George C. Edwards III

George C. Edwards III is the University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies Emeritus at Texas A&M University. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Oxford. A leading scholar of the presidency, he has written or edited twenty-seven books on American politics. He is also editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly and general editor of the Oxford Handbook of American Politics series. His most recent books are Predicting the Presidency: The Path to Successful Leadership, Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America and Changing Their Minds? Donald Trump and Presidential Leadership.

Edwards's principal focus has been the American presidency. This work has focused on several themes. First, He pioneered the quantitative study of the presidency with Presidential Influence in Congress, the first quantitative study of the presidency. He has edited three volumes on theory and methods of researching the presidency: The Oxford Handbook of the American Presidency, Researching the Presidency; and Studying the Presidency.

His second focus has been presidential leadership in Congress. He has written that presidents are highly dependent on the strategic position in which they find themselves and can only influence Congress at the margins. Edwards has also written widely on the president’s relations with the public, particularly their efforts to lead public opinion. He has reported that presidents are rarely able to move the public in their direction. Despite all their efforts, their words typically fall on deaf ears.

In recent years, he has fashioned his empirical findings into a theory of presidential leadership that challenges the view that presidential power is the power to persuade. Instead, he argues, presidential power is the power to recognize and exploit opportunities. In other words, presidents cannot create opportunities for change and must understand and take advantage of whatever possibilities for change already exist.

In early 2009, he predicted the problems President Barack Obama would face, despite the declarations of many insiders the new president would transform the political landscape and thus pave the way for major changes in policy. He confirmed these predictions in two books. In 2016, he predicted that despite his reputed promotional and negotiating skills, Donald Trump would not succeed in persuading either the public or Congress to follow his lead, which his subsequent research confirmed.

He has also written on reforming the Electoral College and has written and spoken widely on the subject. He also was among the first authors to devote attention to implementing public policy, especially the president's role as chief executive. Most recently, Edwards tackled the area of decision making, arguing that presidents and other top officials often make disastrous decisions because they are prisoners of faulty premises.