Presidential Studies Quarterly articles from December 2003

Presidential Studies Quarterly archives from December 2003

The Bush presidency and the American electorate.(Articles)
December 1, 2003... Introduction George W. Bush entered the White House with the electorate evenly divided between the parties and sharply polarized along party lines, not least on the legitimacy of his victory. After the terrorist attacks of September 11,...

George Bush and the 102d Congress: the impact of public and "private" veto threats on policy outcomes.
December 1, 2003... Introduction Changing institutional and electoral dynamics in Congress in the last several decades have placed greater limitations on presidents' ability to influence roll call outcomes. Presidents' floor success rates have been a casualty...

What presidents talk about: the Nixon case.
December 1, 2003... Why do presidents talk at length about some policy issues, while ignoring others? Which issues do presidents emphasize in their public rhetoric, how do they talk about them, why, and with what effects? How do they divide their messages between...

American values or human rights? U.S. foreign policy and the fractured myth of virtuous power.
December 1, 2003... May 2002 brought the odd spectacle of ex-President Jimmy Carter standing shoulder to shoulder in Havana with one of the U.S. government's oldest enemies, Cuban president Fidel Castro. Carter, on a mission to convey a message of friendship to...

"Who ever believed in the 'missile gap?": John F. Kennedy and the politics of national security.
December 1, 2003... In a meeting on December 5, 1962, President John F. Kennedy and his senior military advisers met to discuss the proposed budget for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 1964. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, anticipating criticisms of...

Presidential renomination challenges in the 20th century.
December 1, 2003... One of the common generalizations about presidential elections is that incumbents win their political party's nomination if they seek it (David et al. 1960, 67; Keech and Matthews 1976, ch. 2; Epstein 1978, 178; Abramson et al. 1987). Though...

Was Reagan really a great communicator? The influence of televised addresses on public opinion.
December 1, 2003... Theodore Roosevelt captured the nation's imagination with his use of the bully pulpit to go over the heads of the Washington elite to speak directly to the people. Since that time, spurred on by generations of textbooks and political punditry...

The contemporary presidency: the Twenty-fifth Amendment: recommendations and deliberations of the Working Group on Presidential Disability.
December 1, 2003... The Framers of the Constitution addressed the issues of presidential disability and succession in the document they wrote in Philadelphia in 1787 but they did so in ambiguous and uncertain language. Article II, section 5, states that "In case...

Elections: was the 2000 presidential election fair? An analysis of comparative and retrospective survey data.
December 1, 2003... Americans have long taken great pride in their presidential elections. With a proud history extending back over 200 years, the selection of a U.S. president has long been held up to emerging democracies as an example to be emulated. Power has...

The law: congressional access to presidential documents: the house resolution of inquiry.
December 1, 2003... Congress has many techniques for obtaining documents from the executive branch, including simple requests, committee investigations, subpoenas, and holding executive officials in contempt. One procedure, used only in the House of...

The polls: presidential greatness as seen in the mass public: an extension and application of the Simonton model.
December 1, 2003... Introduction While presidential greatness rankings may not objectively inform us about who the best presidents are, they do tell us much about the factors that raters employ when comparing presidents. To date, most attention has focused on...

Source material: out of office and in the news: early projections of the Clinton legacy.
December 1, 2003... The news media play a significant role in communicating relevant information about a president's tenure, not only to the public, but also to those directly involved in creating a president's legacy (particularly scholars and elite journalists)....

Depression to Cold War: a History of America from Herbert Hoover to Ronald Reagan.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Joseph M. Siracusa and David G. Coleman. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. ix, 300 pp. This book is much more a history of the presidency than a "history of America." The authors present the book as a general survey of the United States from...

El Dorado Canyon: Reagan's Undeclared War with Qaddafi.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Joseph T. Stanik. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003. xvi, 319 pp. "Blowback," a CIA term of art for the unintended, even ironic consequences of intelligence operations, could have been an alternative title of Joseph T. Stanik's...

From Cold War to New World Order: the Foreign Policy of George H.W. Bush.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Edited by Meena Bose and Rosanna Perotti. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. 577 pp. This volume is one of four that present the record of a conference on "George Bush: Leading in a New World," held at Hofstra University on April 17-19,...

Trading Blows: Party Competition and U.S. Trade Policy in a Globalizing Era.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By James Shoch. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. 388 pp. In the quarter century from the end of World War II to the early 1970s, a consensus emerged between Democrats and Republicans that lower tariffs and fewer...

Presidents and the Politics of Agency Design: Political Insulation in the United States Government Bureaucracy, 1946-1997.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By David E. Lewis. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. ix, 224 pp. The new economics of organization (NEO) paradigm has become a popular approach to studying bargaining and coordination problems across government institutions....

Anticipating Madam President.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Edited by Robert P. Watson and Ann Gordon. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003. 271 pp. Many believe that the United States will see its first woman president in the twenty-first century. A recent movie, The Contender, examines the...

The White House World: Transition, Organization, and Office Operations.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Edited by Martha Joynt Kumar and Terry Sullivan. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003. ix, 405 pp. Nearly a decade has passed since Lyn Ragsdale noted that "political scientists are rarely asked to the White House to instruct...

First Off the Tee: Presidential Hackers, Duffers, and Cheaters from Taft to Bush.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... By Don Van Natta, Jr. New York: Public Affairs, 2003. 357 pp. Ever since President Theodore Roosevelt first warned his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, that playing the game of golf was decidedly unpresidential, likely to invite...