AMERICANS WANT A HERO FOR PRESIDENT,
BUT THEY'VE BEEN IN SHORT SUPPLY SINCE FDR

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., July 11 -- What lies beneath the
indignation of the media as it covers the Whitewater trial and the
resignation of the White House official who gathered confidential
FBI reports on Republicans for the Clinton administration?
	John Milton Cooper Jr., a presidential scholar and history
professor at the University of Wisconsin, believes that the public
in late 20th-century America holds its presidents to impossibly high
standards. The public seeks heroes to serve as president, but can
elect only men.
	How did this happen? And when?
	That is the topic of Cooper's essay, "Great Expectations and
Shadowlands: American Presidents and their Reputations in the 20th
Century," in the current issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review. 
	No president in recent memory has approached the stature of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, yet it was his kinsman Theodore Roosevelt
who raised the stakes for those holding the country's highest
office. Teddy Roosevelt "skillfully exploited the mass media to
raise levels of excitement and saliency surrounding emerging issues
of the new industrial society, and he also made himself as president
and as a person, together with his family, the center of national
attention," according to Cooper.
	For his part, FDR -- who won election four times and served
12 years, more than any other president -- brought the country out
of the Great Depression and guided it through the Second World War.
Succeeding presidents have had to live "in the shadow of FDR," as
historian William E. Leuchtenburg put it in his book of the same
name.  But the public's continuing "great expectations" of what
presidents should accomplish in office, and how they should conduct
their private lives, now sets the stage for disappointment no matter
who sits in the White House, Cooper believes.
	"Not just overreliance on the presidency but the requirement
of heroism in its holders has denoted political immaturity among
Americans," Cooper writes. 
.	Cooper's essay is one of two pieces on political topics in
the current issue of the VQR. The other is an engaging look at
Spanish politics in the 20 years since the death of dictator
Francisco Franco: "Spain Today: Is the Party Over?" by David T.
Gies, Commonwealth Professor of Spanish at the University of
Virginia.  Gies argues that democracy is here to stay in Spain, no
matter who is in power.
	Short fiction and poetry by up-and-coming American writers
fill out the issue.
	For more information on the VQR, which has been published at
U.Va. since 1925, or for help in contacting authors, call Staige
Blackford, VQR editor, at (804) 924-3124, or Charlotte Crystal,
U.Va. senior news writer, at (804) 924-6858.
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July 10, 1996