114 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY Nye concludes his explanation of the scorecard by saying, “In judging a president’s record of pursuing a moral foreign policy that makes America safer but also makes the world a better place, it is important to look at the full range of their leadership skills, to look at both actions and institutions, commissions and omissions, and to make three-dimensional moral judgments” (p. 41-42). However, Do Morals Matter? echoes many of the principles of Nye’s other published works, Soft Power and The Future of Power; each of these texts advocates the positive aspect of nation-states to attract and persuade rather than coerce foreign powers to do what they want. His bias towards soft power approaches in foreign policy is evident throughout the text in his rankings. Less evident is his personal political leanings on the rankings. While he ranks two Democrats (Truman and Clinton) as the most moral of all the presidents, he also placed two Democrats at the bottom of the ranking (Kennedy and Johnson). Within the rankings of the presidents, there is nothing scientific about his approach. These rankings are based on Nye’s interpretation of the administration’s foreign policy. Consequently, there are several places where the reader might greatly disagree with Nye’s conclusions. The highestgraded presidents were Truman and Clinton, followed by Obama and Carter. The next level contains George H.W. Bush and Ford. The final ranking group includes Eisenhower, Reagan, FDR, Kennedy, Trump, George W. Bush, Nixon, and Johnson. The text’s greatest strength is Nye’s scorecard, which allows the reader to grade each president based on the case studies presented within the text. Nye allows the reader to draw their own conclusions about the moral aspects of the president’s foreign policy. Nye describes the methodology he used to format the scorecards to ensure that the reader can come to their own conclusions. Because of the subjective nature of the scorecards, multiple reviewers will come to different conclusions based on the different presidents’ perspectives. For example, because Nye’s soft power practices run counter to the teaching of the realist school in international relations, these reviewers would view the moral attributes of presidents differently. To a realist, those presidents that followed the proponents of soft power, Obama, Clinton, and Carter, would have a much lower ranking than those who were proponents of hard power, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Nye’s presidential rankings are greatly subjective, based on his foreign policy views. However, his moral and ethical scorecard framework is a great assessment tool for scholars of presidential leadership. Dr. Joshua N. Longmire (Leadership Studies, '22) is Assistant Professor of Leadership and Program Director of the Master of Arts in International Studies and Master of Arts in Leadership at Dallas Baptist University. BOOK REVIEWS
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