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An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy |  | Author: Betty Glad
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Seller: spectrumbooks
Rating:  3 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 398
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 0801448158
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.926092
EAN: 9780801448157
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Product Description
Jimmy Carter entered the White House with a desire for a collegial staff that would aid his foreign-policy decision making. He wound up with a "team of rivals" who contended for influence and who fought over his every move regarding relations with the USSR, the Peoples' Republic of China, arms control, and other crucial foreign-policy issues. In two areas-the Camp David Accords and the return of the Canal to Panama-Carter's successes were attributable to his particular political skills and the assistance of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and other professional diplomats. The ultimate victor in the other battles was Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a motivated tactician. Carter, the outsider who had sought to change the political culture of the executive office, found himself dependent on the very insiders of the political and diplomatic establishment against whom he had campaigned Based on recently declassified documents in the Carter Library, materials not previously noted in the Vance papers, and a wide variety of interviews, Betty Glad's An Outsider in the White House is a rich and nuanced depiction of the relationship between policy and character. It is also a poignant history of damaged ideals. Carter's absolute commitment to human rights foundered on what were seen as national security interests. New data from the archives reveal how Carter's government sought the aid of Pope John Paul II to undercut the human-rights efforts of the El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. A moralistic approach toward the Soviet Union undermined Carter's early desire to reduce East-West conflicts and cut nuclear arms. As a result, by 1980 the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) was in limbo, and a nuclear counterforce doctrine had been adopted. Near the end of Carter's single term in office Vance stepped down as secretary of state, in part because Brzezinski's "muscular diplomacy" had come to dominate Carter's foreign policy. When Vance's successor, Edmund Muskie, took over, the State Department was reduced to implementing policies made by Brzezinski and his allies. For Carter, the rivalry for influence in the White House was concluded and the results, as Glad shows, were a mixed record and an uncertain presidential legacy.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Sophisticated Account of Carter FP, Perfect Book for My Class May 24, 2010
Xi Chen (Columbia, SC USA)
Professor Glad's book provides a nuanced and balanced account of the dynamics, relationships, and struggles that are involved in the inner circle of American foreign policy making during the Carter years. I am using this book as text book for the class that I teach. It is a course about the two level game between domestic politics and international negotiations. On the domestic level, my class is organized around the roles of the President, Vice President, National Security Advisor (NSA), and Secretary of State. This book provides detailed information on the roles that the above listed players have on foreign policy decision making. The cases studies are quite illuminating. I found it especially revealing in the case of "the Tilt towards China", how the NSA played the role of a motivated tactician and gradually gained his influence on the President over the Secretary of State.
The book is a perfect fit for my class. After all the other readings that provide theoretical argument of foreign policy decision making, the students can have a better grasp of applying theory to actual cases that are included in Professor Glad's work.
Scholars Who You Read Anything You Can Get That They've Written June 22, 2010
Melchiore Laucella
Betty Glad is one of those scholars in which you read anything you can get your hands on that she has written. As with her previous work, in An Outsider in the White House, Glad continues to provide the reader with a sophisticated analysis of important political figures. She offers keen insights into the political character and performance of key actors involved the Carter foreign policy process, notably that of the President, his Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. As with her psychobiography of President Jimmy Carter entitled Jimmy Carter : In Search of The Great White House, Glad again captures the complexity of Carter's foreign policy thinking and the dynamics of his leadership style. She offers profound insights into his decisionmaking and advisory relations, which remain applicable to contemporary times.
I have used this book in my political psychology class at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University where the students are asked to apply psychological theories to the character and performance of the individual actors as well as the group as a whole. (One student continuously discussed the book with me after class sessions). Students admire the amount of thorough research and comprehensive analysis that emerges from this first-rate work. Glad's comprehensive appraisal is superb and is illustrated in her ongoing account of the ascendency of National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's dominant role as foreign policy advisor within Carter's inner circle at the expense of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance who initially served as the president's more influential confidant. Finally, Glad's account of Carter's management of foreign policy, which was conducted largely through diplomacy and negotiation, can offer today's decisionmakers "lessons from history" as they weigh whether to follow such a cautious diplomatic approach against the hasty use of force in their navigation through this post- Cold War/post-9/11 world.
 What makes a good president? December 31, 2009
Jessica R. Porter
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
What makes a good president? What makes a great president? Who influences the president? How does the president work with congress? These are questions that arise every day when we watch President Obama work with congress to improve health care or to confront the dangers of the radicalized Middle East. Betty Glad is the perfect guide to power and influence in the White House. Glad gives a real insider's view of how power and influence played their parts in major decisions and initiatives in the Carter White House.
The book isn't light reading. Glad challenges her readers and expects them to pay attention as she sets the stage and presents the major players in the SALT talks, turning over of the Panama Canal, normalization of relations with China, and Carter's push for human rights around the globe. An appendix provides a quick review section of the "actors" involved in each challenge or initiative the Carter administration faced so that by the end of the book, I felt that I recognized key administration officials like Richard Holbrooke, Cyrus Vance, or Zbigniew Brzezinski when they would walk into a meeting.
Carter was the first president I voted for. I remember how my initial idealism turned into frustration - Why was a man as good as Carter and as smart as Carter running into so many road blocks? Glad's book has given me a framework with which to look at Carter and the many accomplishments of his presidency that is a bit more nuanced than the good guys/ bad guys framework I had in 1977. Let's see if I can give up some of the hero worship and use Glad's more balanced framework to follow the actors, the challenges, and the initiatives that will make up the Obama presidency.
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