conformity language that runs through the readings of Mill and Emerson: To the extent that the political life of responsible individuality includes (or perhaps requires) not just saying “no” to injustice but the advocacy of a more just alternative in the guise of legal and regulatory reform, what one seeks is not nonconformity but, rather, conformity to justice. AMERICAN POLITICS Thomas Jefferson and Executive Power. By Jeremy D. Bailey. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 296p. $89.99 cloth, $29.99 paper. The Discretionary President: The Promise and Peril of Executive Power. By Benjamin A. Kleinerman. Lawerence, KS: University Press of Kansas. 322p. $34.95. doi:10.1017/S1537592710000824 — Douglas A. Ollivant, ISAF Counterinsurgency Advisory/Assistance Team All too often, works of political theory deal with esoteric general questions or navel-gazing textual analysis, far removed from the messiness, hard choices, and sober gran- deur of real political life. Refreshingly, neither of these texts suffers from this limitation. Questions of executive power brought to the surface by the George W. Bush administration in the wake of the 9/11 attacks call for serious engagement by theorists. Simply put, how does the executive respond to an unforeseen situation where law is silent, contradictory, or clearly contrary to public good? Both of these works are written in the shadow of NSA wiretaps, Guantanamo Bay detentions, and “enhanced interrogation techniques,” as well as the controversial jus- tification of the same in the works of John Yoo. While each book deserves its own reading, they are also complimentary, with the more recent text directly engaging the interpretation of the first. In Thomas Jeffer- son and Executive Power, Jeremy D. Bailey offers a detailed and revisionist examination of Thomas Jefferson, per- haps American’s most notable theorist-practitioner on the subject of executive power. Benjamin A. Kleinerman’s The Discretionary President, likewise considers Jefferson’s approach, alongside chapters on Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, before focusing on the approach he pre- fers, that of Abraham Lincoln. Bailey’s tightly written text seeks to redirect the con- sensus reading of Jefferson as “an enemy of executive power” (p. 4) in principle who was hypocritically willing to use it in practice, a view that originated in Henry Adams’ classic history of the Jefferson administrations. Bailey is far more sympathetic to Jefferson and sees much more internal consistency than does the Adams-inspired interpretive tradition. Bailey reminds his readers that, as he assumed the Presidency, “Jefferson had devoted over two decades to reconciling the theoretical requirements of constitutional democracy with the practical realities of political life” (p. 6). Bailey mediates Jefferson’s (frequent) use of Presidential prerogative with his belief in, and practice of, submitting these “acts of . . . discretion to popular judgment” (p. 18). For Bailey’s Jefferson, presi- dential actions in realms where the law is unclear must be explained to the electorate, both in notable particulars and at regular intervals. According to Bailey, this rhetorical justification of exec- utive action is the motivation for Jefferson’s transforma- tion of the inaugural address from a little noticed footnote to the oath of office (as used by our first two Presidents) to the central statement of political intent it has since become. By “stating how he would be president” (p. 140), Jefferson laid out the principles that would guide his future actions, subjecting them to democratic debate and approval. Bailey provides a very sophisticated analysis that ties together the various aspects of Jeffersonian policy into a coherent whole, culminating in a particularly novel examination of Jefferson’s support of theTwelfth Amend- ment (altering the mechanism by which the Electoral College selects the President and Vice President). Bailey’s Jefferson is concerned less with his own political interests (though these certainly factored in) than with the Elec- toral College’s capacity to produce a clear popular man- date for the President. With this popular mandate, the President is then positioned to make his direct appeals to the democratic public, conducting a rhetorical referen- dum on his exercise of power. While favorably inclined toward Jefferson, Bailey is not a blind advocate. As he notes, one of Jefferson’s great fail- ings was not to offer a defense—or explanation—of his constitutionally controversial Louisiana Purchase of 1802 in his Second Inaugural in 1805. Bailey indirectly con- cedes, but does not state, that this lacuna makes Henry Adams’ charge of inconsistency far more plausible. If Bai- ley is correct in asserting that Jefferson believed that responding to democratic will requires decisive executive action, the lack of a specific textual articulation is a disap- pointment for those trying to ground robust executive power in a democratic framework and tradition. Unfor- tunately, even Bailey must admit that “Jefferson never declared this principle in public” (p. 269). Kleinerman offers a different theoretical justification of executive power, one that requires not democratic approval, but instead a popular affirmation of legitimacy. Or, in Kleinerman’s clear phrasing, “[the people] should be asked to judge whether [the act] was constitutional, not whether they liked it” (p. 25). June 2010 | Vol. 8/No. 2 673