Bush White House Research Articles

The 2004 Election Did Not Take Place

It is arguable that the George W. Bush regime has made a more systematically intensive strategic effort to mobilize the management and control of media images as a primary mode of governance than any other U.S. presidency we have yet seen. This article explores the Bush White House's media imagineering and draws on notions of media spectacle, along with Baudrillard's widely misunderstood analysis of the 1991 Gulf War and often overlooked theory of media nonevents, to examine the 2004 U.S. presidential election in particular. It also identifies and draws on what we might see as image insurgencies emerging from the internet, the alternative press, and the mainstream media to raise the prospect that the more fully a regime of power seeks to exert control over and through images, the more vulnerable it becomes to the generation of counterimages, counternarratives, and counterspectacles.

Elizabeth Blackburn and the story of telomeres Deciphering the ends of DNA

Elizabeth Blackburn and the story of telomeres Deciphering the ends of DNA

The Rhetorical Presidency of George H.W. Bush (review)

Reviewed by: The Rhetorical Presidency of George H.W. Bush Kenneth S. Zagacki The Rhetorical Presidency of George H.W. Bush. Edited by Martin J. Medhurst . College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006; pp. ix + 207. $40.00. As scholars busy themselves making sense of George W. Bush's rhetorical presidency, they could easily lose sight of the current president's father and his own rhetorical legacy. Fortunately, Martin J. Medhurst will not let this happen. His latest edited book, The Rhetorical Presidency of George H. W. Bush, represents a thorough, engaging rhetorical analysis of almost every aspect of the elder Bush's rhetorical activity as president of the United States. Each chapter combines standard rhetorical methods with careful archival research to provide fresh and insightful looks into the first Bush presidency. The thesis that runs throughout is that, rhetorically speaking, the Bush presidency failed largely because Bush himself not only showed "no appreciation of the role of rhetoric in the actual formulation of policy, he did not appreciate the inventional and judgmental aspects of the art" (4). When Bush entered office in January 1989, he believed that "he was no Ronald Reagan and could not hope to duplicate Reagan's role as the 'Great Communicator'" (3); and he separated politics from government, the former of which he associated with rhetoric and the latter with the more principled art of creating "broad, consensus-building activities undertaken for the common good" (10). These factors, combined with several other rhetorical "blunders" (98), made for a Bush White House incapable of effecting "prudential action in ways that were both recognized and appreciated by the public at large" (4). What were the blunders? Each succeeding chapter supplies answers to this question. Catherine L. Langford examines Bush's struggle with the "Vision Thing," at which he was rhetorically "inept" (20). The underlying difficulty was that Bush did not "create a public narrative that was simple, repetitive, familiar, and artistic" (21). Bush's narrative shortcomings revolved around his inability to identify clear enemies responsible for America's ills and an empowering "agency" that "commissioned presidential action" (32). The result was that Bush, unlike Reagan, failed "to fashion a narrative that captured the nation's attention or moved its people to action" (32). Roy Joseph investigates the "eloquent symbols and metaphors" (83) in Bush's "New World Order" speeches, arguing that although the president articulated the goals of his vision, he consistently failed to demonstrate how to achieve them or what, precisely, his "vision" was. This omission left others to define a vision for Bush, thus transposing "what could have been a unifying rhetorical idiom . . . into a free-for-all interpretative utterance" (96–97). Holly G. McIntush explores Bush's stance as "the education president" and finds his rhetoric on the subject wanting. Indeed, although the president [End Page 534] sent two major education initiatives to Congress, "his actions lacked focus and were not adequately linked to the goals set forth in 1990 or to the reasons the public was urging reform" (107). Using archival material well, McIntush examines these initiatives and the rhetorical failures associated with them—namely, that Bush did not connect his specific education proposals and their goals to improvements in the American economy. Bush's rather uneven relationship with the religious right is the subject of Amy Tilton Jones's chapter. She shows how Bush's speeches to religiously conservative audiences tried to firm up this relationship. Based on archival material of speech drafts, she analyzes problems associated with humor in religious addresses and closely examines how Bush supplied moral-religious justifications for the first Gulf War. The most informative part of this chapter deals with the 1992 Republican National Convention and the assortment of "harsh, embattled" (163) speeches delivered by the likes of Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, and Marilyn Quayle, which, juxtaposed with Mary Fisher's oration about treating HIV victims humanely, made for an overall rhetoric "that lauded family values, morals, and inclusions but in reality . . . combined contradictions and exclusion" (165). Wynton C. Hall performs an important service by challenging political scientists who downplay or overlook the important role of rhetoric, especially when chief executives frame issues like economics. Analyzing...

The New Democratic Majority in Congress: Preferences, Structure, and Bargaining

This paper begins by exploring the impact of the 2006 midterm elections on the distribution of policy preferences within the U.S. House and Senate during the 110th Congress. We then consider the consequences of the new political configuration in Washington for the distribution of power between party leaders and the committee systems in both chambers, the patterns of bargaining that will occur between congressional Democrats and the Bush White House, and the likely contents of legislative outcomes during 2007-08.

THE HYPER‐RHETORICAL PRESIDENCY

ABSTRACT During the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, the Executive Office of the President became dominated by West Wing advisers who specialized in campaign politics, media management, and nonstop public communications. With record numbers of presidential appointees requiring no congressional approval, the Bush White House pursued partisan control of cabinet agencies. Even obscure federal bureaus were required to remain “on message.” The constitutional derangement about which The Rhetorical Presidency had warned has occurred. No matter who occupies the Oval Office in the future, the hyper‐rhetorical presidency is here to stay.

New Data and New Directions in Interbranch Lobbying: Congressional Mail Summaries of the George H.W. Bush White House

This article analyzes a unique new set of data (compiled originally by the Bush White House) using mail written to President Bush from members of Congress during the 101st and 102nd Congresses to explore interbranch lobbying. We argue that these data illuminate the relationship between the president and Congress in a new and informative way. We use this data to inform our view of the shared power arrangements (identified as "tandem institutions") by developing a series of expectations to explore the joint roles of this interaction. Conforming to expectations, we find that requests for presidential action (especially on foreign policy) and the conveyance of congressional opinion (especially on domestic policy) are the top two categories that characterize this relationship. We also find committee chairs or party leaders, who serve as conduits for opinion of their representatives to the president, are also more likely to write the president than rank-and-file members. Further, those members who are ideologically furthest away from the president tend to write to convey information and urge specific action more frequently than those closer to the president. We need a new engagement, too, between the Executive and the Congress. The challenges before us will be thrashed out with the House and the Senate. And we must bring the Federal budget into balance. And we must ensure that America stands before the world united, strong, at peace, and fiscally sound. But of course things may be difficult. We need to compromise; we've had dissension. We need harmony; we've had a chorus of discordant voices. To my friends–and yes, I do mean friends–in the loyal opposition–and yes, I do mean loyal: I put out my hand. I am putting out my hand to you, Mr. Speaker. lam putting out my hand to you, Mr. Majority Leader. For this is the thing: this is the age of the offered hand. And we can't turn back clocks, and I don't want to. But when our fathers were young, Mr. Speaker, our differences ended at the water's edge. And we don't wish to turn back time, but when our mothers were young, Mr. Majority Leader, the Congress and the Executive were capable of working together to produce a budget on which this nation could live. Let us negotiate soon and hard. But in the end, let us produce. The American people await action. They didn't send us here to bicker. They ask us to rise above the merely partisan. "In crucial things, unity"–and this, my friends, is crucial. President George H.W. Bush Inaugural Address 19891

George W. Bush's City on a Hill

This paper explores the various and sometimes contradictory meanings of the metaphor of A City on a Hill, with an emphasis on how such an investigation can contribute to an understanding of the foreign policy of George W. Bush, especially in terms of the War on Terrorism in general and the war in Iraq in particular. The strands within the metaphor include religious, political, economic, and technological dimensions which too often exacerbate the confusions about national self‐image many Americans have about our role in the world and about what has been called the right‐wing Wilsonianism of the Bush White House. Greater clarity about the role of this metaphor in our history might help in minimizing what can fittingly be called the law of unintended consequences.

The Work at Hand

Donahue continuedfrom previous page ever. Time and the eternal, trauma and memory: one ponders such dichotomies with each new stanza. The poem is both ingenious and moving. As someone who lived in New York for many years. I would argue that "Hum" takes its place among poems like Lorca's "After a Walk" (with its resonant first line, "Cut down by the sky") and O'Hara's "The Day Lady Died." poems that speak on behalf of the city and preserve for the future an aspect of its inner life: Everyone is incidental. Everyone weeps. Detailfrom cover ofThe Night Sky The tears of today will put out tomorrow. The rain is ashes. The days are beautiful. The vocabulary of public events circulates throughout Hum. as if to illustrate a project outlined in The Night Sky: "how to conceive of words not as locked within the self, awaiting liberty, but as freely circulating outside of the self, waiting to be taken in. transformed, and sent back out." Even though we pass through moments of spellbinding clarity and opaque rebuffs to our impertinent demands for picture language, words move through us to reflect our social and political world. Lauterbach cannot, it seems to me, simply celebrate that circulation of words. She cannot sing untroubled the transformation of words that takes place within us. The incomprehensible has happened. It may not be something we care to admit. A bit retro. A symbolist crisis in a postmodern world. A gaudy predicament, she might say, one where the gaudy hides a God, who gives way to a doll, becoming in turn a gull. The flight of the adjective distracts us. The predicament remains, whether at the edge of Ground Zero, or looking at a painting, or talking to a friend, or watching MTV, or just looking out Malarmé's window: Fragment (September) Filtered through the cast of happiness so that evening has the weight of unconditional assent beyond the debris. Joseph Donahue's collection of poems include Incidental Eclipse, from Talisman House, and In This Paradise: Terra Lucinda XXI-XL, from Carolina Wren Press. The Work at Hand Larry Smith Almost Paradise: New and Selected Poems and Translations Sam Hamill Shambhala http://www.shambhala.com 276 pages: paper. S 1 5.95 This world isfrost on an old man's breath, memory rushing into memory. Sam Hamill is one of the hardest working poets in America, and this includes his 30 years of work as editor-publisher at Copper Canyon Press (he's now retired). Like many poets who also edit and publish the works of others -James Laughlin. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Dennis Maloney, and the countless others of us in the small press publishing world -his own poetry is often given short shrift. It"s ironic since one wonders who. other than a true poet, would do the slave labor of this publishing work? Its chief reward, of course, is allowing us to work with those whose writing we respect, even love. Look at Hamill 's recent defiance of the Bush White House that led to his editing of the important Poets Against the War (2003) anthology. Other major achievements include his books of transía lions from the Latin, Greek. Chinese, and Japanese, selections of which are included here; then there's his monumental The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth (2002). done with fellow Rexroth disciple Bradford Morrow, to keep a tradition of nature and engaged writing alive in American verse. He and others at Copper Canyon repeatedly cross the borders of mainstream and academic poetry. It's a calling, to be sure, but it shouldn't cause neglect. One of the finest statements on the task of a poet in the world is his A Poet's Work: The Other Side of Poetry (Broken Moon. 1990; Carnegie Mellon, 1998). Hamill is. then, a model to many others, but. that said, I want to offer an appreciation of his own poetry assembled so wisely here. More than a third of the collection is selections of Hamill's translations. It begins with Sappho, Anakreon, Asklepiados, and Catullus, and launches into his best work with the Chinese masters, most of them from the golden T'ang...

‘Diversity. America. Leadership. Good over evil.’ Hollywood multiculturalism and American imperialism in Independence Day and Three Kings1

ABSTRACT In the 1990s and 2000s a highly selective idea of multiculturalism became central to the imagining of American national identity in Hollywood cinema, one that was closely related to the political discourses of the nation surrounding the presidential election campaigns. Davies's focus here is on two significant films, Independence Day and Three Kings, which, despite their very different genres, registers and politics, typify the 1990s Hollywood trajectory of articulating what has been called ‘vulgar multiculturalism’ to exceptionalist and even, arguably, imperialist US nationalism. At the centre of both films is a quartet of male figures configured according to quite specific ideas about ethnic and racial difference: for example, in Independence Day Jewishness is associated with intelligence, blackness with verbal ‘smarts’ and physical strength. Through this composite but selective image the United States is portrayed as a site of ethnic and racial diversity, whose unique ability to cohere the qualities conferred by difference enables and legitimates its global military primacy. The latent meanings of Independence Day have been interpolated differently into American political discourse by President Bill Clinton, Senator Bob Dole and President George W. Bush. While Clinton responded explicitly to the film's evocation of a Eurocentric Second World War ideology, the film subsequently provided Bush with a more powerful, globalized legitimation for US power. If Independence Day utilized a highly selective version of multiculturalism in the service of American imperialism, Three Kings offers itself by contrast as an embedded critique of the aims and conduct of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Yet this critique is itself shaped by the contours of an exceptionalist discourse of the American national project, one in which, again, images of racial and ethnic difference play a crucial role. Three Kings decries the economic motivation of a war fought solely to protect oil supplies, while making a strong plea that military intervention should have included helping Iraqi rebels overthrow Saddam Hussein. This plea is made most powerfully in a crucial ‘recognition scene’ in which the central GI protagonists come to realize that Iraqi refugees, whom they have been taught to view as Other, share values and aspirations that are strongly coded as American. As such, Three Kings anticipates the Bush White House's rhetorical manoeuvre whereby the ‘war on terror’ is rendered as the bringing of liberation to oppressed peoples, but the film is also readable as portraying humanistic, cross-national obligations. These ideological tensions are unpacked by reference to a structured discussion of the film that took place in 2003 between students at universities in the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Davies finally argues that the film ultimately contests the rhetoric of imperialism, and seeks instead to open up a space in which the desire to escape from oppression is not immediately coded as a wish to become American.

Power plays

Power plays

Surprise, Security, and the American Experience

SURPRISE, SECURITY, AND THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE John Lewis Gaddis Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. x, 150pp, US$18.95 cloth (ISBN 0-674-01174-0)John Lewis Gaddis's short but highly ambitious book aims to place of Bush administration-most notably summed up with national security strategy of United States (NSS) of September 2002 and decision to invade Iraq in March 2003-within context of nearly two centuries of American foreign policy supposedly laid groundwork for decision-making in Washington in 2002-2003. The first grand strategy was authored, we are told, by John Quincy Adams (when he was secretary of state), and was followed later in 19th century by presidents James Polk and William McKinley. It combined and unilateralism with goal of achieving continental and hemispheric hegemony. The second grand strategy, one practiced in 20th century, was authored by Woodrow Wilson (although much more successfully practiced by Franklin D. Roosevelt). In contrast to first tradition, second combined relative with multilateralism and decision to promote democratic governments for others-but like first, it aimed at achieving hegemony, this time with a global reach. And if these two traditions themselves do not provide elements enough to establish an authentically American policy for early 21st century, Gaddis throws in for good measure Thomas Jefferson's notion of of liberty, in which imperialism and freedom are processes may be fruitfully linked.According to Gaddis, each of these grand strategies has features have resurfaced in on terror, as Bush White House grafted unilateral preemption of Adams onto democracy promotion of Wilson in a contemporary determination to reshape Muslim Middle East by combining empire with liberty. Thus the Bush administration, whether intentionally or not, has been drawing upon a set of traditions. . .embedded within our national consciousness (31), whose end result is conviction expressed for some two centuries now and again today that for United States safety comes from enlarging, rather than from contracting, its sphere of responsibility' (13, italics in original).The result of Gaddis's breathtaking effort is to anoint war on Iraq with sacred oil of virtually entire American foreign policy tradition. Posturing as Clio, muse of history, a well-known American diplomatic historian tries to make both intelligible and legitimate doctrine espoused in NSS and Iraq War followed. To be sure, Gaddis hedges his argument. He acknowledges uniqueness of Bush administration's thinking in certain respects; he warns winning a war may be less difficult and less important than winning a peace to follow; he speculates liberal autocracy may be more appropriate for Middle East than democratic government (105); he reminds us of the sin of pride (117); and he recognizes his assessment (dated as being concluded in September 2003) must be tentative in extreme (95). These allowances made, Gaddis nonetheless emerges a clear-eyed supporter of Iraq War.For this reviewer, most successful part of book is clarity of a complex argument wherein Gaddis identifies, contrasts, and then combines two predominant traditions of statecraft in American foreign policy (Adams's realism and Wilson's liberalism). However, clarity in complex argumentation does not necessarily mean case presented is persuasive. On a factual level, one may object to many of Gaddis's conclusions. Thus, as Gaddis himself recognizes, Adams was quite aware of need for restraint in American engagements abroad, while FDR's decision to promote democracy in Japan and Germany after their defeat did not mean he was reluctant to work with dictators in Latin America, China, and elsewhere, recognizing as he did limits of America's power. …

The Miseducation of the West: how schools and the media distort our understanding of the Islamic world

The Miseducation of the West examines the ways in which educational institutions such as media and schools have shaped Western views of Islam. The nature of these messages tells readers as much, if not more, about Western self-images as they do about Islam and Islamic peoples. Quickly emerging is a Western perspective on the other. Westerners found easy justification for the colonial conquest of many Islamic lands. In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries England, France, and to a lesser extent Russia colonized much of the Mulsim world with the United States entering the picture after World War II. Economic colonialization, the oil business, interference with various governments, and the way these events and people are represented in the formal curriculum of schools and the informal curriculum of the media are central dimensions of this work. The contemporary expression of these stories involve the Bush administration's and its conservative allies' efforts to teach the nation about the true meaning of 9/11 and Islamic terrorism. In various reports, conservative organizations with close ties to the Bush White House, present forceful views of what historical concepts should be taught in U.S. schools. As Joe L. Kincheloe states in his thoughtful introduction, these efforts represent a return to a 1954 view of America as the bearer of the democratic torch to the anti-democratic forces of the world. A critical education must counter such tendencies and work to conceptualize 9/11 in a variety of contexts. The essayists in this book write with different voices from diverse viewpoints, contributing to a discussion that will not end for years to come.

Negotiating to Control Weapons of Mass Destruction in North Korea

AbstractNegotiations to control and perhaps eliminate North Korea's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) appeared to achieve positive results in the 1990s. But these positive trends reversed direction in 2001–2004 under President George W. Bush. Why? This essay weighs six possible explanations. 1. progress in the 1990s as a mirage; 2. cultural differences; 3. distrust of international agreements; 4. perceptions regarding the utility of WMD; 5. internal divisions within each government and society; and 6. ulterior motives.The evidence suggests that the sixth explanation carries the most weight. Top leaders in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as well as in the United States had priorities other than arms control. Each side used arms control negotiations as an instrument to promote its political and economic agenda in other realms. Pyongyang demanded large and certain rewards to give up its main bargaining chips. North Korea's negotiating behavior suggested some willingness to freeze or eliminate WMD programs if the price were right. But Kim Jong Il's regime clearly saw its nuclear and missile capabilities as major assets not to be traded away except for very substantial security and economic rewards. For its part, the Bush White House probably worried that any accord with Pyongyang would impede Washington's larger political, military, and economic ambitions, including deployment of a national missile defense (NMD). There was also a subjective element: President Bush probably loathed Kim Jong Il and did not relish the prospect of making any compromises with evil incarnate. For enlightened self-interest to prevail, the parties could benefit from greater empathy and a quest for mutual rather than one-sided gain.

Securing the Future of the United Nations

A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 2004). 129 pages. Available free at <http://www.un.org/secureworld/report2.pdf>. On Dec. 2, 2004, the United Nations High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change released its long-anticipated final report. Its mandate, much broader than that of the earlier Panel on U.N. Peace Operations chaired by Lakhdar Brahimi, grew out of a sense of crisis that has enveloped the United Nations since the Security Council declined to authorize the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and since a truck bomb killed 21 members of the U.N. team in Iraq, including its leader, Sergio Vieira de Mello, the following August. The 16-member panel, appointed by Secretary General Kofi Annan that November, comprised a cross-section of former U.N. agency heads and ex-government ministers and advisers, chaired by Anand Panyarachun, the former foreign minister of Thailand. The panel was free to focus on what it considered the most important threats to international security and the institutions created to maintain it. In doing so, however, it did not forget that states consist of people and that human security—health, safety and livelihood—is neglected only at our individual and collective peril. As it was not a state-driven entity, the panel's report had to derive its initial momentum from the force of its evidence and arguments. Fortunately, the report, created with the support of an international research team, keeps the hortatory boilerplate to a minimum in a text that is highly readable yet thoroughly political, in the sense that it pushes the political envelope while trying not to pierce it. Every government will, as a result, find something to embrace and something to hate, giving U.N. members sufficient grist to grind out a bargain with net benefits for all. This is possible if all members are willing to compromise; of course, compromise has not been a strong suit of the Bush White House or the present leadership of Congress. Nevertheless, much of what the report recommends to confront or control emerging diseases, weapons of mass destruction [End Page 187] (WMD), terrorism and organized crime plays directly to U.S. interests, as do its recommendations about strengthening the United Nations itself. In the sections on biological threats, the panel stresses the need to improve local and national public health systems in developing countries, both because sick populations remain mired in poverty and because bad disease surveillance and reporting anywhere limit everyone's ability to recognize and contain both bioterrorism and outbreaks of novel but natural pathogens like SARS. More controversially, the panel argues for Security Council-mandated quarantines if local or national governments fail to implement needed containment measures and for tripling current funding to combat HIV/AIDS, which is presently gutting public service sectors in many African states. On WMD, the panel warns that the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime may collapse without vigorous reinforcement. The NPT needs strengthening to ensure that current nuclear weapon states downgrade the importance of nuclear weapons in their national strategies by ratifying the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTB), for example, or by taking seriously their NPT obligation to forego nuclear weapons entirely. The panel urges that existing stocks of nuclear and radiological materials be better guarded and that highly enriched uranium be "down-blended" into fuels not usable in weapons; that there be a time-limited moratorium on fissile material production and spent fuel reprocessing while a fissile material production cutoff agreement is negotiated; and that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) manage a central "market" of fissile material for civilian nuclear users and implement much more stringent inspections. These are useful and needed initiatives, but the proposed fissile material market requires that Washington trust the IAEA, which it at present considers a little too independent-minded. Furthermore, the materials cutoff has been on...

Dark victory: America's second war against Iraq

A prominent national security analyst provides a critical examination of the origins, objectives, conduct, and consequences of the U.S. war against Iraq in this major new study. Focusing on the intersection of world politics, U.S. foreign policy, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Jeffrey Record presents a full-scale policy analysis of the war and its aftermath. As he looks at the political and strategic legacies of the 1991 Gulf War, the impact of 9/11 and neo-conservative ideology on the George W. Bush White House, and the formulation of the Bush Doctrine on the use of force, he assesses rather than describes, judges rather than recites facts. He decries the Bush administration's threat conflation of Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, and calls U.S. plans inadequate to meet postwar challenges in Iraq.With the support of convincing evidence, the author concludes that America's war against Iraq was both unnecessary and damaging to long-term U.S. security interests. He argues that there was no threatening Saddam-Osama connection and that even if Iraq had the weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration believed necessitated war, it could have been readily deterred from using them, just as it had been in 1991. Record faults the administration for preventive, unilateralist policies that alienated friends and allies, weakened international institutions important to the United States, and saddled America with costly, open-ended occupation of an Arab heartland. He contends that far from being a major victory against terrorism, the war provided Islamic jihadists an expanded recruiting base and a new front of operations against Americans. Such a solid, thought-provoking study merits attention.

Spinning the Message on NCLB

THIS column is about a city with two tales -- one of spin and the other of sputter. No matter who occupies the White House for the next four years, the past four have borne witness to some of the most ludicrous uses of taxpayer money ever, as the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has tried to spin its message on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) across the country. What was amusing ineptness at first finally became hardball strategy and put the department in the same league as other federal agencies in its efforts at manipulating the media. As a former president of the Education Writers Association, I suppose I could be justifiably sensitive about what has been happening. Education coverage at the federal level used to be somewhat benign. Education was viewed as an important issue -- but not nearly as critical as, say, national security or the affairs of the Department of State. It was a low priority. way ED has shaped its media policies, however, has shoved education up a notch or two in status and importance. Education reporters now have a feel for what the conservative columnist William Safire wrote about this fall. Always quick to defend the Bush White House, Safire nevertheless said: The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before. It seems that the Education Department paid a public relations firm a tidy sum to rate media coverage of NCLB. Lumping news stories and editorials together, the analysis gave points to articles, reporters, and states according to how positive or negative the coverage of NCLB. (Secretary of Education Rod Paige himself got a grade of 95% for an op- ed in the Seattle Times; he failed to attain a perfect 100% because the paper was deemed a local and not a national newspaper). purpose of the analysis, according to a spokesperson for the public relations firm, was to further educate reporters who scored low. Since reporters are naturally cynical, their reaction to news of the rating project was more irreverent than acquiescent. Reporters who rated high scores were apologizing and trying to understand why covering a press conference about NCLB put them high on the list. Those who needed educating were more inclined to brag about their standing or to call the raters idiots. PR firm also produced videos made to look like press conferences (as had already been done by the Department of Health and Human Services to convey positive messages about changes in Medicare). NCLB videos were withdrawn, and so were the HHS videos when the Government Accountability Office said their obvious plugging of President Bush's political agenda represented illegal use of taxpayers' money. signs of heightened spin came early in the Paige tenure at ED. In the initial months of the implementation of NCLB -- when state and district leaders were begging for clarification of the law and for timely regulations -- Paige was on a photo-op tour of the country promoting certain aspects of the law, especially parental choice. His appearances were made that much jollier by the singing of a little song praising NCLB -- a song also paid for by taxpayers. Reporters found that they had to funnel all queries to ED through a single person, the communications director who managed Paige's media contacts in the Houston school district, where the secretary had been superintendent. Giving workshops especially for the communications staffs of big-city districts, this person, who is now back in Houston, describes how he measures, in inches, all media coverage of the schools and judges it as either negative or positive. …

Power and prudence: the presidency of George H.W. Bush

When George H. W. Bush took office in January 1989, he brought to the presidency an impressive resume. A former member of Congress, national party leader, CIA director, ambassador to China, and two-term vice president, he had the credentials and experience for a uniquely successful presidency. Less than four years later, the American electorate resoundingly proclaimed his administration a failure. Many pundits and scholars have echoed the voters' judgment. In a considered and balanced reassessment, Ryan J. Barilleaux and Mark J. Rozell ask whether the public and the pundits have applied the wrong criteria of presidential evaluation. Looking at the context in which Bush came into office, Barilleaux and Rozell argue that his strategy of incrementalism may indeed have been right for the times and any failure may have lain only in Bush's inability to convince the public of that. Moreover, the authors disagree with the common assessment that Bush pursued incrementalism only in domestic policy, arguing that it characterized his foreign policy as well. Power and Prudence is a study in presidential evaluation. It represents a challenge to the conventional wisdom that has developed on the first Bush administration and presents an important reinterpretation of the leadership of a poorly understood president. This thought-provoking analysis suggests that the circumstances of his presidency may have limited Bush's opportunities to articulate or achieve far-reaching policy objectives. These circumstances included the lack of an electoral mandate, Bush's succession to a very popular and ideological leader, his inheritance of a daunting budget deficit, and the situation of divided government. The authors' interpretation of the Bush administration is supported by interviews with members of Bush's White House staff and the limited archival record thus far opened to scholars. A detailed read into the workings of a contemporary presidency, Power and Prudence will appeal to presidential scholars as well as the politically minded reader.

The George W. Bush presidency: an early assessment

Presidential scholar Fred I. Greenstein brings together a distinguished group of experts to offer an early analysis of the George W. Bush presidency. The authors begin with a look at George W. Bush in the context of his modern predecessors, viewing the Bush White House in comparative perspective and examining the president's political ethos, including a unique insider's view from a recently departed administration official. They then discuss budgetary and economic policy, foreign and national security policy, and the problems of domestic lawmaking in a 50-50 government. The book concludes with an assessment of George W. Bush's relationship with the congress, the public and the American electorate.

Securing the "Ontario-Vermont Border": Myths and Realities in Post-9/11 Canadian-American Security Relations

Question: Mr. President, why did you block the reimportation of safer and inexpensive drugs from Canada which would have cut 40 to 60 percent off of the cost?Bush: I haven't yet. Just want to make sure they're safe. When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you....I've got an obligation to make sure our government does everything we can to protect you. And what my worry is, is that, you know, it looks like it's from Canada, and it might be from a third world.1SHORTLY AFTER THE EVENTS OF 9/11, the TV drama series The West Wing presented a episode in which the fictional White House of liberal Democratic president Josiah Bartlett was held in a terror alert lockdown caused by a dangerous terrorist who had entered the US illegally via the Ontario-Vermont All the details in the show were designed to emulate reality. The writers and producers apparently assumed that the natural place for a terrorist to enter the US was from Canada, while nobody noticed, or cared, that Ontario and Vermont are not in fact contiguous.There is no reason, of course, why a fictional White House could not feature a fictional border, but I have chosen this blooper as my title for good reason. Post-9/11 Canadian-American security relations are about the realities of terrorist threats, but they are also about myths. America's northern border as a risk to its homeland security is part reality and part myth. The realities are found in sober intelligence analysis and responsible security planning, on both sides of the border. The myths are constructed at the juncture where reckless media, politicized intelligence, and opportunistic politicians feed off one another. Unfortunately for Canada, myths as well as realities have very real consequences, counted in Canadian economic losses and insecurity, negative effects also felt in the US but in proportionally less painful doses and more readily shrugged off in a wartime atmosphere in which fighting terrorism is not just one priority, but the only priority.Worse from the Canadian perspective is that the combination of reality and myth, and the exaggeration of reality when cloaked in myth, threatens serious long-term damage to Canadian sovereignty, as much from within as from without. Influential forces in Canadian economy and society are poised to sell ideas of deepened continental integration on a variety offrants. They cite the post-9/11 security environment as necessitating such big ideas, and as a window of opportunity to achieve their realization. As facilitators, there is a carrot and a stick. The carrot is the economic promise of a fully integrated North American free market, finally freed from the remaining vestiges of post-NAFTA protectionism. The stick is the threat of US displeasure and retaliation in the form of border closures and exclusionary policies directed towards Canadian businesses. The big idea advocates declare that post-9/11 offers the opportunity to negotiate economic security for Canada in exchange for national security for the US.Big idea advocates are articulate, and their voices, funded from very deep pockets, are resonant and influential. They are also mistaken in many of their assumptions, misleading in some of their arguments, and dangerous in their policy prescriptions. There could scarcely be a less propitious time to negotiate deeper continental integration, whether on security or on economic matters, than an historical moment in which the US-the Bush White House, certainly, but congress under either party-is determined to assert American national sovereignty without any qualification by foreigners. Any deeper integration could not hope to bring along with it a Europeanstyle political superstructure in which Canadian representation and a Canadian voice are built in. Harmonization of policies clearly means Canadian acceptance of American standards, even where these are inappropriate to Canadian realities. …

One for All: Using Focus Groups and Opinion Polls in the George H. W. Bush White House

Democratic theory promises that the public influences elected officials, and thus policy. Since the Nixon administration, presidents have employed a public opinion apparatus in order to capture and employ public attitudes. Public opinion polls, by virtue of statistical certitude, appear both scientific and representative of the public. However, there is another tool in the public opinion arsenal, albeit an unrepresentative one. President George H. W. Bush's administration employed not only public opinion polls but also focus groups during his tenure. When challenging the use of polls, the media, elites and even scholars rarely condemn the practice as poorly representative of the public; focus groups, in contrast, are discussion sections of approximately 20 people considering questions of policy, rhetoric, and performance. Using archival documents, this article compares the use of focus groups with the traditional application of the polling apparatus during the Bush presidency. Despite the inherent consequences of employing such a narrowly representative tool, the Bush White House employed focus groups in much the same manner as the statistically driven polling apparatus.