Chapter 7: Through Thick and Thin?: Follower Constructions of Presidential Leadership Amidst Crises, 2001-2005

One of Jim Meindl’s seminal contributions to scholarship on leadership was his thought-provoking work on the romance of leadership, in which he suggests that leadership is a social construction that is influenced by what goes on in the thoughts of followers and is affected by the contexts in which they are embedded. In certain contexts (e.g., a crisis), charismatic leadership may function as a collective coping mechanism, where followers attribute charismatic qualities to a leader who appears as if he or she has a solution for the crisis (Meindl, 1995). This is particularly true of political leaders who preside over the fates of nations or emerge in opposition as an alternative to the status quo. The changing fortunes of President George W. Bush over the course of his presidency, through the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the Iraq War, provide a rich opportunity to study the relationship between perceptions of crisis and leadership evaluations using the framework suggested by Meindl. In this chapter, we examine the impact of particular contexts on followers’ constructions of President George W. Bush’s leadership through the turbulent first 5 years of his presidency.