The Scarlet Thread of Scandal: Morality and the American Presidency - Hardcover

Charles W. Dunn is the author of numerous books on American politics and history. He is dean of the School of Arts and Letters at Grove City College and lives in Grove City, Pennsylvania.

Dunn's book is a serious, scholarly study of a topic that too often is treated too lightly and sensationally. If you want to understand the impact of political scandals in the United States from a historical and theoretical vantage, you must read this book. (Mark J. Rozell, George Mason University; coeditor of Catholics and Politics: The Dynamic Tension between Faith and Power)

Drawing on works as diverse as William J. Bennett, Robert Bellah, and Dr. Benjamin Spock, Charles Dunn charts the decline of public and presidential morality and addresses the central question of whether a president's leadership of the nation ought to outweigh questions of personal morality. Whereas American society once shared a 'common set of moral understandings,' Dunn suggests that modern views of morality have become a kaleidoscopic. The result has been indifference to personal scandal so long as job performance and, particularly, economic well being, are at high levels. The historical richness of Dunn's book provides a valuable backdrop for understanding the ever growing dichotomy between leadership and morality in America. (Phillip G. Henderson, editor of The Presidency Then and Now)

If we are ever to learn from presidential scandal, we must move beyond the prurient details and the individual transgressions to come to understand them within the political, cultural, moral, religious, and ideological milieu within which they occurred. In a dispassionate and well reasoned way, Charles Dunn has performed this service for us in The Scarlet Thread of Scandal. (Gary L. Gregg II, author of The Presidential Republic)

Dunn provides thoughtful generalizations on social and ideological changes and on individual leaders. (Mary Carroll CHOICE)