The Burden of Foreign Policy: Political Legacies and Presidential Leadership in the Cold War.

This paper examines how presidents were constrained by their predecessors in developing national security strategies during the Cold War. It focuses on the Eisenhower-Kennedy transition and the Carter-Reagan transition, given the change in political party and subsequent desire to craft a new foreign-affairs legacy in each case. The paper finds that although national security policies do create a general framework within which consecutive administrations operate, new presidents still have a window of opportunity to mark a new direction in foreign policy from their immediate predecessor. Perhaps the greatest consistency in foreign policy across these cases was in policy making at the United Nations, where differences in the role of the president's chief adviser at the U.N. were more stylistic than substantive. In conclusion, while the "inherited presidency" does present constraints for new presidents, the Cold War era illustrates that they nevertheless have the political flexibility to move beyond those constraints, at least in foreign affairs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]