Thomas Cronin

Thomas Edward Cronin (born March 18, 1940) is a political scientist. He was president of Whitman College from 1993 to 2005. He is the McHugh Professor of American Institutions and Leadership at Colorado College. Cronin's field of study is the 'expanding power of the American presidency in the 20th century'.

Cronin received his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University. From 1969 to 1972, Cronin was a research associate at the Brookings Institution. In 1977, he was elected to the Common Cause National Governing Board.

Cronin held an associate professorship at the University of North Carolina from 1967 to 1970. From 1979 to 1993, he held an endowed chair at Colorado College. He was a member of the faculty and in 1991, was the acting president of the college. He took a visiting professorship at Princeton University in 1985 and 1986.In 2005, Cronin returned to Colorado College to teach and to write. (According to one of his anecdotes, Colorado College called Cronin for guidance on whom to hire as his replacement; instead of providing them with recommendations, he informed the college that he would like to return as the "McHugh Professor of American Institutions and Leadership" at Colorado College).

Cronin assisted in raising funds for the acquisition of the Baca campus by Colorado College.

• The Presidential Advisory System (Harper & Row, 1969)
• The Presidency Reappraised (Praeger, 1974, 1977)
• The State of the Presidency (Little Brown, 1980)
• US v. Crime in the Streets (Indiana, 1981)
• Inventing the American Presidency (Kansas, 1989)
• Direct Democracy (Harvard, 1989)
• Colorado Politics and Government (Nebraska, 1993)
• The Paradoxes of the American Presidency (Oxford University Press, 1998).
• Government by the People (Prentice-Hall, 2000)
• State and Local Politics (Prentice-Hall, 2000)
• On The Presidency (Paradigm, 2009)
• Imagining a Great Republic (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2017)