Michael Genovese, 8/28/07
Title:
Political Science Professor Sends ‘Memo to a New President’
Header:
Professor Michael A. Genovese’s latest book is paradoxically intended for a mass readership and, at the same time, for the absolute smallest of markets.
Feature:
Michael A. Genovese, a political science professor and the director of LMU's Institute for Leadership Studies, has written 17 books.
Some of the previous 16 were relatively esoteric political science tomes aimed at a more wonkish audience, Genovese says.
But his latest title, "Memo to a New President: The Art and Science of Presidential Leadership," published last March, is paradoxically intended for a mass readership and, at the same time, for the absolute smallest of markets.
"This is written for a much larger audience," Genovese says. "Or, conversely, it's written for an audience of one."
The larger group includes any reader interested in universal lessons such a how to deal with anger, cope with and correct mistakes, process information, use emotions, deal with failure, and, more generally, how to lead.
For that much smaller audience – a President-elect of the United States – this non-partisan book weaves together interdisciplinary modern and ancient case studies culled from fields of history, philosophy, political science and more.
"It's a compilation of all the lessons I've learned after 26 years of teaching the presidency, of writing about the presidency, of speaking and consulting," says Genovese, who holds the Loyola Chair of Leadership Studies. "This is both the wisdom that I've accumulated, plus the wisdom of the ages as applied to the presidency."
Along those lines, the likes of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton; Plato and Aristotle; Machiavelli and Herodotus; and so many others; show up in "Memo."
Genovese says he conceived the idea for writing the book following the previous presidential election, when with George W. Bush's re-election, the course of the Iraq invasion became clearer.
So Genovese pondered: "Is there a way for me, in a shorter, more concise form, to tell a future president, 'You've got to think this through. You've got to use this kind of judgment’?"
The answer, the professor determined, was similar to the question he'd been posing to students as a final exam question. "I asked the class, 'If you could spend one hour with the president, what would you tell him?' Genovese says. "And then I thought, 'Well, gee, if I could spend one hour with the president, what would I tell him?'"