Samson unbound: opposition presidents and the failure of party leadership

Abstract

This article explores the difficulty faced by presidents from the opposition party in their capacity as party leaders. The article accepts as a given Skowronek’s regime cycle vision of American political history, and focuses on his “preemptive president” category. All such “opposition presidents” face roughly the same constrained historical context; thus, it is possible to make inferences and generalize about this type of president. Through a comparison of opposition presidents with “governing party” presidents, I examine one weakness inherent in this type of presidency, focusing specifically on partisan success by measuring the success of an opposition president’s party versus that of a governing party president.