Showing papers in "Presidential Studies Quarterly in 2008"

Who's the Fairest of them All? An Empirical Test for Partisan Bias on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News

Abstract: "We [Democrats] stayed off FOX for a long time because your news department is, in fact, biased ... there are some things in the news department that have really been shockingly biased, and I think that's wrong. And I'll just say so right up front." --Howard Dean, appearing on Fox News Sunday, May 4, 2008 "I think Fox News has come on the scene and identified itself as 'fair and balanced.' We try to do that every day. I think others, instead of trying to get more fair and balanced, probably are offended by that or worried about it ... What they're trying to do is say that Fox News is mixing opinion and fact. That's just simply not true ... Bias can be a lot of different ways--story selection, story placement, story emphasis ... I looked at other people's polls, national polls, and most of the people thought the news was either biased or boring or both. And they generally thought it was biased in one direction." --Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, interview with C-SPAN's Brian Lamb, 2004 For many decades, Republicans have repeated a mantra alleging that the media as a whole are biased against their party and their politicians. This attitude toward the media was perhaps best exemplified by a popular 1992 Republican bumper sticker that said, "Annoy the Media: Re-elect George Bush." However, with the rise of new media such as conservative Web sites, talk radio, and especially the Fox News Channel, Republicans have seen Democrats begin to embrace and extend their complaints of bias in the news. (1) In the run-up to the 2008 elections, those complaints only increased in volume and ferocity. In early 2007, these complaints actually affected the conduct of the campaign when liberal activists pressured the Nevada Democratic Party to cancel a Fox-sponsored Democratic candidate debate. In launching the successful campaign to drop Fox as a debate sponsor, liberal blogger Chris Bowers of MyDD.com argued that, "... instead of giving [Fox] a golden opportunity to further distort the image of Democratic presidential candidates, and instead of providing them with credibility for all of their past and future attacks against Democrats, it would be best if the Nevada Democratic Party chose a different media partner to broadcast this debate" (Bowers 2007). (2) In this study, I will attempt to empirically measure whether Fox News has, in fact, systematically skewed its news over the past decade and compare its news choices to those of the network evening newscasts. Specifically, I will be examining whether Fox's Special Report, ABC's World News (Tonight), the CBS Evening News, and the NBC Nightly News presented biased portrayals of public opinion regarding the president in their coverage. Empirically Examining Media Bias Claims of media bias raised by politicians from either party should be regarded as exceptionally suspect for several reasons. First, politicians might prefer that a news source be perceived as biased against them, even if the source is actually unbiased. As Matthew Baum and I demonstrate elsewhere (Baum and Groeling forthcoming), when members of the public perceive the news to be biased against a candidate or party, harmful messages from that outlet are discounted, while favorable messages are seen as particularly credible. Similarly, partisans might strategically choose to allege bias--even in the absence of such bias--in an attempt to "work the ref"--that is, vociferously protest a close call in an attempt to have the next one go your way. And, because of well-documented cognitive biases--such as confirmation and disconfirmation biases, selective perception, anchoring, attention bias, the clustering illusion, and selective perception, among others--partisans might sincerely perceive news as being biased against their preferred stance, even when it is actually unbiased (see Hastorf and Cantril 1954; Dalton et al. 1998; Baum and Groeling n.d.) The possibility that perceptions of bias rest in the eye of the beholder is not lost on journalists, who readily turn to that explanation to blunt charges of favoritism. …

The Last Word: Presidential Power and the Role of Signing Statements

Abstract: 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 unilateral policy devices, to name but a few (Barilleaux 1989; Cooper 2002; Mayer 2001; Spitzer 2006). In late 2005 and then in 2006, the signing statement moved from relative obscurity to cause celebre. The reason it became a public spectacle is multifaceted. First, in December 2005, President George W. Bush used the signing statement to renege on a deal he had made with Senator John McCain (R-AZ) to keep torture off the list of interrogation techniques as part of the global war on terrorism. Throughout the fall of 2005, the administration applied enormous political pressure to persuade Senator McCain to back away from his "no torture" position. When it failed, President Bush invited Senator McCain, along with Senator John Warner (R-VA), to a White House photo op and a formal signing ceremony, at which President Bush proclaimed, "[T]he Administration is committed to treating all detainees held by the United States in a manner consistent with our Constitution, laws, and treaty obligations, which reflect the values we hold dear" (Bush 2005a). However, in President Bush's signing statement to the bill, (1) he set off a public firestorm after he wrote, The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks. (Bush 2005b) Also in December 2005, the Bush administration released numerous documents regarding Judge Samuel Alito's time in the Reagan administration's Justice Department. Alito, at the time preparing for his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, had worked in the Reagan Justice Department in the mid-1980s, in part to develop the signing statement as a useful device to protect the prerogatives of the presidency, as well as to advance policy preferences throughout the executive branch agencies (Alito 1986). And finally, in April 2006, Charlie Savage, a reporter for the Boston Globe, wrote an article claiming that President Bush had used the signing statement to challenge "more than 750 laws" since taking office, a number that exceeded all previous presidents combined (Savage 2006). What ensued were numerous editorials condemning the practice, along with congressional hearings, testimony, and legislation designed to blunt the effects of the signing statement and a chorus of critics who issued reports demanding that the practice stop. Yet despite all the recent attention, there has been little scholarly research tying the use of the signing statement to the larger picture of presidential power (Cooper 2002, 2005 are important exceptions). This essay investigates how the signing statement is used to influence the policy process when the normal methods break down, particularly in this modern period of divided government characterized by high levels of partisanship inside Congress and inside the electorate. The empirical analysis seeks to understand the factors that explain why the president uses signing statements on some laws and not others. In broader terms, the investigation of signing statements sheds light on how two distinct views of power--Neustadt's personal presidency and unilateralism--can be viewed as complementary, rather than competing approaches. The investigation utilizes a mixture of methods and evidence to assess the role of presidential signing statements in understanding presidential power. …

Presidential Communication in the Internet Era

Abstract: The new media environment and the rise of the Internet have had important implications for presidential communication. As the first chief executives of the new media era, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have established an online presence through the White House Web site, http://www.whitehouse.gov. As the site has evolved, these administrations have had to balance the communication potential of technological innovations against the requirements of politics and governing. Future presidential administrations will embrace new opportunities and confront additional challenges as they seek to integrate new media options of the Web 2.0 era and beyond into their communications strategies.

Polls and Elections: Editorial Cartoons 2.0: The Effects of Digital Political Satire on Presidential Candidate Evaluations

Abstract: While the number of full-time editorial cartoonists has declined in the past few decades, several have taken their craft online in the form of animated Flash cartoons. In this article I test the effects of one of the more popular animated editorial cartoons on presidential candidate evaluations of 18- to 24-year-olds. A posttest-only experimental design was used to survey students from several universities in six states. The results from this online experiment suggest that these editorial cartoons have a negative effect on candidate evaluations. However, viewing the clip did not change candidate preferences and an analysis of the control group suggests that viewership of online humor may have a positive effect on political participation.

Polls and Elections The Ground War 2000‐2004: Strategic Targeting in Grassroots Campaigns

Abstract: 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 parties have long shown themselves to be adaptable in an uncertain political environment, making and remaking themselves as conditions permit or demand. They have, in a sense, seen opportunities and taken advantage of them. The emphasis on grassroots politics that once was the bread and butter of the local political parties described by the preeminent scholar V. O. Key gave way in the 1980s to technocentric parties that seemed to have forgotten the party-in-the-electorate. Political scientists were quick to ascribe all manner of political pathologies to the decline of political mobilization by entities such as parties, and, truth be told, there was something to the argument. By the late 1990s, however, evidence pointed to the rediscovery of the mass base of political decision making. Grassroots mobilization efforts, by all accounts, were making a comeback. The virtually unfettered ability of individuals and organizations to disseminate information and facilitate mobilization efforts in the first few years of the twenty-first century was but one indicator of the trend. The political parties, too, expanded anew their personal contact campaigning efforts, particularly in light of ambiguous evidence regarding the effects of mass media advertising on turnout, but particularly helpful and precise evidence on the efficacy of a more personal approach to politics (e.g., Gerber and Green 2000). We examine the elections of 2000 and 2004, two years that saw the highest levels of personal contact campaigning since the American National Election Studies began asking about such tactics in the 1950s, Our goals are twofold. First, we test hypotheses, derived from statements of top campaign operatives from the presidential election campaigns in those years, that the parties shifted their grassroots campaign strategies from largely swing-voter-focused operations to more mixed-base and swing strategies. Our results present a modest degree of support that the parties accomplished such goals. Second, we examine personal contact campaigning in a way that, to our knowledge, has not been possible to this point. Because of the rather low levels of respondents in national surveys who reported campaign contacts, the ability to rigorously assess their correlates has been hindered. The much greater degree of such reports in the last two cycles enables us to examine the determinants of unique Democrat and Republican contacts--those people who report either Democrat or Republican party contacts but not both. It is our contention that the kinds of people each party seeks out as part of a base-centered strategy are likely to be quite different from the kinds of people that both parties seek to influence in efforts to expand their electoral coalitions in search of political victory. In this case, our results are interesting. Political Parties and the Resurgence of Grassroots Politicking Conventional conceptions of political parties view them as multidimensional linkage institutions between the mass electorate and elected officials in the government (Baer and Bositis 1993; Eldersveld 1982; Sorauf 1967), Parties exist as organizations, with some degree of structure, varying divisions of labor, and some number of full-time employees and, in the government, with officials (actual and potential) standing for election under party labels. Eldersveld noted that political parties are a central type of linkage structure in the modern American political system. As "intermediary organizations," they "help produce positive action and effective decisions in the face of fragmentation, conflict, and mass involvement. These structures are groups that engage in activities and organize initiatives that make cooperative behavior possible" (1982, 4). …

Polls and Elections Southern Discomfort? Regional Differences in Voter Decision Making in the 2000 Presidential Election

Abstract: The South has undergone dramatic changes in population, economics, and partisanship in recent decades, leading scholars to conclude that the New South has lost many of its unique patterns of voting behavior. Using an extensive data set that contains sufficient sample sizes for regional comparisons, we estimate an interactive model of vote choice in the 2000 presidential election to compare the decision making of Southern and non-Southern respondents. We find that the voting calculus of Southern voters remains distinct, particularly for those struggling with cross-pressures between ideology and party identification. These findings have theoretical implications for general models of presidential voting behavior and practical relevance for understanding election outcomes and the future of party politics in the South. The contemporary American South continues to experience dramatic changes in population, economics, and partisanship that have fundamentally altered the political landscape of not only the region but the entire nation. The wide-ranging effects of these developments on electoral behavior are not entirely understood, but it is unquestionable that the New South remains as important in American politics—particularly presidential elections—as the Old South. With nearly two-thirds of the Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency, the South is a considerable electoral prize. 1 More than a

Why “Go Public”? Presidential Use of Nominees to the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Abstract: In recent years, presidents have utilized public appeals on behalf of their nominees to the U.S. Courts of Appeals with increasing regularity. In this study, I examine the timing, audience, and themes of these presidential speeches from 1977 to 2004. I find that presidents have tended to discuss circuit court nominees who are vulnerable to defeat in the confirmation process before narrow audiences consisting of sympathetic groups or campaign supporters. Presidents discussed nominees in an effort to influence Senate behavior, but more so to court favor with like-minded groups and link nominees to electoral politics. These findings indicate that presidents have begun to insert their nominees into public political discourse for their own political gain, rather than to help their nominees secure confirmation.

Institutional Change and the Dynamics of Vice Presidential Selection

Abstract: The American vice presidency has recently matured into a distinguished office of considerable authority (David 1967; Goldstein 1982; Light 1984; Mayer 2000; Nelson 1988a; Pomper 1966). Vice President Richard Cheney's unprecedented power in the administration of George W. Bush, from advocating the Iraq War to shaping the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and forging the nation's energy policy, is only the latest manifestation of the newly invigorated office. (1) The rapid growth in its substantive responsibilities dates back largely to Jimmy Carter's inclusion of Vice President Walter Mondale among his inner circle, the first time a president treated his vice president as a valued advisor on a broad array of issues (Light 1984). Since then, presidents have frequently vested their seconds in command with real authority and, at least in the cases of Albert Gore and Richard Cheney, positions akin to true partnerships. Despite the office's growth, the vice presidency has evaded scholarly attention, and relatively little is known about how presidential candidates choose their running mates. Here we analyze the vice presidential selection process by focusing on the incentives facing presidential nominees, who since 1940 have handpicked their running mates, (2) and how these incentives have changed over time. We propose a new model of vice presidential selection that emphasizes the influence of two major developments--one a set of institutional changes, the other a historical accident--that substantially changed the incentives driving nominees' choice of running mates. We modify and temporally extend an existing empirical analysis of the selection process (Sigelman and Wahlbeck 1997) to test our belief that these forces lessened the strategic value of ticket balancing, widely emphasized in the literature, and instead increased the importance of choosing running mates with extensive backgrounds in public service who would appeal to the mass electorate in the general election. Freer to choose running mates based on their qualifications and more personal factors, presidents have become more willing to entrust their vice presidents with governing authority once elected, further enhancing the office and the incentive to fill it with a capable running mate. The Changing Incentives of Vice Presidential Selection When choosing a running mate, presidential nominees must balance two potentially competing goals: maximizing their chances of actually being elected president and selecting a vice president who is capable of sharing the burdens of government and, if necessary, succeeding to the presidency. Because the latter is meaningless without the former, the academic and popular consensus is that electoral motivations drive the choice of a running mate (Goldstein 1982; Natoli 1985; Polsby and Wildavsky 1991; Sigelman and Wahlbeck 1997). Generally, the conventional wisdom is that presidential candidates seek to balance their ticket by choosing a running mate who contributes key qualities that the presidential nominee lacks. The particular electoral environment will determine which balancing characteristics--such as age, nature of political experience, ideology--matter most. The most rigorous existing empirical analysis of the dynamics driving vice presidential selection is Lee Sigelman and Paul J. Wahlbeck's 1997 study. To test the ticket-balancing theory, Sigelman and Wahlbeck constructed a conditional logit model of 22 major party selections from 1940 to 1996 comprising a variety of measures of ticket balance along regional, ideological, experiential, and demographic dimensions, as well as a measure of the electoral size of a prospective running mate's state. Empirically, the ticket-balancing theory failed to pass muster. Factors long thought to influence the selection process, including region, political ideology, religion, race, gender, and ethnicity, were shown, surprisingly, to have little or no effect on the likelihood of selection. …

If Everyone Had Voted, Would Bubba and Dubya Have Won?

Abstract: Adapting and refining the approach used in earlier work on Senate elections, we simulate the impact of universal turnout on each presidential election from 1992 to 2004 and find little evidence that increased turnout would systematically transform partisan competition or policy outcomes. A state-level analysis of exit polls and the Current Population Survey reveals considerable variability in the gap separating voters and nonvoters. In most cases, nonvoters are just slightly more Democratic than voters. However, a handful of states, such as Texas, consistently feature a large “partisan differential,” in which nonvoters come disproportionately from demographic groups that are more Democratic than voters. We find that universal turnout may well have tipped an extremely close election—such as that of 2000 or even 2004—into the Democratic column. But the partisan differential is generally small enough that universal turnout would only change the outcome of an already close contest rather than leading to a wholesale transformation of competitive dynamics.

Presidential Policy Initiatives: How the Public Learns about State of the Union Proposals from the Mass Media

Abstract: Media coverage of State of the Union proposals increases public knowledge on presidential policy initiatives, especially among individuals who follow news coverage. These estimates are based on within-survey/within-subjects comparisons of answers to factual questions for respondents who are simultaneously unexposed and exposed to media coverage on the same issue. In this powerful but underused design, individuals serve as counterfactuals for themselves, holding constant all relevant observed and unobserved characteristics. The findings are based on statistical analyses of data from four national surveys conducted since the late 1990s covering a range of topics from health care to Social Security reform. Watching or listening to the address directly does not appreciably affect knowledge once control variables are added for whether individuals follow news coverage of the speech, the amount of news coverage, and the interaction of these two factors.

The Rising Power of the Modern Vice Presidency

Abstract: These are truly extraordinary times for the American vice presidency. For most of American history, citizens have heard the familiar disparagements about the weakness of the nation's second office, from John Adams's complaint that "[m]y country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived ... I can do neither good nor evil," to Daniel Webster's refusal to run for vice president because "I do not propose to be buried before I am dead," to John Nance Garner's reported conclusion that "the vice presidency is not worth a pitcher of warm spit" (Goldstein 1995)--actually, he may have uttered a different four-letter word, but that's a different story--to Nelson Rockefeller's dismissal of his final office as simply "standby equipment" (Persico 1982, 245). Against that history of nearly 200 years, who would ever have thought that in 2008, serious people would be wondering whether the office has become too powerful? Who could have imagined that the adjective "imperial" would be used to modify "vice presidency" (Blumenthal 2007)? Surely Hubert H. Humphrey would never have anticipated that juxtaposition of such inconsistent concepts. He may have recommended the office to Walter F. Mondale (Moe 2006), but he suffered in it from underutilization, subject as he was to Lyndon B. Johnson's capricious treatment. That experience prompted him to coin Humphrey's law about the dependent nature of his office: "He who giveth can taketh away and often does" (Goldstein 1997, 112; Humphrey 1969). Humphrey had hoped to be a close presidential advisor and troubleshooter, but ultimately he wanted to be vice president so he could one day be elected president. Forty years ago, he found that his tenure as vice president complicated that ambition. That service, in the eyes of some, diminished him, and the association it brought with an unpopular war and president tarnished his record. By contrast, Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to be vice president so he could be vice president. The second office was sufficiently robust to represent the life's ambition of a man who brought to that job a resume of diverse, high-level government experience that would rival or exceed that of virtually anyone who had ever served as president or vice president. Cheney's association with an unpopular war and president did not deter him from realizing his life's ambition. He has not been simply "standby equipment." And while people divide regarding whether he has done "good" or "evil," most observers assign him significant responsibility for what has been done during the last seven-plus years. So how did it happen? How did the oxymoron of "vice presidential power" (Light 1984) become reality? And how did the "imperial vice president" become a familiar concept (Blumenthal 2007)? I have been asked to trace the development of the vice presidency, beginning with the term of Walter F. Mondale through the present day, and to discuss the experience and temperament of the five vice presidents who served during this time, as well as their relationships and roles, in order to suggest some broad themes relevant to selecting the next vice presidential candidate. In so doing, I want to suggest that vice presidential role and power during this period has been the product of institutional development and a variety of factors that have arranged themselves in different ways with each successive president-vice president pair. Put differently, vice presidential role does not turn simply on being able to control any single factor but rather on the different ways in which a number of important influences are arranged or play out in each administration. It is important to place the Mondale vice presidency in some historical context, and I will do so, although sketching with very broad strokes. In essence, the vice presidency grew, and moved, from around the beginning of the twentieth century. …

The Presidency and Local Media: Local Newspaper Coverage of President George W. Bush

Abstract: Leading the media, public, and Congress through speeches is at the core of modern presidential governance. But just as the modern political environment requires presidents to appeal for support through speeches, presidents are increasingly unable to cultivate public opinion. Presidents who attempt to lead the nation are faced with a public that tunes out the president's prime-time addresses (Baum and Kernell 1999) and a news media whose attention to presidential addresses is fleeting (Peake and Eshbaugh-Soha 2008). When the national news media cover the presidency, the coverage is typically more negative than positive (Farnsworth and Lichter 2005; Groeling and Kernell 1998). As a result, presidents have difficulty setting the media's agenda (Edwards and Wood 1999; Eshbaugh-Soha and Peake 2003) or moving public opinion (Edwards 2003). The difficulty presidents face generating positive and frequent national news coverage is not lost upon recent chief executives. Increasingly, presidents have turned from the so-called "filter" of national news coverage to appeal to local and regional media for coverage. This has manifest itself in increased domestic travel (Cook 2002; Cohen and Powell 2003) and efforts on the part of the White House to nurture favorable relations--and presumably news coverage--with local media. Cultivating local media begins with one expectation: Local media are more responsive than national media to the White House's efforts to generate news coverage, whether support for the president's policy or reelection goals. Indeed, presidential administrations target local media for two reasons, argues Martha Joynt Kumar (2007, 97-99). First, "the president generally receives positive coverage when he travels to localities around the country" and that coverage is typically comprehensive. Second, people generally trust their local media more than they trust national media outlets. This, in turn, makes local media the primary source of news for most Americans (Hamilton 2004). Journalists, White House insiders, and some political scientists hold this as conventional wisdom and suggest it is one of the reasons for why presidential administrations since Nixon have targeted local media through domestic travel and other efforts. Recent research on newspaper coverage of President George W. Bush's trips provides support for this conventional wisdom. In 2001, for example, President Bush's domestic travel led to mostly positive local newspaper coverage (Barrett and Peake 2007). Bush's Social Security reform tour in 2003, which included a significant "going local" strategy, received ample and generally favorable local coverage from local newspapers in comparison with stories in the Washington Post (Eshbaugh-Soha and Peake 2006). Despite these findings, the burgeoning literature on this understudied topic is not definitively supportive of the conventional wisdom. One study of everyday coverage of the presidency--unrelated to specific presidential visits--demonstrates that local newspaper coverage of the presidency is in fact decidedly negative (Eshbaugh-Soha 2008b). Another study, which focused on a broad set of local newspapers and front-page coverage unrelated to domestic travel by President Bush in 2006, produced decidedly mixed findings (Peake 2007). To further develop our understanding of local media coverage of the presidency, we examine local newspaper coverage of the third year of George W. Bush's presidency. We expect that local news media will cover presidential trips favorably in part due to the unique and rare nature of a presidential visit. Yet, we expect substantial variation in local news coverage across several important variables, including audience support for the president and numerous characteristics of the story itself. What is more, we explore the impact that local coverage of the war in Iraq had on the tone of presidential news coverage to see if President Bush is correct that local media would offer a more favorable perspective of the president and his policies in light of increasingly negative national news coverage of the war after the fall of Baghdad. …

The Evolution of the Rhetorical Presidency and Getting Past the Traditional/Modern Divide

Abstract: 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 term largely coined by James Ceasar, Glen Thurow, Jeffrey Tulis, and Joseph Bessette in their article "The Rise of the Rhetorical Presidency" (1981) and more fully developed by Tulis in his book The Rhetorical Presidency (1987), has come to dominate presidential study, as well as the rhetoric of presidential scholarship itself. Indeed, because the modern presidency is presented in these works as the true origin of the rhetoric and the power of the contemporary presidency that we observe today, this demarcation is often used as a jumping-off point for much of the research in the field (Campbell 1996; Greenstein, Berman, and Felzenberg 1977; Landy 1985; Liebovich 2001; McConnell 1967; Medhurst 1996a, 1996b; Pfiffner 2000; Polsby 1973; Rozell and Pederson 1997; Shaw 1987; Stuckey 1997). Additionally, if studies do not begin their analysis with a modern president, then they most likely busy themselves with attempting to determine the exact point of the origination of the modern (Gamm and Smith 1998; Greenstein 1978, 1982, 1988, 2000, 2006; Greenstein, Berman, and Felzenberg 1977; Kernell 1997; Milkis 1998; Smith and Smith 1990; Tulis 1987, 1996, 1998). While initially excavating the subject matter, the questions that seemed to emerge from many works studying the presidency were: Where does the modern rhetorical presidency truly begin? And who can be seen as the originator of the style of political activity and presidential rhetorical prowess that we see today? There was also (and still is) a debate over whether the modern presidency began with Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, or even Teddy Roosevelt. Looking to provide more insight into the subject, I dove headfirst into the fray and used a sampling of 50 State of the Union addresses to make observations on the conflict. In my 2003 article, some of my findings, which are questioned and largely misinterpreted by Chad Murphy in his critical analysis, posited that there might be "three observable eras in the evolution of the state of the union address" and that "the modern [period] begins with Woodrow Wilson and continues to the present day" (343). However, the main thrust of the article, and a conclusion almost completely ignored in Murphy's analysis, was that "although format changes and rhetorical changes have occurred in presidential rhetoric, the traditional/modern paradigm, seemingly so widely accepted, may warrant revision and re-evaluation" (343). In addition, I found that "because of the many variables at play within consideration of presidential rhetoric, it is nearly impossible to say with confidence that the observed changes are the result of single individuals" (343). In this essay, one of my primary purposes is to respond to the queries raised by Murphy. However, the bigger question that needs to be examined in the realm of presidential scholarship is, yet again, the propriety of the traditional/modern dichotomy. I believe that the use of this paradigm is not only a hindrance to fully understanding the development of presidential power and rhetoric, it is a misnomer that is utilized for simplicity's sake at the cost of extensive and extremely insightful research. The Evolution of the Modern Rhetorical Presidency: A Critical Response In his essay, Murphy does an excellent job of taking the much-needed next step for an examination of presidential rhetoric and the State of the Union address. In order to produce a clearer picture of the development of the State of the Union address and the changes that have taken place therein, he includes all of the annual messages in his study. He asserts, "Consequently, I am able to more clearly identify the periods of presidential rhetoric and locate the durable shift in contemporary presidential speech making. …

“An Informal and Limited Alliance”: The President and the Supreme Court

Abstract: Presidential influence transcends some of the barriers imposed by the separation of powers to influence decision making by the Supreme Court. Specifically, we test Robert Scigliano's proposition that an informal and limited alliance exists between the president and the Court. The analysis utilizes Supreme Court decisions on civil rights and civil liberties cases from 1953 to 2000 to assess the effects of the presidency, Congress, judicial policy preferences, and legal factors on the Court. The findings demonstrate that presidential ideology influences Court decisions, while the effects of Congress are more conditional and limited. The results provide support for Scigliano's notion of an informal alliance.

The Mixed Legacies of Ronald Reagan

Abstract: Although academia continues to debate Ronald Reagan's place in history, a Reagan legacy industry has been working, with some success, to enshrine the former president's memory in a host of public sites and symbols (Bjerre-Poulsen 2008). The man who fired the nation's air traffic controllers and thundered against the growth of the federal bureaucracy now has Washington's national airport and DC's largest federal office building named in his honor. Recently, conservative activists have borrowed from the evangelical Christian movement and urged each other to be guided by the question "What would Reagan do?" (Heritage Foundation 2008). And even Barack Obama invoked Ronald Reagan in the 2008 presidential campaign as a role model of transformative leadership. From these and other indications, it would seem that Ronald Reagan is well on his way to becoming an iconographic figure in our politics. Many academics and liberal groups understandably take a dim view of this development. But the fact of the matter is that ours would be a very dreary political society if citizens did not try to find ways to celebrate their departed heroes. Rather than pooh-poohing the idea of honoring important political figures, we would do better to recognize that there are significantly different ways of doing so. One way of honoring is to memorialize a person. We do that by stamping his or her name on physical things--a street, building, piece of currency, and the like. Thus the Reagan Legacy Project, led by Grover Nordquist and his group, Americans for Tax Reform, aims to erect a Reagan monument in every state and to have something named after the former president in each of the nation's 3,054 counties. Second, we can bestow honor by ritually praising the person who is to be remembered. This involves mounting celebrations, remembrances, or similar hortatory projects. Here, for example, one might think of the commemorations conducted by the Young America's Foundation at Reagan's Rancho del Cielo or the over 40 state governments that have now designated February 6 (the former president's birthday) as "Ronald Reagan Day." Finally, there is the honor that comes from trying to appreciate a person. By "appreciate" I aim to use the term in its original sense--to evaluate or price out the worth of whatever is under consideration. In this sense, to appreciate does not mean simply to admire or be thankful. It means to be carefully attentive to understand, in a well-rounded way, the significance of someone or something. Applied to any major political figure, such an appreciative effort means striving to take the full measure of a person's presence on the public scene. That is far different from simply rendering a thumbs-up or thumbs-down approval rating. It seems to me that this third category is the highest form of honor we can bestow on a person. That is because it puts the supreme value on the truth of things. We pay our greatest respect to a person by studiously and honestly weighing what it meant that he or she passed through this troubled world. It is true that Reagan has become an iconographic figure for many people. But this does not deny the value of striving for such an appreciation. Quite the contrary. Properly understood, an icon is not something to be worshipped but something to be seen into, a portal into deeper realities. Ideologically closed minds can have trouble seeing that an icon is not an idol. Of course, even in the best of circumstances, honoring-as-truthful-appreciation is difficult work. A wise historian once said that "all history is contemporary history" (Collingwood 1994, 202). (1) In other words, you and I cannot avoid seeing the past in light of our present. Humanly speaking, that is the only light we have. If that is the case in the best of circumstances, offering a fair account of Ronald Reagan's legacy in 2008 is especially difficult. Given that it is scarcely 20 years since he left office, we are only just now entering the middle distance where one can start gaining a reasonable historical perspective. …

The Contemporary Presidency: “An Excess of Refinement”: Lame Duck Presidents in Constitutional and Historical Context

Abstract: Well into President George W. Bush's second term, history appears to be repeating itself--second terms are far more problematic than first terms. Are problematic second terms inevitable, and if so are they caused by the Twenty-second Amendment? In this article I explore the constitutional and historical dynamics of presidential term limits, focusing on the leadership and clerkship roles the president performs in the constitutional system, constrained by the dynamics of political time. The article examines the classic arguments for and against term limits, comparing Hamilton's focus on stability to Jefferson's concern for tyranny. It then surveys the scholarship on second term problems to tease out the effects of term limits from the more general problem of second terms. I conclude with an analysis of second term and term limit problems from a political time perspective, suggesting that presidents are more constrained in the pursuit of their constitutional functions by the dynamics of regime cycles than they are by term limits. It appears that term limits add little to the functions of the presidency in the constitutional order. There is an excess of refinement in the idea of disabling the people to continue in off we men who had entitled themselves, in their opinion, to approbation and confidence, the advantages of which are at best speculative and equivocal, and are overbalanced by disadvantages far more certain and decisive. Federalist No. 72 As this article is being written, the nation is well into the final quartile of President George W. Bush's presidency, and it would appear that history is repeating itself. Despite a reelection win that was clearly stronger than his first victory, and despite claiming political capital he was willing to spend, Bush's second term has witnessed plunging public approval, a troubled policy agenda, and significant midterm election losses. The administration entered its second term having undertaken a study of previous second terms to stave off the inevitable, to no apparent avail (Balz 2007, 25). History demonstrates that second terms are far more problematic than first terms, afflicted with "sixth year itches," "sixth year curses," and the more generic "second term blues" (Sabato 2008; Shogan 2006; Fortier and Ornstein 2007). One explanation for this phenomenon is the president's status as a lame duck due to the term limits imposed by the Twenty-second Amendment. This article examines the impact of the two-term limit on the president's ability to do his job, exploring this question from a constitutional and historical perspective, focusing on the leadership and clerkship roles the president performs in the constitutional system, constrained by the dynamics of political time, concluding that term limits are, in Hamilton's evocative phrase, "an excess of refinement." That is, while not the harbinger of doom some portray, they in fact add little to the functions of the presidency. The argument is in four parts. The article begins with a brief review of the president's function in the constitutional order, moving away from a presidency-centered approach in favor of a systemic one, arguing that this is the best way to evaluate presidential effectiveness. Second, it outlines the classic concerns about term limits, both pro and con, comparing Alexander Hamilton's focus on energy and stability to Thomas Jefferson's concern for tyranny and health, arguing that each makes strong and weak arguments, but that Hamilton wins the day. Third, it surveys the scholarship on second term problems, highlighting arguments concerning reelection hubris, administration fatigue, and leadership failure to demonstrate that some problems are due more to the existence of successive terms than to term limits. The article concludes with an examination of term limits in a broader historical context, comparing second term problems to the constraints and opportunities all presidents face at various points in political time, arguing that presidents are limited far more by larger historical forces than they are by a lame duck status. …

Who Speaks for the People? The President, the Press, and Public Opinion in the United States

Abstract: The U.S. president, the press (or media), and public opinion survey data are all stand-ins--substitutes--for the American people. In the United States as a federal republic, the U.S. president is the sole elected representative of all Americans. Among the president's chief attributes is his role as a rhetorician and national communicator; one person, the president, gives voice to the mass public. He serves as the personification and the symbol of the United States (Ceasar et al. 1981; Cohen 2004; Hart 1987; Wattenberg 2004). Furthermore, the president's role as chief communicator has dominated media attention over the last several decades, albeit at the expense of Congress members, other members of government, and other members of his political party (Rozell 2003). What the public learns about government often comes from what the president imparts. The press, for its part, provides the forum for and content of public discourse. Reportage by journalists of what politicians, government officials, businesspersons, and professionals say or write; published or spoken commentary by known figures; guest editorials; letters to the editor; and Web logs by known and unknown members of the public constitute the public sphere. Almost all of what Americans know about national politics, the U.S. government, their fellow citizens, and the larger world is communicated through the media. The persons, ideas, and arguments of national politics and government are what members of the public absorb from watching television; reading newspapers, magazines, and other publications; and being on the Internet. The press (or media, to use the terms interchangeably) may distort political reality in predictable ways (Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston 2007; Sparrow 1999; Cook 1998), but for practical purposes media reality is political reality. Public opinion polls, too, speak for the American public. If public opinion had once been an amalgam of public correspondence, politicians' conversations, letter-writing campaigns, petitions, and public demonstrations, this has not been the case for more than a half century. Scientific public opinion surveys have effectively made public opinion identical to polling results, and polling results are typically now the only indicator used for the determination of popular views and personal behaviors with respect to particular persons and issues. Vox Populi, Vox Dei. Dick Cheney's infamous recent response (the vice president replied "So?" to an ABC News interviewer's declaration that two-thirds of Americans believe that the war in Iraq was not worth fighting) is the exception that proves the rule (Raddatz 2008): Few politicians or public figures can publicly speak out against, or voice opposition to, the American public. And very few politicians or officials, if any, can do so consistently. On the contrary, politicians, government officials, and the public pay attention to public opinion reflected in polling data. While public opinion may not ultimately settle issues, it almost always factors in decision making, as accounts of the operations of the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations indicate. And if public opinion is especially one sided, it may actually be controlling. If this introductory set of comments seems obvious, perhaps less obvious is how these three institutions--the presidency, the press, and the polls--interrelate. They cannot all represent the public's voice, obviously, unless they are in full agreement. Yet much of the time, and possibly most of the time, this is clearly not the case. Does one of these institutions better represent the public than the other(s)? Does any one (or any two) dominate the other(s)? Or, are there separate spheres in which one (or more than one) of these public voices is (are) privileged? The purpose of this article is to reconsider these three institutions--the first, formal, the latter two, informal--and their role in the political system. …

The Evolution of the Modern Rhetorical Presidency: A Critical Response

Abstract: 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 nineteenth century. Today, presidents use fewer words, as well as words such as we and our with greater frequency. According to Teten and others, these changes--defining the modern rhetorical presidency--occurred during the Woodrow Wilson administration, potentially because of Wilson's decision to resume the delivery of an annual spoken address to Congress rather than send a written communique. Teten's conclusions are based on a sample of State of the Union addresses that may mask variation in the length and tone of the speeches, I analyze the text of all State of the Union addresses, allowing me to examine the full distribution of elements of presidential rhetoric over the past 217 years. Consequently, I am able to more clearly identify the periods of presidential rhetoric and locate the durable shift in contemporary presidential speech making. My analysis suggests that Wilson was more of a transitional figure, a president with rhetorical features before his time. Permanent changes in the State of the Union address occurred later during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. This change coincided with the increased use of technology by the president and Congress and the expansion of the audience for the State of the Union speech. Three Eras of Presidential Rhetoric In his recent work, Teten investigates rhetorical change in the early twentieth century. He states that he does not seek to resolve the debate over whether the modern rhetorical presidency began with Theodore Roosevelt (Gamm and Smith 1998; Kernell 2007; Milkis 1998) or with Woodrow Wilson (Tulis 1987). Instead, the author seeks to examine whether the rhetorical presidency is best divided in two, as it currently is, or whether another classification better fits the history of presidential speech making. Additionally, the author attempts to illuminate some specific areas in which presidential rhetoric has changed. These areas include the use of inclusive rhetoric and shorter speeches in the modern era as compared to the traditional era. Many factors make the analysis of rhetoric problematic. Controlling for the audience and general tone of the speech is difficult, so Teten limits his analysis to State of the Union addresses based on the speech's constitutionally mandated nature and consistent audience (2003, 335). Further, text provides a large quantity of speeches. There are more than 200 addresses, and they are lengthy, totaling 1,769,516 words across 43 presidents. Teten simplifies his task by sampling 50 addresses, selected at random, oversampling for the time period between Theodore Roosevelt and Wilson because that is the time period generally addressed by scholars as the transition from the traditional to the modern rhetorical presidency. Teten offers tests of two hypotheses with respect to rhetoric and the State of the Union address, The first hypothesis is that the total length of speeches has decreased in the modern era. To test this, he examines the total number of words in presidential speeches and observes an interesting finding, Early presidents gave short addresses, but starting with John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, the length of the annual address to Congress increased dramatically over the next 90 years, averaging between 15,000 and 20,000 words (Teten 2003, 340). Beginning with Woodrow Wilson in 1914, the number of words in the State of the Union address dropped sharply, never again passing the 10,000-word mark in the addresses sampled by the author. From this, Teten draws the inference that there are three rhetorical presidencies rather than two. He is cautious about claiming that Wilson deliberately altered presidential rhetoric, explaining that it may have been a function of Wilson delivering the address orally to Congress rather than in written form like his predecessors. …

The Presidential Pork Barrel and the Conditioning Effect of Term

Abstract: There have been numerous analyses of how presidential election rules and pressures shape campaign behavior. Shaw (1999) and Hill and McKee (2005) reveal, for example, that presidential candidates expend more resources in states with uncertain outcomes--these are sometimes called "battleground" states. Surprisingly little has been done on the effects of elections on presidential governance, however. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that presidents make policy that favors battleground states. Witness, for instance, the Bush administration's imposition of tariffs on steel imports during 2002-2003 that, many argued, was designed to attract support from the domestic industry's home states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia--all of them up for grabs in the 2004 presidential contest (Broder 2002). This is something Karl Rove called "asset deployment" (Solomon, MacGillis, and Cohen 2007). Other impressionistic evidence suggests that presidents advantage those states that provided them with the most support in their election. There have been reports that New York has received disproportionately little of federal homeland security money in the past few years because it is solidly Democratic (Newfield 2004). Two hypotheses about federal government spending and presidential elections reflect these casual observations. The first is the battleground hypothesis. It asserts that states that are evenly balanced between the two parties will receive a disproportionate amount of federal largesse as presidents attempt to curry favor for the upcoming election. The second is the presidential-support hypothesis. It posits that presidents reward states whose voters supported them in disproportionately large numbers in the previous election. This article is a contribution to the small but growing literature that tests these hypotheses and examines what might be called the presidential pork barrel. It adds value in two ways. First, it focuses on a category of spending, procurement, that has not been examined this way before. Procurement is particularly suited to a test of these hypotheses. It is, for instance, clearly distributive in nature. A problem with Larcinese, Rizzo, and Testa's (2006) recent study is that they use aggregate federal spending per capita to confirm the presidential support hypothesis. A significant proportion of this measure is in the form of direct payments to individuals--policy the president has little ability to alter unilaterally because it is established by prearranged statutorily derived formulae. Efforts to alter geographic patterns of this type of spending are likely to be shaped by partisan and ideological struggles. Second, the article examines the conditioning effect of term. No other study of this issue has looked at presidential term, but it makes sense to assume that the vote-buying imperatives of the two hypotheses are greatly attenuated or completely absent in presidents' second terms. Forced from the ballot by the Twenty-Second Amendment, second-term presidents do not need to use distributive spending to buy popular votes. Theoretical Underpinnings and Hypotheses If distributive spending is used for electoral purposes, the fundamental assumption is generally that elected officials "buy" the votes of constituents by directing government largesse to them. The more spending their constituents receive, the greater the chances elected officials have of receiving their votes and winning the election. The president's constituency is the nation. However, the Electoral College breaks this constituency into fifty-one discrete units--the fifty states plus the District of Columbia. Each state has the same number of electoral votes as it has members of Congress, and candidates must win a majority of these votes (at least 270) to become or remain president. What is more, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, all states use the unit rule, which means they distribute their electoral votes en bloc to the candidate who wins a plurality of their popular vote. …

The Law: Presidential Misuse of the Pardon Power

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to explore why the presidential pardon power has been invoked by our last three presidents not merely for the traditional reasons of showing mercy or ensuring justice, but also in circumstances where the president may have enjoyed a personal benefit from exercising executive clemency. Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush each used clemency in inappropriate ways: either to help their own executive branch officials and possibly themselves to avoid judicial prosecution (Bush 1 and 2), or to excuse financial contributors and aides that, as the president himself, had been subjects of aggressive independent counsel investigations (Clinton). These controversial clemency actions of the last three presidents are an unfortunate legacy of the independent counsel statute, which lapsed in 1999. As will be shown, nearly every pre-Watergate president who had endured a special counsel investigation avoided using the clemency power to excuse executive branch officials from their crimes, especially in circumstances where the president's own involvement was unclear. The restraint showed by these past presidents is consistent with the framers' intentions that the clemency power be used either as a kingly "act of grace," or for "the public welfare"--not to excuse the president's men. The three recent presidents mentioned above may represent a disturbing new trend where a modern chief executive feels free to excuse his close associates in circumstances where his administration may be involved in wrongdoing, or to reward political donors. Using the clemency power to protect one's aides or help one's benefactors marks a misuse of the presidential pardon power. Brief History The presidential clemency power found in Article II of the Constitution vests in the president the ability to "grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." The American clemency power was based on the British king's power to excuse offenses. In Great Britain, where an absolute monarch reigned virtually unchecked, the pardon power was often "abused for personal gain," according to political scientist David Gray Adler (Adler 1989, 213). He notes, "the king frequently used pardons as partisan indulgences for friends and supporters" (ibid., 209). In fact, "pardons frequently [were] sold" by Edward II (ibid., 227). Kings used clemency to consolidate power, concluding that mercy endears a king to his subject (Kobil 1991, 586). Despite their fear of tyranny, the American framers nevertheless added to the Constitution a very potent clemency power. They followed the British idea of vesting a clemency power in one person by awarding it to the chief executive or "president" in the Constitution, although many remained suspicious of a strong executive (ibid., 589-590). The most famous defender of a broad pardon power among the framers was probably Alexander Hamilton, who contended in Federalist No. 74 that without "the benign prerogative of pardoning ... justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel" (Hamilton, Madison and Jay 1999, 415). Vesting the pardon power in the president was the best decision because "the sense of responsibility is always strongest in proportion as it is undivided" (ibid., 415-416). In unsettled times characterized by "insurrection or rebellion," a "well-timed offer of pardon ... may restore the tranquility of the commonwealth"; practically speaking, a single person would be better equipped than a group to make such quick and difficult decisions (ibid., 417). Consistent with Hamilton's reasoning, the framers created this powerful prerogative despite the danger presented by a chief executive possibly forgiving treason by his own associates. Virginia delegate George Mason warned that the president might use the pardon power to derail investigations into unseemly executive behavior (Adler 1989, 221). …

The Contemporary Presidency Constraining Executive Power: George W. Bush and the Constitution

Abstract: The Framers of the Constitution were influenced by their English constitutional heritage with respect to individual rights and drew heavily upon British precedents. With respect to governmental structure, however, they rejected British precedent and created a separation of powers system based on a written constitution. The principles upon which they designed the Constitution included explicit limits on the powers of government and a separation of powers structure intended to prevent the accumulation of power in any one branch of government. The system set up by the Framers has worked reasonably well for more than two centuries of political experience (with the exception of the Civil War). In the nineteenth century, the Congress tended to dominate policy making, except in cases of war. In the twentieth century, however, the presidency accumulated sufficient power to play a dominating role in both domestic and foreign policy. One of the important constitutional confrontations between the presidency and Congress over a range of issues occurred during the "imperial" presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. In reaction to the aggrandizement of power in the presidency, Congress asserted its own constitutional authority by enacting a number of laws intended to constrain presidential power. It is this congressional reassertion of constitutional authority in the 1970s that Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush intended to reverse when they came to power in 2001. The administration, particularly Vice President Cheney, who had served as chief of staff to President Gerald Ford, felt that Congress overreacted to Vietnam and Watergate and hobbled presidential power in unconstitutional ways. He said, The feeling I had [during the Ford years], and I think it's been borne out by history, that in the aftermath, especially of Vietnam and Watergate, that the balance shifted, if you will, that, in fact, the presidency was weakened, that there were congressional efforts to rein in and to place limits on presidential authority. (Walsh 2006) A White House aide later articulated an attitude seemingly shared by many at the top levels of the Bush administration: The powers of the presidency have been eroded and usurped to the breaking point. We are engaged in a new kind of war that cannot be fought by old methods. It can only be directed by a strong executive who alone is not subject to the conflicting pressures that legislators or judges face. The public understands and supports that unpleasant reality, whatever the media and intellectuals say. (Hoagland 2006) (1) Those "conflicting pressures," of course, are the whole point of the separation of powers system. The atrocities of 9/11 gave President Bush the opportunity to achieve much of the expansion of executive power that he had sought since he became president. This article will take up four cases of extraordinary claims that President George W. Bush has made to executive authority under the Constitution: suspending the Geneva Conventions, denying habeas corpus appeals, National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance, and signing statements. Suspending the Geneva Conventions and Torture George W. Bush has been the only U.S. president to defend publicly the right of U.S. personnel to torture detainees. Probably the president did not intend for U.S. personnel to commit the egregious acts of torture that resulted in the death of many detainees. He did argue, however, that U.S. personnel needed to use aggressive techniques when interrogating prisoners captured in the war on terror. Despite declarations that "we do not torture," the aggressive interrogation procedures that were used by U.S. personnel (military, CIA, and contractors) in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib are considered by most of the world to be torture. The Bush administration, in determining the legal basis of interrogation policy, used a narrow and technical definition of "torture" set forth in an Office of Legal Counsel memorandum of August 2002. …

Substance versus Style: Distinguishing Presidential Job Performance from Favorability

Abstract: 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 academia. Unlike most survey instruments, which simply take the pulse of the public on particular issues, Gallup's approval question has been transformed into a political resource, something that presidents and their advisors hope to influence through strategic action (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Bond, Fleisher, and Wood 2003; Jacobs and Shapiro 1994.) The rise of the Gallup approval series to its elevated status is in some ways ironic, as the meaning of the question began and remains ambiguous. As Edwards (1990, 3) reports, early in its history, the Gallup organization experimented with the wording of the question to avoid measuring how much people "liked" the president and settled on the current form of the question in 1945 because it best measured the "job approval" of the president. Yet despite Gallup's efforts at refinement, Neustadt (1960) describes the question as "unfocused," and Mueller notes, "many respondents when asked are able only vaguely to rationalize their positions" (1973, 18). The ambiguity of the question is also reflected in the various terms used to describe it. Early studies characterize it as "presidential popularity," while later studies tend to use the term "presidential approval" or "job approval." In an attempt to resolve this debate, Brody argues that popularity "is the most frequently used and utterly confusing of the synonyms for the public's evaluation of the job performance of the incumbent president. It is confusing because it connotes image rather than substance and surface rather than depth" (1991, 3). Despite these protestations, ambiguity about the question remains. It is precisely around these issues of image and substance that the uncertainty about the Gallup question arises. Are responses to this question solely a reflection of presidential job performance, or do personal evaluations of the president play an important and identifiable role in respondents' answers? In their field essay on presidential approval, Gronke and Newman (2003) stress the need for studies like this one that integrate insights from economic-based, time-series analysis with findings about character assessment from cross-sectional analysis. Cross-sectional and panel studies find that presidential character matters in the public's assessment of the president and presidential candidates (Funk 1999; Kinder 1986) and is linked to presidential approval (Greene 2001). However, time-series studies of presidential approval (the vast majority) focus on the impact of economic conditions and world events, with little attention given to examining whether there is a personal dimension to the public's approval. (1) Research in this area is not just of empirical interest, however; it raises important normative issues as well. In some circles, there is concern that images will eclipse substance in politics, as voters are fooled by "smoke and mirrors" and ignore the impact of policy decisions (Waterman, Wright, and St. Clair 1999). The analysis presented here investigates the role of the public's personal evaluation of the president in its assessment of the president over time. To identify and understand the personal component of the public's evaluation of the president, I create a quarterly measure of the president's favorability from 1977 to 2002. The favorability question has been asked repeatedly across presidential administrations, making it possible to compare presidents over time. In his cross-sectional study, Cohen (2000) provides some evidence that the favorability question is a valid measure of the personal dimension of the public's evaluation of the president by demonstrating its close link to questions about presidential character. I provide additional analysis to demonstrate the validity of the measure through a series of correlations between favorability and character questions measured over time, correlations of lags and leads between approval and favorability, and a regression analysis of economic variables on the favorability measure (to show the distinction between favorability and approval). …

Presidential Decision Making and Minority Nominations to the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Abstract: 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 legitimate, they must be at least marginally representative of the racial composition of the public. The symbolic representation of minority judges "has a positive and legitimizing effect on the functioning of a democracy" (Walker and Barrow 1985, 597). Institutional legitimacy is particularly essential for the judiciary because it "has no influence over either the sword or the purse" (Hamilton 1788). Furthermore, if minority judges decide cases differently (Scherer 2004-05; Welch, Combs, and Gruhl 1988), it is especially imperative to understand what drives minority nominations to circuit courts. Even though extensive work has been done on minority representation in Congress (e.g., Cameron, Epstein, and O'Halloran 1996; Canon, Schousen, and Sellers 1996; Lublin 1997a, 1999), minority representation on circuit courts remains relatively unexamined outside of qualitative studies (e.g., Goldman 1997). The primary value of this research article is that it demonstrates that some of the potential influences believed to affect presidents' nomination decisions have little impact, whereas others have surprisingly large effects. When presidents and their advisors are deciding whom to nominate to openings on the U.S. courts of appeals, to what extent do they take into consideration or even give priority to signals from other political actors? Senators, especially home-state senators, immediately come to mind as a potential influence on these decisions. Various characteristics of a state (e.g., the size of the minority population, minority economic influence, and minority representation in the congressional delegation) may also generate pressure on presidents to nominate minority judges and on senators to approve them (Gryski, Zuk, and Barrow 1994). A reading of Goldman's (1997) work on how various presidents have gone about nominating federal judges can take researchers down a variety of paths with respect to a particular combination of influences because of the lack of clear guideposts as to what affects presidents making this decision, Some quantitative studies indicate which factors might affect presidential decision making on the diversification of circuit courts. For example, Bratton and Spill (2002) show that gender diversification of state supreme courts is responsive to a variety of conditions, such as the method of appointment in a state. However, relatively little is known about how minority nominations are generated for appointments to the U.S. courts of appeals--a gap that is especially surprising given that the U.S. courts of appeals, which lie immediately below the Supreme Court in the judicial hierarchy, are effectively courts of last resort for each party in nearly every federal case (Carp and Stidham 1998). In fact, the Supreme Court usually reviews less than 1 percent of the cases that are appealed to it each year from the U.S. courts of appeals (Songer, Sheehan, and Haire 2000). (1) Because circuit courts play such a prominent role in the federal judicial system, knowing what determines who is on the circuit courts is imperative to better understanding American politics. In analyzing minority nominations to the U.S. courts of appeals, I employ a strategic model of presidential decision making. That is, I account for how presidents combine their own preferences with information about the preferences of other potentially influential individuals and institutions to arrive at a particular nomination. Strategic models have been used to show that presidents are strategic in deciding whether to issue an executive order (Deering and Maltzman 1999), in nominating Supreme Court justices (Moraski and Shipan 1999), and in determining whether to go public (Canes-Wrone 2001). …

The Making of the Modern Vice Presidency: A Personal Reflection

Abstract: In an otherwise masterful document, the Founding Fathers created the vice presidency with almost no thought as to how it would fit into the structure of the new federal government. The office was, in fact, a constitutional afterthought designed solely to provide a president-in-reserve, and for 200 years it languished in obscurity, derision, and irrelevance. This is the story of how Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale changed all that. By 1976 I had known Walter Mondale for 15 years. Although we were separated in age by nearly a decade, we shared a Norwegian heritage, a love of politics in the progressive Minnesota tradition, and an appreciation for dry humor. In 1972 Mondale had sensed that I was ready to move on after three years as chairman of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. He asked me to come to Washington to head his Senate office and, not incidentally, help him prepare for a possible run for the presidency. I gladly accepted, and it turned out to be a good fit. We worked together well, and I became more convinced than ever that he had, and deserved, a future in national politics. In the late spring of 1976, I was not alone in concluding that he might be well positioned to become that year's Democratic vice-presidential nominee. Jimmy Carter had just come from nowhere to the brink of securing the party's presidential nomination. Hubert H. Humphrey, Minnesota's other U.S. senator who had narrowly lost the presidency in 1968 but never fully lost his presidential ambitions, had just announced that he would not enter the late 1976 primaries, as he had been sorely tempted to do. Humphrey's decision meant that Mondale, his close friend and protege, was now free to think about a position on the ticket for himself. It was not an implausible idea. Carter was a pro-civil rights, moderate governor from the South who had never served in Washington; Mondale was a northern liberal who had spent more than a decade in the U.S. Senate. National tickets had traditionally been constructed to "balance" such factors, so if Carter wanted to continue that practice, he would be hard pressed to find a better balance than Mondale could provide. There was only one problem with this seemingly compelling idea: Mondale was totally uninterested. In fact, he wanted no part of it. He had recently concluded an unhappy, year-long presidential "exploratory" effort, which he ended for a variety of personal and political reasons, including, famously, his lack of affection for Holiday Inns. He was well into the process of re-engaging in the business of the Senate, and he was finding particular satisfaction in the work of the Select Committee on Intelligence, which was then immersed in an unprecedented examination of the FBI and the CIA. Why, he argued, should he consider giving up an institution he loved (and, he didn't need to add, a very safe seat in that institution) for an office that had been the subject of derision and bad jokes for nearly two centuries? Most pointedly, he noted the slights, humiliations, and generally bad treatment that Humphrey had suffered in the Johnson White House, the same kind of treatment then being visited on Vice President Nelson Rockefeller in Gerald Ford's White House. Why, he asked me, should he trade his independence as a senator for an office of total dependency and no prescribed duties except presiding over the Senate, where he could only vote to break ties? A good deal of history in addition to this logic was on Mondale's side of the argument. Going all the way back to John Adams, the nation's first vice president, it was difficult, if not impossible, to come up with an occupant of the office who had anything approaching a happy experience. After many hours of discussion, it was fair to say that Mondale's position on the matter was becoming entrenched and showed no visible signs of softening. Unable to persuade him of the merits of an idea that were so obvious to me, I decided to seek help. …

Superpresidentialism and the Military: The Russian Variant

Abstract: In any type of polity, the relationship between the executive and the armed forces is a quintessential institutional link. In most democracies the control of the military is the shared responsibility of the president, his or her government, and the legislative branch. Although the presidential role may be paramount, the legislature is usually responsible for several essential functions of controlling the armed forces such as passing pertinent laws, setting the defense budget and overseeing its proper disbursement, debating the nomination of new military leaders, and ensuring that the executive branch does nor overstep its constitutionally delineated boundaries. In democracies--especially in presidential systems--the chief executive as commander in chief enjoys broad powers over the armed forces. Still, in this relationship there are certain intangible variables that strongly influence civil-military relations. A recent study analyzing the connection between American presidents from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to George W. Bush and their military leaders finds that leadership style matters greatly and presidents who evidence genuine respect for the military's organizational culture are likely to develop a far more effective rapport with their armed forces than those who do not (Herspring 2005a). In praetorian polities--such as Argentina, Brazil, and Chile through much of the 1970s and 1980s--the president is usually a leading general whose direct control of the armed forces is limited only by the arrangements within the military hierarchy. In such states the legislature's function in civil-military relations, to the extent that it possesses any role at all, is ordinarily a pro forma approval of decisions taken by the executive branch in order to lend them a (very superficial) sort of legitimacy. This article sheds light on a case of presidential-military relations that is quite different from the two types at the opposing ends of the democratic-praetorian spectrum sketched above. My focus is the evolution of the executive-military nexus in post-Soviet Russia, a polity that emerged from over seven decades of state socialism in 1991. The Russian army is one of the largest in the world, it is ostensibly an ally of the United States and NATO in the "war against terror," and it controls a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons and an enormous albeit to some extent dilapidated conventional arsenal. The proper civilian oversight of Russia's military is, therefore, a serious concern not only for the Russians but also for the world around them. Contemporary Russia is certainly not a democracy, unless one uses that term so generously as to apply to virtually all states that hold elections no matter how skewed and inconsequential they might be (Fish 2005, 15-20). During the past decade, Russia's polity has been depicted as "managed democracy," "presidential democracy," "controlled democracy," and so on. Pinning different modifying labels onto "democracy," however, only obfuscates the reality of the Russian state's fundamental authoritarian nature (Collier and Levitsky 1997). Russia is not a full-fledged dictatorship, however, given that local elections are still contested, opposition groups--though harassed--still exist, and a few media outlets do remain that provide critical commentary on public affairs. I argue that, within a decade after the proclamation of the new post-Communist state, Russia has gradually become what I call a superpresidential authoritarian polity, that is, a fundamentally authoritarian state in which the president has managed to concentrate extraordinary powers in his hands. Two political events may be considered as the defining milestones of this process. First, following the September-October 1993 conflict between the legislature and President Boris Yeltsin, Moscow's political trajectory has been characterized by increasing centralization, the growth of executive power, the corresponding decline in the legislature's influence, and the steady erosion of human and civic rights and freedoms. …

The Law Treaty Negotiation: A Presidential Monopoly?

Abstract: United States v. Curtiss-Wright (1936) involved a dispute over legislation passed by Congress two years earlier authorizing the president to impose an arms embargo in a region in South America. The issue was whether Congress had delegated too much of its legislative power to the president. In 1935, the Supreme Court had struck down two delegations of power to the president involving domestic policy. (1) The question presented in Curtiss-Wright was a narrow one: could Congress delegate greater discretion to the president in foreign affairs? Writing for a 7-1 Court, Justice George Sutherland decided that it could. Justice James C. McReynolds dissented, stating his opinion that the district court reached the right conclusion by striking down the delegation as excessive. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone did not take part in the consideration or decision of the case. Judicial Misconceptions In upholding the delegation of legislative authority, Justice Sutherland spoke about "the differences between the powers of the federal government in respect of foreign or external affairs and those in respect of domestic or internal affairs." He said the two classes of powers "are different, both in respect of their origins and their nature." (2) Congressional legislation, to be made effective in the international field, "must often accord to the President a degree of discretion and freedom from statutory restriction which would not be admissible were domestic affairs alone involved." (3) In this passage, Sutherland not only sustains the delegation but recognizes a field of independent presidential power that cannot be restricted by Congress. The problems with his constitutional analysis and historical understanding are treated in an earlier article (Fisher 2007b). Many scholars have pointed out the deficiencies of Justice Sutherland's "sole organ" doctrine, his recognition of "inherent" and "extra-constitutional" powers for the president, and his account of the flow of sovereignty and external affairs to the United States (Brownell 2000; Goebel 1938; Levitan 1946; Lofgren 1973; Patterson 1944; Quarles 1944; Ramsey 2000; Simones 1996; Van Tyne 1907). This article examines the errors of Justice Sutherland with regard to the president's constitutional authority to negotiate treaties. Not only did Sutherland attempt to show that the federal power over external affairs was distinctly different in origin and character from that over internal affairs, "but participation in the exercise of the power is significantly limited." In the field of external affairs, he said, the Constitution required the president to share with the Senate the treaty-making power, "but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude; and Congress itself is powerless to invade it." (4) In making this assertion, Sutherland ignored his own experiences and writings as a U.S. senator from Utah and demonstrated no grasp of how often presidents in the past had shared treaty negotiation with members of Congress, both senators and representatives. Constitutional Theory The Constitution provides little guidance on how treaties are to be negotiated. Article II, section 2, empowers the president, "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur." Article I, section 10, prohibits states from entering into any treaty, alliance, or confederation. That section also prohibits a state, without the consent of Congress, from entering into "any Agreement or Compact" with a foreign power. The supremacy clause in Article VI defines treaties, along with the Constitution and statutes, as "the supreme Law of the Land." Otherwise, the Constitution is silent about many elements of the treaty-making power. It says nothing about the president's authority to negotiate treaties, the process of terminating a treaty, or the allocation of authority to interpret and reinterpret a treaty. …

The New Vice Presidency: Institutions and Politics

Abstract: The criteria for selecting vice presidential candidates and the electoral and institutional impact of the running mates are important and understudied questions in American politics. Popular assumptions are rampant, and yet scholarship is slim. The result is often confusion. Public discussion of the vice presidency faces two challenges. First, pundits and perhaps presidential campaigns harbor enormous expectations regarding the electoral impact of the vice presidential nominee. Handicapping which potential nominee would help the Republican and Democratic tickets has been a favorite parlor game in the media and talk shows during 2008. This raises a pressing question for presidency scholars: What is the independent effect of the running mate on the outcome of the election? Although the running mate may have an impact (especially in critical swing states such as Ohio and Florida), the enormous electoral significance that pundits attach to the vice presidential picks is inflated. Second, the popular preoccupation with the running mate's electoral impact has distracted our attention from genuinely significant institutional developments--namely, the enhanced political and institutional power of the vice presidential office since the Jimmy Carter administration. Although the press is transfixed by the electoral impact of the running mate, the media neglects the transformation of the vice presidency into a pivotal new force in the Executive Office of the President and the executive branch more generally. The neglect of the vice presidency is perhaps not surprising. After all, the U.S. Constitution is nearly silent on the vice president apart from his or her serving as president of the U.S. Senate and as the first option in presidential succession. John Adams aptly noted when he was George Washington's number two, "I am nothing but I may be everything." The constitutional snub led to a long line of obscure vice presidents, including Richard Johnson, George Dallas, and William King from the nineteenth century and Charles Dawes and Alben Barkley in the last century. For nearly 200 years, the vice president languished in obscurity, derision, and irrelevance. The purpose of this symposium--a collaboration of Presidential Studies Quarterly and the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs' Center for the Study of Politics at the University of Minnesota--is to spotlight and encourage research regarding the vice presidency's electoral and institutional impacts. The year 2008 is a particularly propitious moment to expand this research agenda, for three reasons. First, presidential succession may appear especially relevant. Nearly one out of three vice presidents (14 of 46) has become president. Knowing more about the running mates may be particularly important in 2008 because the Republican nominee, John McCain, is a cancer survivor and would, if elected, be the oldest president sworn in to a first term. A second motivation for expanding the research is that the selection of running mates seems to offer a targeted but still critical electoral resource in 2008. If the presidential race is as closely contested in key states as the two most recent elections, even a small impact on a critical state such as Florida or Ohio could alter the election's outcome. The selection may also be a factor in resolving the Democratic Party's deadlock in selecting a nominee. The third and especially important stimulus is the emergence of the vice presidency as a critical institutional base of power and decision making. The media and other political scholars should scrutinize the electoral strengths of the running mates and their suitability to succeed the president. What also needs far more attention are the qualifications of the vice presidential nominees to serve as vice president given the office's substantial institutional resources and influence. The papers in this forum by Joel K. …

Conveying Presidential News: The White House Press Corps Covers the President

Abstract: On a daily basis, presidential news coverage comes from the work of a relatively small group of Washington reporters assigned to cover the White House. Although often treated interchangeably with the Washington press corps, the reporters at the White House focus solely on that beat. I identify which news organizations form the White House press corps and then focus on the practices of those organizations in assigning reporters to the White House. I also look at what current and recent White House correspondents view as the basic elements of a White House story. Although news organizations have long been committed to full coverage of the White House, the future is less certain for some of them as the growing financial pressures in the news industry have had an impact on their ability to cover the president in the same manner as they have in the past.

Did Reagan Make Gorbachev Possible

Abstract: This article examines how Soviet leaders responded to Ronald Reagan during his first presidential administration. It contests the notion that Reagan's tough rhetoric and arms buildup from 1981 to 1984 made Gorbachev possible. It draws on fresh evidence to argue that Reagan's words and deeds had precisely the opposite effect—they emboldened hard-liners within the Kremlin and ultimately postponed “new thinking.”