Commander in Chief

Geoffrey Perret talked about his book, Commander in Chief: How Truman, Johnson, and Bush Turned a Presidential Power Into a Threat to America’s Future, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In his book Geoffrey Perret, a presidential and military historian, looks at the expansion of the executive privilege incurred in the presidencies of Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and George W. Bush. Mr. Perret said that each president misread the need to have a strong executive branch and this led to what the author called unwinnable wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. He talked about each president individually and about the advisers with whom he surrounded himself. close