What are Fred I. Greenstein’s six qualities of presidential performance and how do recent presidents score?
Executive summary
Fred I. Greenstein devised a six-part framework—communication to the public, organizational capacity, political skill, policy vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence—to evaluate presidential performance, and he applied it systematically from Franklin D. Roosevelt through Bill Clinton (and later editions extend to George W. Bush and Barack Obama) [1] [2] [3]. Existing public summaries and Greenstein’s books identify the six qualities clearly, but detailed, comparable “scores” for recent presidents beyond Clinton are not fully published in the provided material, obliging careful qualifications in any ranking [1] [3].
1. The six qualities Greenstein lays out—what each means
Greenstein’s six qualities function as both job-related skills and personality traits: “communication to the public” gauges a president’s ability to explain goals and shape public opinion; “organizational capacity” measures skill at structuring the White House and executive branch to implement policy; “political skill” captures bargaining, coalition-building and timing; “policy vision” assesses clarity and coherence of goals; “cognitive style” denotes how presidents process information and complexity; and “emotional intelligence” refers to self-control, empathy, and temperament under stress [1] [4] [5].
2. Why these six—Greenstein’s intellectual pedigree
Greenstein framed the six qualities as a corrective to single-dimensional takes on presidential greatness—moving beyond “great man” narratives and toward observable leadership capacities grounded in history and political psychology; his approach builds on and extends the Neustadtian emphasis on persuasion and Barber’s character work, offering a practical checklist for scholars and journalists alike [5] [6].
3. How earlier modern presidents scored in his work (FDR through Clinton)
In his comparative studies, Greenstein applies the six qualities to modern presidents and argues that performance varies by mix—for example, FDR scored high on communication and policy vision, Truman’s strengths and weaknesses differed, and Clinton’s era figures prominently in Greenstein’s overview; Greenstein’s summaries and the Presidential Studies Quarterly article indicate he used the six headings to explain why some presidents succeeded where others did not [1] [7]. Greenstein’s book The Presidential Difference contains the detailed qualitative assessments underlying those judgments [2].
4. What Greenstein (and later editions) say about George W. Bush and Barack Obama
Later editions of Greenstein’s work extended his framework to assess George W. Bush and included a chapter on Barack Obama, meaning Greenstein judged their leadership through his six-part lens; public descriptions of those editions note that Bush was evaluated post-presidency and Obama was assessed in the early years of his administration using the same framework [3]. The provided sources, however, do not include Greenstein’s full chapter-by-chapter scores or line-by-line evaluations for those presidents, so specific comparative grades cannot be asserted from the material at hand [3].
5. What the sources say—and do not say—about Trump and Biden
The supplied reporting and Greenstein summaries do not contain Greenstein’s systematic evaluations of Donald Trump or Joe Biden; while Greenstein’s method is applicable to any modern president, the available sources do not provide Greenstein-produced scores or detailed qualitative judgments of Trump or Biden, and thus any claim that Greenstein ranked them would exceed the evidence provided [2] [3]. Independent scholars and pundits have applied Greenstein-like checklists to recent presidents, but those are not Greenstein’s own published judgments and reflect alternative interpretive agendas [6].
6. Reading the framework critically—strengths, limits, and agendas
Greenstein’s framework is powerful because it combines leadership functions and personality in evaluative terms useful for journalists and historians, yet it is interpretive rather than purely quantitative—scholars debate weightings of the six qualities and whether some (e.g., emotional intelligence) should dominate judgments; the Princeton press and reviews underscore the framework’s influence while cautioning that no single “personality” fits all successful presidents, and that rankings often reflect historians’ biases and the political aims of reviewers [2] [5] [6].