Modern Presidency Research Articles

The Law: Barack Obama and Budget Deficits: Signs of a Neo-Whig Presidency?

You know, the President is elected to lead. --Speaker John Boehner (R-OH, Epstein 2011) ... we're still waiting for the president to lead. --Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY, Calmes 201 la) [Obama's FY 2012 budget proposal] ... it's what I call an abdication of leadership --Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI, Allen and Allen 2011) ... if you look at the history of how these [budget] deals get done, typically it's not because there's an Obama plan out there; it's because Democrats and Republicans are both committed to tackling this issue in a serious way. --Pres. Barack Obama (U.S. White House 2011b) Introduction: Presidential Place in the National Budget Process The Modern Presidency has been missing in action on the federal budget. Faced with a deficit crisis of historic proportions, all eyes are on President Barack Obama to pave the way to fiscal health. Yet he has repeatedly evaded the gazes. While vowing in early 2009 to cut the deficit in half in his first term, Obama signed bills over the next two years to cut taxes and increase spending. After commissioning a deficit panel in 2010, he has not thrown his weight behind any of its specific fiscal, entitlement, and budget process reform policy proposals. And halfway through fiscal year (FY) 2011, the government was running on two-week continuing resolutions. Why has this visionary presidential candidate repeatedly demurred from budgetary leadership? Most obviously, the president's modest institutional posture is a strategy to navigate the challenging policy and political landscape. First, the nascent economic recovery may require years of demand stimulation by the government. Second, long-standing public opinion incoherence on fiscal policy (how to reduce spending, pay for popular and expensive programs, and balance the budget simultaneously) has continued to paralyze congressional as well as executive leadership as they translate campaign promises into new law. Third, the president is seemingly hesitant to take big political risks as he absorbs the results of the 2010 midterm election (backlash against his perceived expansionist agenda after 2008) and looks ahead to 2012 (likely backlash against Republicans' perceived reductionist agenda after 2010). Acknowledging these pressures on the president, this paper will largely focus on how these actions change the orientation of the presidency toward the more Whiggish side of the power spectrum. In avoiding a firm fiscal agenda, and opting instead to goad Congress into playing the leading role in budget policy formation, Obama is speaking and behaving in a way that echoes an older conception of presidential place. Sometimes called the constitutional theory of the presidency, a Whig president demonstrates self-conscious institutional sensitivity to the separation of powers system through deferential rhetoric and action. This premodern theory stands in contrast to the stewardship (Theodore Roosevelt) and prerogative (Franklin Roosevelt) models of presidential power (Genovese 1976; Stokes 1976). For example, in an oft-cited description of such institutional thinking (not necessarily echoing nineteenth-century Whig Party economic views), William H. Taft rebuked his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, for misunderstanding the office. The true view of the Executive function is, as I conceive it, that the President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power or justly implied and included within such express grant as proper and necessary to its exercise. Such specific grant must be either in the Federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest. (Taft 1916, 139-40). Of course, Taft's vision was on the verge of extinction even in his own time. …

Sacrifício rei, estado ruandês e genocídio

Em contraste com as análises do genocídio ruandês de 1994, que privilegiam o político, este artigo sustenta que o poder e a política durante o tempo que precedeu o genocídio foram afetadas por noções ruandesas específicas de cosmologia e ontologia. Para entender esse componente "imaginário" da violência, precisamos examinar atentamente as crenças e práticas relacionadas com a instituição da realeza sagrada em Ruanda. Embora essas crenças e práticas foram oficialmente encerradas em 1931, quando o último rei de Ruanda sagrado foi deposto e substituído por seu filho educado por missionários, a sua matriz cosmológica manteve-se em tempos recentes. Isto pode ser visto na literatura popular de rua Ruandesa, que circulou amplamente nos dias que antecederam o genocídio. Nessa literatura, o então presidente Juvenal Habyarimana era comparado explicitamente a um rei ruandês. Mais importante ainda para os objetivos deste artigo, foi a comparação mais difusa, implícita, e simbólica entre Habyarimana e um rei sagrado. Em particular, alguns dos elementos-chave neste simbolismo iluminam (e mostram a importância da persistência) da imagem de como um rei (ou presidente) deveria se comportar. Como havia muitos jornalistas ruandeses reacionários (e racistas) que tinham começado a duvidar da capacidade do presidente Habyarimana de ser um "bom rei", seu "sacrifício"'subseqüente estava, em um sentido simbólico, fortemente predestinado.

Befuddling Executive Power with Executive Unilateralism in the Unitary Executive

Previous studies dwell on either how the U.S. Constitution supposedly envisions the conduct of policymaking between the president and Congress, or why the executive branch persistently outmaneuvers Congress. Yet insufficient attention is paid to the fact that the unitary executive is for the purpose of exacting collective decision-making between the two branches of government. This paper is a preliminary endeavor to put American presidency in perspective. In outlining the constitutional foundation of the unitary executive theory, I trace the sources of executive power in the context of separation of powers, and checks and balances as its functional mechanism. Then, I look into the evolving conduct of modern presidents to explore how executive power is often befuddled with executive unilateralism ever since America was built on the principle of presidentialism. By illuminating how some entrepreneurial presidents managed to expand their claims on prerogative powers, I argue that the precedents set by their predecessors in combination with their use of rhetoric unwittingly enable them to justify executive unilateralism at times. I conclude by stipulating whether Barack Obama can overcome the presidency of George W. Bush, by constructing his own version of the unitary executive yet refraining from the entrapment of executive unilateralism.

Freeing speech: the constitutional war over national security

The United States is in the midst of a heated conversation over how the Constitution impacts national security. In a traditional reading of the document, America uses military force only after a full and informed national debate. However, modern presidents have had unparalleled access to the media as well as control over the information most relevant to these debates, which jeopardizes the abilities of a democracy's citizens to fully participate in the discussion. In Freeing Speech, John Denvir targets this issue of presidential dominance and proposes an ambitious solution: a First Amendment that makes sure the voices of opposition are heard. Denvir argues that the First Amendment's goal is to protect the entire structure of democratic debate, even including activities ancillary to the dissemination of speech itself. Assessing the right of political association, the use of public streets and parks for political demonstrations, the press' ability to comment on public issues, and presidential speech on national security, Denvir examines why this democratic model of free speech is essential at all times, but especially during the War on Terror.

The Contemporary Presidency: Gender Desegregation and Gender Integration in the President's Cabinet, 1933-2010

To study women and men in the U.S. cabinet is to study the intersection of descriptive and substantive representation. Consider, for example, the significance of gender to the political credibility of two well-known cabinet secretaries, Frances Perkins and Colin Powell. As the labor secretary in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, Frances Perkins advanced reforms that women activists had sought for decades. Countless policy battles in municipal and state government had strengthened the ties between her gender identity and her political priorities. Gender and politics were also tightly intertwined for Colin Powell, secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration. As a career military officer with extensive experience in military-civilian dialogues, Powell brought a distinctive credibility to his diplomatic engagements. For Powell and for Perkins, gender provided access to career opportunities and organizational networks, shaping their advocacy and leadership. These examples begin to reveal the importance of gender for both women and men secretaries, demonstrating the need to consider its impact on careers and decisions. Are there systematic differences among the women and men appointed to the cabinet in the modern presidency? What is the significance of these differences for the modern presidency? Answering these questions requires comparing the women and the men secretaries, drawing on past classification schemas developed and tested by political scientists. As individuals, cabinet members can be categorized as initial or midterm appointees, as Washington insiders or outsiders, and as specialists in their departments' policies, liaisons to their departments' constituents, or generalists chosen for their loyalty to the president (see Best 1981; Borrelli 2002; King and Riddlesperger 1984; Polsby 1978). To see the aggregate effect of the individual similarities and differences, we consider the extent to which a president's cabinet has undergone either gender desegregation or gender integration. In simple terms, when women enter a formerly all-male cabinet, but then are marginalized within it, the cabinet is gender desegregated. As women and men secretaries acquire similar political resources and opportunities to exercise power, the cabinet undergoes gender integration. It is the task of this article to define these terms precisely, applying them to the cabinets of the modern presidency. Particular attention is given to the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama cabinets. By the time of the Clinton presidency, there was a widespread expectation that women would be named to the cabinet--an expectation encouraged by Clinton's campaign promises of an administration that looks like America, by the lobbying efforts of the Coalition for Women's Appointments, and by extensive media coverage. How did this affect the cabinet ? Did it evidence gender integration? George W. Bush made no promises similar to Clinton's, and he encountered far less pressure to diversify his cabinet appointments. Did the cabinet changes begun in the Clinton administration continue in the Bush administration? Barack Obama was the first civil rights attorney to be president. How did his initial cabinet secretaries compare to those of Clinton and Bush? Did Obama provide a gender-desegregated or a gender-integrated cabinet ? These questions are the focus of this study of gender and change in the president's cabinet. Women, Men, and the President's Cabinet Cabinet secretaries advance the president's agenda through their advocacy in Congress, through leadership in their departments, and through their relationships with departmental issue networks. Yet this outreach also strains the secretaries' allegiance to the president, as members of Congress advance their own priorities through authorizations and appropriations, departmental careerists mobilize to protect their programs, and constituencies seek policies in their self-interest. …

The provisional pulpit: modern presidential leadership of public opinion

cornerstone of the public presidency is the ability of the White House to influence, shape, and even manipulate public opinion. Ultimately, although much has been written about presidential leadership of opinion, we are still left with many questions pertaining to the success of presidential opinion leadership efforts throughout the modern presidency. What is still missing is a systematic, sequential approach to describe empirical trends in presidential leadership of public opinion in order to expand on important scholarly queries, to resolve empirical disputes in the literature, and to check the accuracy of conventional political wisdom on how, when, and under what conditions presidents lead public opinion. In The Provisional Pulpit, Brandon Rottinghaus develops a simple theory of presidential leadership, arguing that presidential messages are more likely to be received if there are fewer countervailing agents or messages to contradict the president's message. He concludes, based upon the findings presented in this book, that the 'bully pulpit' is largely provisional for modern presidents. more the president can avoid the political echo chamber associated with partisan battles or communications, the better the chance the president has to lead public opinion. The Provisional Pulpit adds an important layer of understanding to the issue of how and under what conditions presidents lead public opinion. All modern presidents clearly attempt to lead public opinion; often, due to factors outside their control, they fail. This book is an exploration into how and when they succeed.

Presidential rhetoric and the public agenda: constructing the war on drugs

The bully pulpit is one of the modern president's most powerful tools-and one of the most elusive to measure. Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda uses the war on drugs as a case study to explore whether and how a president's public statements affect the formation and carrying out of policy in the United States. When in June 1971 President Richard M. Nixon initiated the modern war on drugs, he did so with rhetorical flourish and force, setting in motion a federal policy that has been largely followed for more than three decades. Using qualitative and quantitative measurements, Andrew B. Whitford and Jeff Yates examine presidential proclamations about battling illicit drug use and their effect on the enforcement of anti-drug laws at the national, state, and local level. They analyze specific pronouncements and the social and political contexts in which they are made; examine the relationship between presidential leadership in the war on drugs and the policy agenda of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Attorneys; and assess how closely a president's drug policy is implemented in local jurisdictions. In evaluating the data, this sophisticated study of presidential leadership shows clearly that with careful consideration of issues and pronouncements a president can effectively harness the bully pulpit to drive policy.

Varieties of Obamaism: Structure, Agency, and the Obama Presidency

President Obama's record stands out among modern presidents because of the wide range between his accomplishments and the boldness of his as-yet unfulfilled promises. Obamaism is a complex phenomenon, with multiple themes and policy ends. In this paper we examine the administration's initiatives drawing upon recent scholarship in political science to consider the political, economic and institutional constraints that Obama has faced and to assess how he has faced them. Our key theme is the importance of integrating the study of presidency and public leadership with the study of the political economy of the state. The paper argues against personalistic accounts of the Obama presidency in favor of a structured agency approach.

Bomb power: the modern presidency and the national security state

A groundbreaking examination of how the atomic bomb profoundly altered the nature of American democracy. Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What the Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017. In Bomb Power, bestselling author Garry Wills presents a blistering critique of excessive executive power and official secrecy, drawing a direct line from the Manhattan Project to the usurpations of George W. Bush. He reveals how the atomic bomb transformed our nation down to its deepest constitutional roots-by dramatically increasing the power of the modern presidency and redefining the government as a national security state-leaving us in a state of continuous war alert for nearly seven decades. Bold and incisive, Bomb Power casts the history of the postwar period in a new light and sounds an alarm about the continued threat to our Constitution.

The Constitutional presidency

Since 1981, when Joseph M. Bessette and Jeffrey K. Tulis first published The Presidency in the Constitutional Order, the study of the constitutional powers of the presidency has advanced considerably. Bessette and Tulis continue the conversation almost 30 years later, presenting original research on the most significant issues regarding presidential power and the Constitution. After introducing and identifying the main approaches to the study of the constitutional presidency and the nature of executive power, Bessette and Tulis, along with other constitutional scholars, cover a wide range of topics. These include the logic and meaning of Article II of the Constitution; the constitutional and political debate over Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality of 1793; the contribution of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft to the constitutional foundations of the modern presidency; the controversy over the presidential election of 2000 and the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore; military tribunals and the war on terrorism; executive orders; growing presidential influence over the budgeting process; executive privilege; impeachment; and demagoguery in democratic regimes. The book conjoins political and legal modes of analysis and shows how constitutional interpretation is indispensable to an adequate description of political behavior and serves as the source of standards for evaluating presidential conduct. The contributors offer new and distinctive arguments, especially in light of the renewed debate over executive power during the George W. Bush administration.

Gilded Age Statecraft

Gilded Age Statecraft Robert M. Calhoon (bio) Charles W. Calhoun. Minority Victory: Gilded Age Politics and the Front Porch Campaign of 1888. American Presidential Election series. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008. xi + 243 pp. Appendices, notes, bibliographical essay, and index. $29.95. Now more than a century in the past, the Gilded Age still has blurred historiographical boundaries, albeit ones being remapped quarterly, since 2001, in The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. This reviewer wrestled with the distinction between Mugwumps and Gilded Age liberals while completing Political Moderation in America’s First Two Centuries. Evidence indicated that historic moderation in America coalesced during 1913, the first year of the Wilson presidency, only to dissipate in 1914 as Progressives demanded from Wilson more assertive leadership. But a wider consideration of the politics of industrialization from the late-1880s to 1917 suggested that Wilson’s carefully crafted moderate agenda of 1913 was simultaneously visionary and antique.1 As a volume in the new University Press of Kansas series on historic presidential elections, this book credits Benjamin Harrison, rather than Grover Cleveland, with “setting the stage for the creation of the modern presidency” (p. 190) under McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft. Moreover, Calhoun carefully searches records of the 1888 campaign for self-inflicted wounds that would come back to haunt the Harrison administration in 1892 when Cleveland won re-election on his second try—postponing for four turbulent years the transformative electoral showdown of 1896. That said, Calhoun also shows that the political culture of the Gilded Age was no less fluid and volatile in the late-1880s than it would become in the mid-1890s. “The delicate balance of the national political equilibrium,” he posits, “required each party to be both intense and circumspect” (p. 3). The constricted social space between intensity and circumspection was a legacy of the Compromise of 1877. As Calhoun himself demonstrated in his magisterial book on The Republican Party and the Southern Question,2 the drafting of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution placed Congress in a paradoxical quandary. In the view of New Jersey Republican Frederick Frelinghuysen, [End Page 99] Democrats “who claim for themselves devotion to the principles of democracy, which is a government nearer to the people, . . . oppose an amendment which will give the power of manifesting sovereignty to four million native born, arms-bearing citizens of the United States.” Yet Frelinghuysen’s own Republican Party was torn between two rationales for the Fifteenth Amendment: conservatism (a simple declaration of the right to vote that did not further alter the federal principle) and republicanism (recognizing, in the words of Florida carpetbag Senator Adonijah Welch, that “intelligence and virtue,” while integral to voting, “are not peculiar to any race” and “not monopolized by nor wholly excluded from any people on the round earth.” Though satisfied that both houses of Congress had steered safely between this Scilla and Carybidis, Calhoun discerns that the Fifteenth Amendment had still been a harrowing passage to navigate because the debate had “limned the outer limits of the party’s notions of republicanism” while avoiding “fundamental damage to the principle of federalism.” The constitutional logic that Congressional Republicans employed in 1875 was that a high threshold for Congressional enactment and state ratification of amendments (two-thirds and three-quarters respectively) meant that amendments to the Constitution should alter the original document and its amendments as little as possible. The Fifteenth Amendment lacked teeth not only because a straightforward statement of republican principle was all the Congressional Republicans could muster but, more importantly, because statements of principle mattered as good faith gestures toward states that might in the future be persuaded to protect voting rights as part of the constitutional settlement of Civil War issues. Moreover, the Fourteenth Amendment was widely understood to be a high-water mark of constitutional change, undercutting the Tenth Amendment’s bolstering of states’ rights, firming up new prohibitions on the power of states to deny rights and immunities, due process, and equal protection, as well as banning states from defining for themselves either state or national citizenship. Implicit in the high-water-mark interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment was an understanding that a...

Modern Presidents and the Transformation of the Federal Personnel System

In this paper I review the causes and consequences of key changes in the federal personnel system in the modern presidency. I first describe the contours of this system at the end of the Truman Administration and the problem the system created for presidents. I then detail three changes to this system that emerged in response to the insularity of the civil service at mid-century. I conclude by reviewing how changes in the personnel system influence presidential efforts to control and manage the administrative state. I note how the short-term incentives of presidents to get control can lead to long-term difficulties in controlling that state.

Going it Alone: The Politics of Signing Statements from Reagan to Bush II

Objectives. Until recently, the signing statement—a written statement the president can append to a bill after he signs it into law—remained buried in the footnotes of history. However, for modern presidents, the signing statement has become one important, albeit understudied, example of presidential unilateralism—strategies employed to preserve executive prerogatives and advance presidential policy in the face of gridlock. This article examines how presidents exert influence through signing statements and their role in the context of the separation of powers. Methods. Descriptive time-series data and logit models assess signing statement behavior from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush (1981–2008). Results. The analysis demonstrates how features of the political (especially unified government) and policy context explain variation in the type of signing statement. Conclusion. The evidence suggests presidents have incentives to use constitutional signing statements when Congress is the least likely to challenge them and not necessarily for reasons related to policy gridlock.

The Rhetorical PresidencyToday: How Does It Stand Up?

The Rhetorical Presidency by Jeffrey Tulis has had a good run. Since its publication in 1987, the book has achieved landmark status in the field of presidential studies. It has also influenced scholarship in American political development, theory, and communication studies. The allure of The Rhetorical Presidency derives from the compelling story it tells about pre-twentieth-century presidents. According to Tulis, these presidents operated under a different understanding than do modern presidents. Because the original Constitution was based on a preference for careful policy deliberation and a fear of demagoguery, premodern presidents understood that they should not communicate with the public on policy matters. Instead, these presidents knew that they should direct their policy ideas to Congress, in writing. Tulis says that all pre-twentieth-century presidents except Andrew Johnson conformed to this constitutional norm. The decision by Congress to impeach and almost remove Johnson from office after he went on a tempestuous speaking tour in 1867 illustrates the power of the norm (Tulis 1987, 4-6, 46-47, 59, 87-93). (1) In The Rhetorical Presidency, Tulis bases his conclusions about the public communication behavior of premodern presidents on two sets of data. The first set is the speeches these presidents made. The second set is a sampling of their written communications. From his review of both kinds of presidential communication, Tulis finds that presidents in their public rhetoric generally avoided addressing policy specifics, and instead couched their communications in broad themes of patriotism and national principle. He claims that this consistent communication behavior by presidents for so long after the republic's founding proves the existence of a widely understood--but now superseded--norm against presidents communicating with the public on controversial policy matters. Because it fit so well with his reported research findings, Tulis's account of the role that presidents were originally intended to play in the order has been widely accepted. Tulis performed an important service by directing scholarly attention to the public communication activities of premodern presidents. However, the empirical foundation of The Rhetorical Presidency is becoming increasingly weakened, thereby calling into question the overarching theory of the book. Subsequent scholarship has found that the world of premodern presidential communication practices was not nearly as cleanly ordered as Tulis portrays. This article reviews those research findings and offers an alternative explanation for the variability in presidential communication behavior uncovered by the new research. This alternative explanation is based not on a now-superseded norm, but rather on the conflicting attitudes toward the presidency that have always been a characteristic of the office. (2) There are two reasons for the differences in research findings. First, research into the public speeches and writings of premodern presidents has revealed many more instances of presidents engaging in policy-oriented rhetoric than Tulis found. This research shows that at least eight presidents, not just the one identified by Tulis, communicated openly with the American people on policy matters at various times during their administrations. Even according to his own limited analytic criteria, Tulis missed many historical incidents of public policy communication by early presidents. Second, Tulis in his research employed an analytical framework that excluded from consideration the administration-sponsored newspapers that were used by at least 10 presidents to communicate extensively with the public on policy matters. Tulis thus neglected an institution of fundamental political importance through which many early presidents did just what he said they abstained from doing. In terms of their public communication approaches, premodern presidents can be classified according to four types: Open Communicator, Veiled Communicator, Patriotic Cheerleader, and Silent Head. …

Patronage Appointments in the Modern Presidency: Evidence from a Survey of Federal Executives

This paper analyzes how modern presidents make patronage decisions. It explains where less qualified but essential-to-place persons want to go and where presidents find it easiest to place them. It uses new survey data from the George W. Bush Administration to provide some of the first systematic evidence we have on where presidents place patronage appointees in the federal government. It finds that presidents are most likely to place patronage appointees in agencies that share the president‘s views about policy and in positions where appointees have less visible impact on agency outputs or performance. I conclude that patronage factors play an important and underappreciated role in presidential administrative strategies.

Turkey Farms, Patronage, and Obama Administration Appointments

In this paper we use new data on over 1,000 persons appointed to positions in the first six months of the Obama presidency to expand our understanding of presidential appointments and modern patronage practices. We use systematically collected appointee biographical data to determine which agencies receive appointees with fewer qualifications and more extensive campaign experience or political connections. We finds that presidents tend to place patronage appointees in those agencies that are less central to the president’s agenda, with the same political ideology as the president, and where appointees are least able to hurt agency performance. We conclude that the controversial role of patronage in the modern presidency embodies the deeper conflict that emerges from a need for both presidential accountability and broader government performance.

Wrestling With The Dragon: Presidential Power And Health Reform

Wrestling With The Dragon: Presidential Power And Health Reform

President Eisenhower and the Development of Active Labor Market Policy in the United States: A Revisionist View

The early assessment of Dwight D. Eisenhower and his presidency by the popular media and academic scholars was predominately negative. They saw his political philosophy as conservative and dated, his political leadership and skills as weak, and his grasp of issues and policies as minimal. His foreign policy was timid and isolationist. His domestic policy was virtually nonexistent. In addition, he was accused of delegating decision making to his staff and cabinet. Moreover, he was lazy and a bumbler with the English language (Barber 1972, 162; Brinkley 1990, 113; De Santis 1976, 191; Greenstein 1994, 6-7; Reichard 1978, 266-71). President Harry Truman, who began taking notes for a book on American presidents soon after he left office, categorized Eisenhower as one of our worst presidents. In Truman's estimation, He didn't do a thing as President ... [and] never made any effort to put forward the leadership to which he was entitled, and he didn't have any program (1988, 7). Academics reinforced these early assessments in their ranking of the presidents from greats to failures. The famous Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., poll of 75 prominent historians, political scientists, and journalists in 1962 ranked Eisenhower twenty-second out of 31 presidents. Subsequent assessments by historians and political scientists ranked Eisenhower nineteenth to twentieth among presidents (Reichard 1978, 273; Rosenman and Rosenman 1976, 553-54). James David Barber, in his classification of presidents, rated Eisenhower a passive-negative president--that is, someone who does little in politics and enjoys it less and a political leader who lack[s] the experience and flexibility to perform effectively (1972, 13, 156). However, time has been good to Eisenhower's reputation. Changing values brought on by the alleged military and domestic excesses of the 1960s and 1970s, and the opening of various Eisenhower archives, have resulted in an outburst of revisionist literature. Commentators now hail Eisenhower's leadership skills, his hidden-hand executive maneuvers, his foreign policy successes, and his domestic achievements. The most highly touted of these newly discovered successes were his foreign policy efforts in dealing with the Middle East, China, Vietnam, and the Soviet Union (Alexander 1975; Cook 1981; De Santis 1976; Divine 1981; Hahn 2006; Reichard 1978; Rushkoff 1981). Eisenhower's much-derided political and executive skills have also been subject to positive revision (Conley and Yon 2007, 293; De Santis 1976, 206-7; Greenstein 1994; Maranto 1993; Reichard 1978, 275; Sloan 1991, 153, 160). Some revisionists now credit Eisenhower with desegregating public facilities in previously rigidly segregated Washington, D.C., thus burnishing his civil rights record (Brownell 1991; Mayer 1991). Eisenhower's early rankings as a mediocre president at best have also been reversed. For example, a 1982 poll of historians placed Eisenhower ninth in the presidential rankings. Successive polls and analyses have ranked Eisenhower between ninth and eleventh as president (Endersby and Towle 2003, 392; Murray and Blessing 1994, 16; Ridings and McIver 1997, xi). Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1997, 189), whose father initiated the ranking system, found in a replication of his father's poll that respondents rated Eisenhower tenth, just below James K. Polk and just above John Adams. Sanchez (1996, 61, 99, 102), in an analysis of positive and negative comments on American presidents in 36 introductory political science texts, found that of the modern presidents, Eisenhower ranked second to Franklin D. Roosevelt and just ahead of John E Kennedy in the total percentage of all positive comments. Purpose of the Article This article is concerned with Eisenhower's domestic policies, namely his initiatives in furthering active labor market policy (i.e., full employment)--an important staple in the welfare state--in the United States. …

Faith and the Modern Presidency: An Interview with Randall Balmer

Faith and the Modern Presidency:An Interview with Randall Balmer Randall J. Stephens Randall Balmer is professor of American Religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University. He has published a number of books and articles for the scholarly and popular press. An editor for Christianity Today, Balmer has written for the New York Times Syndicate, and has produced PBS documentaries on Billy Graham, creationism, and American evangelicalism. His three-part TV documentary, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, was nominated for an Emmy. In 2008 HarperOne published his God in the White House: A History: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush. Historically Speaking editor Randall Stephens caught up with Balmer in Boston and discussed the 2008 presidential campaign and the lessons Americans can learn about faith and the presidency from the Kennedy era to the present. Randall Stephens: How much have your own religious views influenced what you write about? Randall Balmer: Coming right out of graduate school, I was more interested in trying to establish myself within the scholarly community, and so I took on more traditional sorts of projects. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Sub-culture in America (Oxford University Press, 1989) was a radical departure for me. I'm trained as a colonial historian. And I remember very clearly, for example, going to the chair of my department, and I said, "I have an idea for this fairly unconventional book. What do you think?" He said not to do it; it would be professional suicide. I decided I wanted to do it anyway, in part because it grew out of the crucible of my own experience. It turned out to be a reasonably successful book and PBS documentary. But it also turned out to be a very important book for me personally, in that it brought me back to the faith in ways that I had not anticipated when I first undertook the project. Since then, the books I've written have reflected my interests and my obsessions at various times. The last two books, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts Faith and Threatens America (Basic Books, 2007), in particular, was in many ways motivated by a sense of utter despair at the 2004 elections. I woke up the day after the election with a hangover, and I hadn't been drinking. I had to figure out what I was going to do to change what I considered to be this country's perilous course. I don't flatter myself to think that I had any real role in changing things, but I like to think that I contributed or did my part. Stephens: You begin your God in the White House: A History: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush with an observation: "Americans were content to disregard religion as a criterion for voting in 1960, whereas by 2004 they had come to expect the candidates fully to disclose their religious views and to expound on their personal relationship with the Almighty." Could you say something about that process? Balmer:What I call the Kennedy paradigm of voter indifference toward a candidate's faith really prevailed through several election cycles up until 1976. Oddly enough, Richard Nixon reintroduced the language of faith and piety into presidential politics. I think it's impossible to imagine Jimmy Carter, the one-term governor of Georgia, emerging out of political anonymity to become first the Democratic nominee and then the president of the United States in 1976 had it not been for Nixon. And one of the reasons I find that so paradoxical is that Nixon was always Billy Graham's favorite politician and his lifelong friend. The culture of corruption surrounding the Nixon administration paradoxically reintroduced this language of faith and piety into presidential politics. Carter, a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, burst onto the scene saying that he wanted a government as good and decent as the American people. He promised never to knowingly lie to the American people. For a populace who had suffered through Richard Nixon's...

History, Historians and the First 60th Years of the People's Republic of China—A Conversation With Jin Chongji

In two ways, Professor Jin Chongji, a leading scholar in modern Chinese history and former president of the Chinese Historical Association, is an ideal candidate for our purpose. First, he is, in a most genuine and literal sense, a member of the first generation of historians in the People's Republic of China. He began his college education in 1947, two years before the collapse of the Nationalist-controlled Old China, and launched his scholarly career in 1951, two years after the birth of the Communist-led New China. Since then he has been working as a historian for nearly 60 years. He is both a witness of the evolution of the tradition of PRC's history profession and a participant in the creation of this tradition.