is not the same as being a great president--that requires that the agenda also be perceived as valuable over time.
An important question is what sort of leadership a president should provide, and the model cited by analysts like George C. Edwards today is that of presidents as facilitators who can get others to go in the direction they want to go anyway rather than as leaders who lead where people otherwise would not go:
A facilitator operating at the margins sounds very much like Neustadt's model of the president as bargainer, a prospect that observers concerned with policy effectiveness, like Sundquist, are likely to view with dismay. Short of an electoral solution, there appears to be little likelihood of overcoming the institutional competition that has characterized end-of-the century governance (Thomas, Pika, and Watson 446).
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