Presidential Studies Quarterly articles from March 2000

Presidential Studies Quarterly archives from March 2000

Reinventing Leeway: The President and Agenda Certification.
March 1, 2000... Presidents certify agendas in the separated system. They are unusually well placed to perform that function. They do it best when acknowledging and promoting leeway, a condition facilitating competitive speculation by fostering the initiation,...

Strengthening Presidential Decision-Making Capacity.
March 1, 2000... "Governance is a scarce commodity" (Peters 1996, 1). An accurate assessment of democratic governments around the world, Peters's observation evidently applies as well to the U.S. presidency. In particular, I will contend that presidential...

Building Coalitions.
March 1, 2000... Building coalitions is at the core of governing in America. The necessity of forming coalitions is inevitable in a large, diverse nation in which political power is fragmented both vertically and horizontally. Because the president in most...

The Presidency, the Bureaucracy, and Reinvention: A Gentle Plea for Chaos(1).
March 1, 2000... Presidential involvement with administration and the bureaucracy has many faces. At times, presidents have been severely chastised for excessive involvement with the details of administration (Arnold 1999, 234). As Ronald Moe (1999) suggests,...

Domestic Policy Making.
March 1, 2000... Presidents have been making domestic policy since George Washington appointed the nation's first postmaster general. But as the institutional presidency has grown with the passage of time and crisis, presidents have become increasingly active...

Reinventing What for Whom? President and Congress in the Making of Foreign Policy.
March 1, 2000... What are the pressing problems of the presidency in foreign policy decision making, and what, if anything, can and should be done about them? There are several empirical and normative dilemmas associated with this question. First, how much do...

The Law: The Clinton Theory of the War Power.
March 1, 2000... President Bill Clinton frequently has engaged in unilateral acts of executive war making in defiance of the war clause of the Constitution, which vests in Congress the sole and exclusive authority to initiate hostilities on behalf of the...

The Polls: The Components of Presidential Favorability.
March 1, 2000... Public opinion toward the presidency and its incumbent is complex and multifaceted. A rich understanding of public views of the president would include knowledge about public expectations, public reactions to presidents and their actions,...

The Qualities of Effective Presidents: An Overview from FDR to Bill Clinton.
March 1, 2000... In some political systems, it does not much matter who serves as the nation's top political leader. In Great Britain, with its tradition of collective leadership, for example, the rare Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, or Tony Blair is far...

Measuring Congressional Support for the President: Evaluating NOMINATE Scores.
March 1, 2000... Scholars of both the presidency and the Congress require an accurate measure of legislators' underlying preferences. Whether one is interested in explaining policy outcomes, the politics of congressional committees or parties, or bargaining...

Managing the Press: Origins of the Media Presidency, 1897-1933.(Review)
March 1, 2000... Managing the Press: Origins of the Media Presidency, 1897-1933. By Stephen Ponder. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. 233 pp. $45.00 cloth With presidential-press relations increasingly a subject of discussion among presidents, their...

Who Speaks for the President? The White House Press Secretary from Cleveland to Clinton.(Review)
March 1, 2000... Who Speaks for the President? The White House Press Secretary from Cleveland to Clinton. By W. Dale Nelson. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998. 325 pp. $29.95 cloth. With presidential-press relations increasingly a subject of...

Seeing Spots: A Functional Analysis of Presidential Television Advertisements, 1952-1996.(Review)
March 1, 2000... Seeing Spots: A Functional Analysis of Presidential Television Advertisements, 1952-1996. By William L. Benoit. New York: Praeger, 1999.256 pp. $59.95 cloth. Author William Benoit describes the aim of Seeing Spots: A Functional Analysis of...

Shaping and Signaling Presidential Policy: The National Security Decision Making of Eisenhower and Kennedy.(Review)
March 1, 2000... Shaping and Signaling Presidential Policy: The National Security Decision Making of Eisenhower and Kennedy. By Meena Bose. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998. 197 pp. $29.95 cloth. Meena Bose thoughtfully integrates concepts...

The Watergate Crisis.(Review)
March 1, 2000... The Watergate Crisis. By Michael A. Genovese. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. 197 pp. $39.95 cloth. The actions and events--wiretapping, burglary, obstruction of justice, resignation--collectively known as "Watergate" have come to...

The Shaping of Containment: Harry S. Truman, the National Security Council, and the Cold War.(Review)
March 1, 2000... The Shaping of Containment: Harry S. Truman, the National Security Council, and the Cold War. By Sara L. Sale. Saint James, NY: Brandywine Press, 1998. 250 pp. $14.50 cloth. In her book, The Shaping of Containment: Harry S. Truman, the...

The Reconstruction Presidents.(Review)
March 1, 2000... The Reconstruction Presidents. By Brooks D. Simpson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. xi + 276 pp. $35.00 cloth. Whereas the preponderance of historians' recent work on Reconstruction concentrates on grassroots struggles within...

The Presidency of Richard Nixon.(Review)
March 1, 2000... The Presidency of Richard Nixon. By Melvin Small. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999. 387 pp. $29.95 cloth. Will we ever come to grips with Richard Milhous Nixon? This addition to the highly regarded University Press of Kansas...

Whittaker Chambers: A Biography.(Review)
March 1, 2000... Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. By Sam Tanenhaus. New York: Random House, 1997. 638+ pp., $35.00 cloth. For years, the Alger Hiss case has commanded the attention of scholars because of its impact on the politics of the World War II era....

Republican Empire: Alexander Hamilton on War and Free Government.(Review)
March 1, 2000... Republican Empire: Alexander Hamilton on War and Free Government. By Karl-Friedrich Walling. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999. 356 pp. Alexander Hamilton was never president of the United States, but he had more influence on the...

Strengthening Presidential Decision-Making Capacity.
March 1, 2000... "Governance is a scarce commodity" (Peters 1996, 1). An accurate assessment of democratic governments around the world, Peters's observation evidently applies as well to the U.S. presidency. In particular, I will contend that presidential...

The Presidency, the Bureaucracy, and Reinvention: A Gentle Plea for Chaos(1).
March 1, 2000... Presidential involvement with administration and the bureaucracy has many faces. At times, presidents have been severely chastised for excessive involvement with the details of administration (Arnold 1999, 234). As Ronald Moe (1999) suggests,...

Domestic Policy Making.
March 1, 2000... Presidents have been making domestic policy since George Washington appointed the nation's first postmaster general. But as the institutional presidency has grown with the passage of time and crisis, presidents have become increasingly active...

Reinventing What for Whom? President and Congress in the Making of Foreign Policy.
March 1, 2000... What are the pressing problems of the presidency in foreign policy decision making, and what, if anything, can and should be done about them? There are several empirical and normative dilemmas associated with this question. First, how much do...

The Law: The Clinton Theory of the War Power.
March 1, 2000... President Bill Clinton frequently has engaged in unilateral acts of executive war making in defiance of the war clause of the Constitution, which vests in Congress the sole and exclusive authority to initiate hostilities on behalf of the...