats. They benefited from the record inherited. The successors were dependent, to a considerable degree, on their predecessors’ supporters. At least some other contextual factors seem consistent with those presented to the successors of the regime builders. One wonders whether the same patterns that Zinman finds in the presidencies of his five heirs apparent would have appeared in case studies of Adams and Taft. Similarly, did Lyndon B. Johnson experience similar constraints and choices following John F. Kennedy’s short presidency? Just as Zinman’s five heirs apparent were constrained by the performance and memories of “their very transformative predecessors” (pp. 155–56), surely Adams, Taft, and Johnson were also restricted. If so, the insights Zinman offers are not limited to those who follow regime builders but have wider applicability. What of Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge?

Indeed, Zinman recognizes in his conclusion that same-party successors, aside from those anomalies who followed a failed or disgraced copartisan, will face some of the constraints and options of the heirs apparent who trail regime builders. He suggests that their presidential success requires “individuality and initiative,” (p. 157), effective communications, skillful defense, seizure of opportunities for bipartisan accomplishment, management of factions within the president’s party, and the setting of an ambitious agenda. Zinman’s insights are quite sensible, but a few additional case studies in addition to those regarding the five presidents who followed regime builders might have reinforced and extended his points without unduly lengthening a text of 162 pages, exclusive of notes, bibliography, and index.

Nonetheless, Zinman’s engaging book demonstrates that presidents operate in different contexts, that where a president lands in political time affects his or her opportunities, and that the relevant constraints and conditions include whether a president follows a transformative, or even a successful, copartisan. History has treated some heirs apparent, such as Madison and Truman, rather well, yet has been more critical of the service of Grant and to some extent Van Buren. Although the author opines that “[p]olitical context and environment matters as much or more than an individual president’s talents and skills” (p. 152), his work suggests that presidential success, at least for heirs apparent and presumably for others, is not simply a function of skill or context alone but a product of the interaction between the two and the strategies that presidents adopt to navigate the time in which they serve. The Heir Apparent Presidency provides a thoughtful discussion of that challenge and draws useful lessons for students, scholars, citizens, and presidents.