Presidential Studies Quarterly articles from June 2008

Presidential Studies Quarterly archives from June 2008

Presidential policy initiatives: how the public learns about State of the Union proposals from the mass media.(Essay)
June 1, 2008... State of the Union (SOTU) addresses are highly visible moments in a presidency. They offer unparalleled opportunities for presidents to communicate their priorities and accomplishments. Aside from the pageantry, however, what do citizens learn...

"An informal and limited alliance": the president and the Supreme Court.(Essay)
June 1, 2008... The framers of the Constitution did not make policy making easy. By separating governmental power into multiple institutions and providing for checks and balances between the three branches, the framers created a fragmented, decentralized...

The last word: presidential power and the role of signing statements.(Essay)
June 1, 2008... The presidential bill signing statement is one of many devices that contemporary presidents have developed for use against a recalcitrant Congress, joining with the executive order, memoranda, proclamations, pocket vetoes, and primary...

Presidential decision making and minority nominations to the U.S. Courts of Appeals.(Essay)
June 1, 2008... Institutions whose members fail to reflect the diversity of the population are often taken to be unrepresentative of citizens' policy preferences and potentially undemocratic (Mansbridge 1999; Pitkin 1978). For the courts to be viewed as...

Substance versus style: distinguishing presidential job performance from favorability.(Essay)
June 1, 2008... No question about politics has been asked with as much frequency and on a topic of such general interest as the Gallup presidential approval question. And few items of public opinion research have garnered as much ink, both inside and outside...

The evolution of the modern rhetorical presidency: a critical response.(CONTROVERSY)(Critical essay)
June 1, 2008... In his study of presidential rhetoric, Teten (2003) asserts that contemporary State of the Union addresses evolved in the early twentieth century. They are shorter and use more inclusive language than the annual presidential addresses of the...

The evolution of the rhetorical presidency and getting past the traditional/modern divide.(CONTROVERSY)(Critical essay)
June 1, 2008... Almost six years ago, as a graduate student at Vanderbilt University, I was first introduced to a division that exists in the classification of presidential rhetoric and, indeed, of presidents themselves. The "modern" rhetorical presidency, a...

Executive privilege and the U.S. attorneys firings.(The Contemporary Presidency)(Essay)
June 1, 2008... President George W. Bush's penchant for secrecy is widely acknowledged by his detractors and even many of his supporters. Although the president says that the war on terror and other contemporary threats to U.S. interests necessitate his...

Saving the presidency from lawyers.(The Law)(Essay)
June 1, 2008... The second Bush presidency has made at least one major contribution to the study of the presidency: It has put the lie to the notion that constitutional powers and institutional relations are less than central to the contemporary presidency and...

The ground war 2000-2004: strategic targeting in grassroots campaigns.(Polls and Elections)(Essay)
June 1, 2008... Following the epitaphs written for American political parties in the wake of political and legal changes during the post-World War II era, a resurgence of sorts has occurred that would make George Washington Plunkitt proud. The political...

Scripted for Change: The Institutionalization of the American Presidency.(Book review)
June 1, 2008... Scripted for Change: The Institutionalization of the American Presidency. By Victoria A. Farrar-Myers. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. 268 pp. The thesis of Scripted for Change is that "shared understandings" or norms...

The American Vice Presidency Reconsidered.(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The American Vice Presidency Reconsidered. By Jody C. Baumgartner. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. 184 pp. Until Richard B. Cheney entered the office, only a small group of academics paid much attention to the growing power and influence of...

The Matador's Cape: America's Reckless Response to Terror.(Book review)
June 1, 2008... The Matador's Cape: America's Reckless Response to Terror. By Stephen Holmes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 367 pp. Following the events of September 11,2001, many international relations scholars and security analysts...