Presidential Leadership, Illness, and Decision Making

Rose McDermott is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor McDermott's main area of research revolves around political psychology in international relations. She is the author of Risk Taking in International Relations: Prospect Theory in American Foreign Policy (1998) and Political Psychology in International Relations (2004). Professor McDermott has held fellowships at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the Women and Public Policy Program, both at Harvard University.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Aging, illness, and addiction; 3. The exacerbation of personality: Woodrow Wilson; 4. Leading while dying: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1943–45; 5. Addicted to power: John F. Kennedy; 6. Richard Nixon: bordering on sanity; 7. 25th Amendment; 8. Presidential care.

“McDermott has written a significant, innovative study that adds greatly to the literature on political psychology and presidential leadership….The chapter on how JF’s use of steroids for treatment of Addison’s disease, and of narcotics and amphetamines, influenced his behavior with Khrushchev during the 1961 Vienna Conference is especially riveting. Finally, the implications of McDermott's analysis are brought to bear on the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, with some final thoughts on presidential care….Essential.” E. C. Dreyer, University of TulsaChoice