Profs and Pints Online presents: “Inside Presidents’ Cabinets,” a historical look at the role of advising the highest office, with Lindsay Chervinsky, scholar of the presidency and professorial lecturer at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

When Americans elect a president, they also end up getting a cabinet, a collection of advisors to the person holding the highest office. That can be a blessing—or a curse. Strong presidents can turn their cabinets into effective tools for public outreach, coalition building, congressional liaising, and representation abroad. Weak presidents often are undermined by their cabinets’ scandals, division, and incompetence.

Come learn about the origins of the presidential cabinets, and how cabinets have performed throughout history, from Lindsay Chervinsky, who teaches a class on the American Presidency and is the author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.

Chervinsky will start at the beginning, looking at the cabinet’s origins under George Washington and the various precedents Washington set for his successors. She’ll discuss how presidential cabinets exist without any direct mention in the U.S. Constitution, and she’ll tell us how and why George Washington dismissed the U.S. Senate as his council on foreign affairs and modeled his first cabinet after his councils of war in the American Revolution.

From there we’ll look at the best and worst cabinets in history, focusing on the presidencies of Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and others.

The cabinet is more than just a group of bureaucrats. It’s a test of presidential leadership. Inform yourself this election season by learning more about the cabinet and its pivotal role in the modern presidency and contemporary politics.

Profs & Pints Online: Inside Presidents' Cabinets