The Politics Presidents Make

The Politics Presidents Make
Author: Stephen Skowronek
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 592
Release: 1997-03-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780674689374

This study aims to demonstrate that presidents are persistent agents of change, continually disrupting and transforming the political landscape. The politics of the "third way" is also discussed in relation to Bill Clinton's political strategies.

Presidential Leadership in Political Time

Presidential Leadership in Political Time
Author: Stephen Skowronek
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-01-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0700629432

In this expanded third edition, renowned scholar Stephen Skowronek, addresses Donald J. Trump’s presidency. Skowronek’s insights have fundamentally altered our understanding of the American presidency. His “political time” thesis has been particularly influential, revealing how presidents reckon with the work of their predecessors, situate their power within recent political events, and assert their authority in the service of change. A classic widely used in courses on the presidency, Skowronek’s book has greatly expanded our understanding of and debates over the politics of leadership. It clarifies the typical political problems that presidents confront in political time, as well as the likely effects of their working through them, and considers contemporary innovations in our political system that bear on the leadership patterns from the more distant past. Drawing out parallels in the politics of leadership between Andrew Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt and between James Polk and John Kennedy, it develops a new and revealing perspective on the presidential leadership of Clinton, Bush, Obama, and now Trump. In this third edition Skowronek carefully examines the impact of recent developments in government and politics on traditional leadership postures and their enactment, given the current divided state of the American polity, the impact of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, of a more disciplined and homogeneous Republican party, of conservative advocacy of the “unitary theory” of the executive, and of progressive disillusionment with the presidency as an institution. A provocative review of presidential history, Skowronek’s book brims with fresh insights and opens a window on the institution of the executive office and the workings of the American political system as a whole. Intellectually satisfying for scholars, it also provides an accessible volume for students and general readers interested in the American presidency.

Empowering the White House

Empowering the White House
Author: Karen Marie Hult
Publisher:
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2004
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

On the surface the new president seems to inherit an empty house," Hugh Heclo, a recognized expert on American democratic institutions, has noted. "In fact, he enters an office already shaped and crowded by other people's desires." Empowering the White House examines how Richard Nixon entered that crowded Oval Office in 1969 yet managed to change it in a way that augmented the power of the presidency and continues to influence into the twenty-first century how his successors have governed. Nixon's White House is perhaps best remembered for the growth in the size of the staff, which operated under the supposed iron fist of H. R. Haldeman. But more important than size and management style to the character of the Nixon White House were the assigned tasks, complexity, and dynamics of the burgeoning staff. Faced with hostile majorities in Congress and executive branch careerists assumed to be committed to a Democratic agenda, Nixon sought to control his political fate by engaging more actively than earlier presidents in public relations and the mobilization of support. At the command and under the control of the Oval Office, the staff carried out assignments designed to fulfill Nixon's aims. This theoretically informed and well-researched study explains how Nixon changed and expanded the institutionalized presidency and how that affected the Ford and Carter administrations. Nixon ushered in a new stage in the modern presidency by organizing and using his increasingly complex staff in new ways that have persisted beyond the 1970s to this day. To a greater degree than any predecessor, Nixon systematized outreach, legal advice, and policy formulation. His White House staffing, then, has come to be regarded as a "standard model" that influences incoming presidents regardless of party affiliation. Leavening this organizational study are revealing accounts of how the Nixon, Ford, and Carter staffs operated behind the scenes in the West Wing. Anyone needing to know how the White House worked during those presidencies—or how it has worked since—will find this book invaluable.

Speaking with the People's Voice

Speaking with the People's Voice
Author: Jeffrey P. Mehltretter Drury
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2014-03-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1623490448

The role of public opinion in American democracy has been a central concern of scholars who frequently examine how public opinion influences policy makers and how politicians, especially presidents, try to shape public opinion. But in Speaking with the People’s Voice: How Presidents Invoke Public Opinion, Jeffrey P. Mehltretter Drury asks a different question that adds an important new dimension to the study of public opinion: How do presidents rhetorically use public opinion in their speeches? In a careful analysis supported by case studies and discrete examples, Drury develops the concept of “invoked public opinion” to study the modern presidents’ use of public opinion as a rhetorical resource. He defines the term as “the rhetorical representation of the beliefs and values of US citizens.” Speaking with the People’s Voice considers both the strategic and democratic value of invoked public opinion by analyzing how modern presidents argumentatively deploy references to the beliefs and values of US citizens as persuasive appeals as well as acts of political representation in their nationally televised speeches.

Meeting the Moment

Meeting the Moment
Author: William Haldeman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2024-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

The histories presented here are of a select group of US presidents, their inspired leadership characteristics, and how they may inspire us today. The traits these presidents possessed were cultivated over a lifetime of lived experience and immortalized through the power of the presidential word—speeches, letters, and addresses—which collectively represent the most transcendent documents in American history. Viewed through the lens of nuance, complication, human emotion, pathos, and drama, William Haldeman sets forth the lives of these presidents in ways to help inform our own lives, from leveraging our experience and instincts to making the right calls when they matter the most. Grounded in an interdisciplinary approach, Haldeman appeals to both scholars and general audience readers alike, offering a refreshing view of presidential leadership that not only elevates leadership as a central part of the scholarly field, but also broadly engages American presidency enthusiasts and readers of history, biography, politics, and leadership development.

Power Without Persuasion

Power Without Persuasion
Author: William G. Howell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2003-07-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0691102708

Since the early 1960s, scholarly thinking on the power of U.S. presidents has rested on these words: "Presidential power is the power to persuade." Power, in this formulation, is strictly about bargaining and convincing other political actors to do things the president cannot accomplish alone. Power without Persuasion argues otherwise. Focusing on presidents' ability to act unilaterally, William Howell provides the most theoretically substantial and far-reaching reevaluation of presidential power in many years. He argues that presidents regularly set public policies over vocal objections by Congress, interest groups, and the bureaucracy. Throughout U.S. history, going back to the Louisiana Purchase and the Emancipation Proclamation, presidents have set landmark policies on their own. More recently, Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans during World War II, Kennedy established the Peace Corps, Johnson got affirmative action underway, Reagan greatly expanded the president's powers of regulatory review, and Clinton extended protections to millions of acres of public lands. Since September 11, Bush has created a new cabinet post and constructed a parallel judicial system to try suspected terrorists. Howell not only presents numerous new empirical findings but goes well beyond the theoretical scope of previous studies. Drawing richly on game theory and the new institutionalism, he examines the political conditions under which presidents can change policy without congressional or judicial consent. Clearly written, Power without Persuasion asserts a compelling new formulation of presidential power, one whose implications will resound.

The Politics Presidents Make

The Politics Presidents Make
Author: Stephen Skowronek
Publisher: Belknap Press
Total Pages: 526
Release: 1995-03-15
Genre: Executive power
ISBN: 9780674689367

THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION Stephen Skowronek's wholly innovative study demonstrates that presidents are persistent agents of change, continually disrupting and transforming the political landscape. In an afterword to this new edition, the author examines "third way" leadership as it has been practiced by Bill Clinton and others. These leaders are neither great repudiators nor orthodox innovators. They challenge received political categories, mix seemingly antithetical doctrines, and often take their opponents' issues as their own. As the 1996 election confirmed, third way leadership has great electoral appeal. The question is whether Clinton in his second term will escape the convulsive end so often associated with the type.

Hellfire Nation

Hellfire Nation
Author: James A. Morone
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 589
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300105177

Annotation. Although the US is proud of being a secular state, religion lies at the heart of American politics. This volume looks at how the country came to have the soul of a church & the consequences - the moral crusades against slavery, alcohol, witchcraft & discrimination that time & again have prevailed upon the nation.

Protecting Soldiers and Mothers

Protecting Soldiers and Mothers
Author: Theda Skocpol
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 737
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0674043723

It is a commonplace that the United States lagged behind the countries of Western Europe in developing modern social policies. But, as Theda Skocpol shows in this startlingly new historical analysis, the United States actually pioneered generous social spending for many of its elderly, disabled, and dependent citizens. During the late nineteenth century, competitive party politics in American democracy led to the rapid expansion of benefits for Union Civil War veterans and their families. Some Americans hoped to expand veterans' benefits into pensions for all of the needy elderly and social insurance for workingmen and their families. But such hopes went against the logic of political reform in the Progressive Era. Generous social spending faded along with the Civil War generation. Instead, the nation nearly became a unique maternalist welfare state as the federal government and more than forty states enacted social spending, labor regulations, and health education programs to assist American mothers and children. Remarkably, as Skocpol shows, many of these policies were enacted even before American women were granted the right to vote. Banned from electoral politics, they turned their energies to creating huge, nation-spanning federations of local women's clubs, which collaborated with reform-minded professional women to spur legislative action across the country. Blending original historical research with political analysis, Skocpol shows how governmental institutions, electoral rules, political parties, and earlier public policies combined to determine both the opportunities and the limits within which social policies were devised and changed by reformers and politically active social groups over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining afresh the institutional, cultural, and organizational forces that have shaped U.S. social policies in the past, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers challenges us to think in new ways about what might be possible in the American future.

Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic

Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic
Author: Stephen Skowronek
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0197543103

A powerful dissection of one of the fundamental problems in American governance today: the clash between presidents determined to redirect the nation through ever-tighter control of administration and an executive branch still organized to promote shared interests in steady hands, due deliberation, and expertise. President Trump pitted himself repeatedly against the institutions and personnel of the executive branch. In the process, two once-obscure concepts came center stage in an eerie faceoff. On one side was the specter of a "Deep State" conspiracyadministrators threatening to thwart the will of the people and undercut the constitutional authority of the president they elected to lead them. On the other side was a raw personalization of presidential power, one that a theory of "the unitary executive" gussied up and allowed to run roughshod over reason and the rule of law. The Deep State and the unitary executive framed every major contest of the Trump presidency. Like phantom twins, they drew each other out. These conflicts are not new. Stephen Skowronek, John A. Dearborn, and Desmond King trace the tensions between presidential power and the depth of the American state back through the decades and forward through the various settlements arrived at in previous eras. Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic is about the breakdown of settlements and the abiding vulnerabilities of a Constitution that gave scant attention to administrative power. Rather than simply dump on Trump, the authors provide a richly historical perspective on the conflicts that rocked his presidency, and they explain why, if left untamed, the phantom twins will continue to pull the American government apart.