Statesmen Who Were Never President is part of a series that searches for an answer to the question: Why do great men never become president?
The book examines the political and and personal lives of nine statesmen who were never elected president. Part I spotlights William Gibbs McAdoo and James G. Blaine, statesmen during the Progressive Era. The next section examines statesmen during the modern presidency including Robert Taft, Senator Mike Mansfield, and J. William Fullbright. Part III focuses on those statesmen who worked for social welfare concerns: Morris Udall, Senator Edmund Muskie, and Nelson A. Rockefeller. Some may have been more qualified to be senator or lacked the ambition to pursue the presidential office, while others suffered from questionable judgment or fell prey to illness or political attacks. The volume pulls together insights from earlier studies as well as original testimony of intimates and scholars at the Miller Center, seeking to look comparatively at these findings about selected statesmen.