President Of The United States Research Articles

Mediator Narration of Memory: US Presidents’ Autobiographies and the Narration of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1993–2012

The main argument of the paper is that we should examine mediator-narrative as an agency in narrative construction of memory during conflict. It demonstrates how despite the differences between the US presidents’ personal world views, their strategic narrations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are strikingly similar. These selective narratives strengthen the image of the US as a peacemaker and benevolent global leader. This narration is achieved by sidelining the detrimental role of the Israeli settlements and security threats, especially the increasing influence of Hamas in the Gaza-Strip. Therefore, this resilient mediator-narrative prevents critical thinking on the conflict and encourages a duplication of such policies.

The wisdom of the crowd with partial rankings: A Bayesian approach implementing the Thurstone model in JAGS.

We develop a Bayesian method for aggregating partial ranking data using the Thurstone model. Our implementation is a JAGS graphical model that allows each individual to rank any subset of items, and provides an inference about the latent true ranking of the items and the relative expertise of each individual. We demonstrate the method by analyzing data from new experiments that collected partial ranking data. In one experiment, participants were assigned subsets of items to rank; in the other experiment, participants could choose how many and which items they ranked. We show that our method works effectively for both sorts of partial ranking in applications to US city populations and the chronology of US presidents. We discuss the potential of the method for studying the wisdom of the crowd and other research problems that require aggregating incomplete or partial rankings.

The US Presidency: Power and Constraint

How much should we fear that a president will break the law to pursue power—then use their office to avoid legal accountability? Political scientists studying the presidency have often overlooked the risk of what we here call a criminal president. Donald Trump's presidency spotlighted that risk and has begun to shift the field's focus toward not just presidential power but presidential constraints. We believe this shift should continue. In this review, we aim to set an agenda that makes the danger of a criminal president central to understanding the presidency more broadly. Situating the criminal presidency within wider questions about legal and constitutional constraints on presidential power, we emphasize the unique risks to democracy that a president unbound by law can pose. We call for a greater focus on the legal rules governing the executive branch—especially unitary executive ideas—and the policies needed to hold criminal presidents accountable.

Face-work in North American Presidential Debates: A Corpus-based Multi-theoretical Approach

As inherently confrontational contexts, North American presidential debates compel politicians to engage in image restoration efforts when targeted by a face-threatening act. Since the first televised debates in 1960, presidential campaigns have become increasingly mediatized and the need to defend against face-damage has increased, for there is still a need to uphold a favorable presidential image despite the prominence of impoliteness in these events. Although a longstanding tradition, there is still no framework for the combined analysis of threatening and defensive face-work in presidential debates. This paper presents a corpus-based three-fold analysis blending qualitative, quantitative and statistical methodologies to observe the evolution of facework in this context, focusing on impoliteness and image restoration manifestations. The selected corpus comprises the presidential debates of seven North American elections —one per decade—, providing an overview of the evolution of both phenomena. This methodology also allows insight into the frequency of specific strategies. The analysis adopts a multi-theoretical approach to demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating Impoliteness theory (Culpeper, 1996) and Image restoration theory (Benoit and Wells, 1996) to create a comprehensive new approach to the study of face-work in presidential debates. Supported by results from Pearson’s Chi-square test, the combination of these theories was shown to be possible. The recurrence of attack-defense pairings integrating strategies from both theories also pointed to their necessary combination. While the recent incorporation of a female presidential candidate hinted at the potential gender variation of face-work in the debates, further data is needed to obtain conclusive results.

Unmasking the Authoritarian Mob Boss: A Critical Analysis of Donald Trump’s Political Leadership

This article comprehensively examines Donald Trump’s political leadership, arguing that his tenure as the 45th President of the United States exhibited characteristics commonly associated with authoritarian mob bosses. Drawing upon various empirical evidence and theoretical political science frameworks, the study sheds light on the underlying dynamics that shaped Trump’s leadership style and its implications for democratic governance. The analysis begins by contextualizing Trump’s rise to power within the erosion of democratic norms. It explores how his rhetoric, characterized by demagoguery and the demonization of opponents, mirrors the tactics employed by mob bosses to consolidate their power and suppress dissent. Moreover, the study uncovers the striking similarities between Trump’s administration management and the hierarchical structures of organized crime, highlighting his reliance on loyalty, personal connections, and a disregard for institutional checks and balances. Furthermore, this research delves into Trump’s autocratic tendencies, as evidenced by his disdain for the free press, attacks on the judiciary, and attempts to undermine the integrity of democratic processes. It reveals how these actions align with the strategies employed by authoritarian leaders to silence opposition and perpetuate their dominance. By examining Trump’s presidency through process tracing, this study contributes to our understanding of the complex relationship between authoritarianism and the erosion of democratic institutions. The findings underscore the urgent need for continued scholarly and public scrutiny of leaders who exhibit traits akin to authoritarian mob bosses to safeguard the principles of democratic governance and protect the integrity of liberal democracies.

Bias and excess variance in election polling: a not-so-hidden Markov model

Abstract With historic misses in the 2016 and 2020 US Presidential elections, interest in measuring polling errors has increased. The most common method for measuring directional errors and non-sampling excess variability during a postmortem for an election is by assessing the difference between the poll result and election result for polls conducted within a few days of the day of the election. Analysing such polling error data is notoriously difficult with typical models being extremely sensitive to the time between the poll and the election. We leverage hidden Markov models traditionally used for election forecasting to flexibly capture time-varying preferences and treat the election result as a peek at the typically hidden Markovian process. Our results are much less sensitive to the choice of time window, avoid conflating shifting preferences with polling error, and are more interpretable despite a highly flexible model. We demonstrate these results with data on polls from the 2004 through 2020 US Presidential elections and 1992 through 2020 US Senate elections, concluding that previously reported estimates of bias in Presidential elections were too extreme by 10%, estimated bias in Senatorial elections was too extreme by 25%, and excess variability estimates were also too large.

US Diplomatic Visits and Allies’ Military Spending

Abstract This article develops and tests two competing arguments regarding how a patron’s diplomatic visits influence the military spending of protégés. One argument posits that a patron’s visits will decrease allies’ defense spending by producing reassurance (reassurance hypothesis). Another perspective contends that such visits will increase allies’ burden sharing by fostering allied partnerships (partnership hypothesis). I test these hypotheses by analyzing US presidential visits to allies and the annual percentage changes in allies’ military spending from 1950 to 2007. I find evidence supporting the reassurance hypothesis, indicating that diplomatic visits by US presidents are associated with lower military expenditures by allies the following year. Furthermore, I find that the negative effect is primarily observed when visits are made in the first 3 years of a presidential term, while visits in the final year of a presidency do not result in significant changes in allied burden sharing. The findings highlight the role of a patron’s travel diplomacy in providing reassurance in military alliances, as well as its unintended consequence for protégés’ foreign policy: reduced alliance contribution.

Looking Ahead to the 2024 US Presidential Election: Are 65+ Voters Really Shifting to the Left?

Looking Ahead to the 2024 US Presidential Election: Are 65+ Voters Really Shifting to the Left?

Mass drug administration to reduce malaria incidence in a low-to-moderate endemic setting: short-term impact results from a cluster randomised controlled trial in Senegal.

In Africa, the scale-up of malaria control interventions, including seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), has dramatically reduced malaria burden, but progress toward malaria elimination has stalled. We evaluated mass drug administration (MDA) as a strategy to accelerate reductions in malaria incidence in Senegal. We conducted an open-label, cluster-randomised controlled trial in a low-to-moderate transmission setting of Tambacounda, Senegal. Eligible villages had a population size between 200-800. All villages received pyrethroid-piperonyl butoxide bednets and proactive community case management of malaria at baseline. Sixty villages were randomised 1:1 to either three cycles of MDA with dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine+single-low dose primaquine administered to individuals aged ≥3 months, six-weeks apart starting the third week of June (intervention), or standard-of-care, which included three monthly cycles of SMC with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine+amodiaquine administered to children aged 3-120 months starting end of July (control). MDA and SMC were delivered door-to-door. The primary outcome was clinical malaria incidence in all ages assessed during the peak transmission season (July-December), the year after intervention. Here, we report safety, coverage, and impact outcomes during the intervention year. The trial is registered at ClinicalTrials.Gov (NCT04864444). Between June 21, 2021 and October 3, 2021, 6505, 7125, and 7250 participants were administered MDA and 3202, 3174, and 3146 participants were administered SMC across cycles. Coverage of ≥1 dose of MDA drugs was 79%, 82%, and 83% across cycles. During the transmission season of the intervention year, MDA was associated with a 55% [95% CI: 28%-72%] lower incidence of malaria compared to control (MDA: 93 cases/1000 population; control: 173 cases/1000 population). No serious adverse events were reported in either arm. In low-to-moderate malaria transmission settings with scaled-up malaria control interventions, MDA with dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine+single-low dose primaquine is effective and well-tolerated for reducing malaria incidence. Further analyses will focus on the sustainability of this reduction. United States President's Malaria Initiative.

John Adams – the American Cicero? From the Genealogy of Res Publica Americana

When creating a new republic, the Foundings Fathers deemed it necessary to become well versed in the lessons of history, in order to avoid the fates of previous republics. Above all other historical corollaries, Americans evoked the example of the republican Rome that had upheld a system of government that aspired to ordered liberty as supported by a mixture of public civic virtue and effective institutional design for nearly five centuries. The comparisons were possible because the American colonies had kept the grammar school system of education then common in England, giving all educated Americans a basic grasp of Cicero’s reputation and writings, who represented eloquence, moral virtue and hostility towards tyranny. He thus became a source of inspiration for the Founders, and John Adams directly considered himself an American Cicero. In the article, the authors try to answer the question about the legitimacy of such a position of the 2nd President of the US. To do this, they compare the basic political categories of Cicero and Adams, pointing out their similarities and differences. They also examine to what extent Cicero’s thought could be applied to the reality of the young American republic.

Sports and the American presidency: from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump

Sports and the American presidency: from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump

US Military Intervention and Presidential Communication Frames

US Military Intervention and Presidential Communication Frames

Exploring Speech Act Patterns In Anthropological Pragmatics

The purpose of this paper is to look into discourse patterns of President Joe Biden from an anthropological pragmatics perspective, and the theory of speech acts, in particular. I will argue that speech acts are double-edged tools in human communication that have the power to create objective facts accepted and maintained by human agreement on the one hand but are also determined by fluctuating socio-cultural context. In exploring the topic of the American presidency from an anthropological pragmatics perspective, this article addresses theoretical and methodological issues which further our understanding of linguistic structure of social reality determined by socially constrained functions that underlie culture. Thus, this paper argues for a broadened research path to advance the theory of speech acts in political discourse. An analysis of President Joe Biden’s language practices uncovers the rhetorical concept of ethos and its criterion of credibility that is indicative of his presidential status.

Emotional labor in decision making: Gender, race, and relational practices in the White House

AbstractRelational and emotional practices intensive in emotional labor play an essential role for high‐level decision making, even though this labor is often devalued or unseen. United States presidents can often present themselves as rational and emotionally detached because they delegate emotional work to other members of their team. The burden of such work is unequally distributed along gender and racial lines. It involves expressing empathic concern, repairing relations, anticipating others' emotional responses, protecting marginalized colleagues, speaking hard truths, and providing emotional support to help others regulate their emotions. This article contributes to research on emotions in decision making, public administration, and presidency studies. Case studies of Nancy Reagan and Valerie Jarrett—who played important roles in the Reagan and Obama administrations, respectively—illustrate the article's main argument.

Crisis in EU-US relations under Trump: an emotional contemptuous double game of misrecognition

ABSTRACT With the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016, the transatlantic relations entered a renewed period of crisis. The former US administration challenged key international norms at the core of the EU’s identity – thereby testing the EU’s ability to rethink its position in the world. Against this background, studies have attempted to analyse the EU’s response vis-à-vis the US mainly from a realist and socio-psychological perspectives. Yet little attention has been given to the crucial emotional component underlying the EU’s response – related to EU’s recognition needs. Therefore, this article proposes to analyse the transatlantic crisis under the Trump administration through the lens of recognition theories and emotions in IR. Based on the emotion discourse analysis of public statements, it shows that dynamics of misrecognition and re-affirmation of identity have been at play in this recent crisis fuelled by the powerful emotion of contempt.

Sports and the American Presidency: From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump

Sports and the American Presidency: From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump

Article: Bidonomics Versus Maganomics: Pick Your Poison

This essay examines the international trade policies of Joseph Biden and Donald Trump, the two presumed candidates for President of the United States in 2024. I first analyse the trade law revolution effected by the Trump presidency, 2017–2021. During these years the Trump administration adopted a protectionist policy rooted in nationalism and populism. As a direct result of Trump administration trade policy there occurred: (1) a significant retreat from globalization; (2) paralysis of the World Trade Organization (WTO); (3) a revival of US unilateralism in trade policy; and (4) the US-China trade war. When Joseph Biden became president in 2021, he did not reverse the Trump trade policies. Declaring his favour of a ‘worker-oriented’ trade policy, the Biden administration defended Trump’s tariff policies while continuing his hostility to both new free trade agreements and the multilateral trading system. Biden’s distinctive addition to Trump’s trade policy is a protectionist industrial policy featuring subsidies and a ‘buy American’ mandate. Despite these similarities, Trump and Biden propose very different international trade policies for 2025 and beyond. Trump intends to adopt across the board protectionist tariffs of at least 10% on all imports and tariffs of at least 60% on all Chinese imports. The former tariffs will provoke numerous tit-for-tat trade wars; the latter tariffs will economically ‘decouple’ China and the United States. Both policies will raise prices and slow global economic growth. On the other hand, Biden eschews new tariffs. American policy will be rooted in industrial subsidies and ‘buy American’ protectionism. Critics of both Trump and Biden propose a ‘third way’ set of international trade policies that avoid protectionism. This ‘third way’ would feature new free trade agreements with Asian- Pacific, European, and Western Hemisphere nations, a revival of multilateralism and the WTO, and a more constructive trade relationship with China.

Male twinning after the 2008 Obama election: A test of symbolic empowerment

On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama was elected the first Black President of the United States. His campaign and electoral win served as a symbol of hope for a more just future, fostering an “Obama effect” that appears associated with improved well-being among non-Hispanic (NH) Black communities. Situating the Obama election within the symbolic empowerment framework, we consider the potentially protective role of the Obama election on NH Black fetal death, an important but understudied measure of perinatal health that has stark racial disparities. Using restricted-use natality files from the National Center for Health Statistics, we proxy fetal death using the male twin rate (number of twins per 1000 male live births). Male twins have a relatively high risk of in utero selection that is sensitive to maternal and environmental stressors, making the twin rate an important marker of fetal death. We then estimate interrupted time-series models to assess the relation between the Obama election and male twin rates among NH Black births across monthly conception cohorts (February 2003–October 2008). Greater-than-expected male twin rates signal less susceptibility to fetal loss. Results indicate a 4.5% higher male twin rate among all NH Black cohorts exposed in utero to the Obama election, after accounting for historical and NH white trends (p < 0.005). The greater-than-expected rates concentrated among births conceived in the months preceding Obama's nomination at the Democratic National Convention and Obama's presidential win. These results suggest a salutary perinatal response to election events that likely reduced NH Black fetal loss. They also indicate the possibility that sociopolitical shifts can mitigate persisting NH Black-NH white disparities in perinatal health.

The American Position towards the Establishment of the Palestinian State: From the Oslo Accord to the Deal of the Century (1993 – 2019)

The end of the Cold War period in the early 1990s crowned the United States of America (US) as the sole superpower in the world, allowing it to engage more actively in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Yet, there were initiatives by the US administrations that addressed the conflict since the 1970s. The consecutive US administrations of President Clinton, President Bush and President Obama made efforts in addressing the conflict but all failed to reach a settlement where negotiations were stuck during addressing the final status issues including the fate of the Israeli settlements and the status of Jerusalem. The Trump administration took a different radical approach and imposed a unilateral peace proposal that sided the Israeli narrative known as “deal of the century”. Under these US efforts, and under the claim that the Palestinians rejected most of these initiatives or were the side that failed these US peace initiatives, the question that arises in mind is that to what extent did the American position address the minimum aspiration of the Palestinian people in establishing their own independent state? Basically, the article suggests that the US was not a fair broker, it didn’t practice any form of pressure on the Israeli side but instead blamed the Palestinians – who are under the Israeli occupation -, the US didn’t accept the comments or the reservations of the Palestinians over its peace initiatives but accepted and adopted the Israeli comments, according to the US officials’ statements. The article writing methods generally follow the descriptive analytical approach and the historical approach along with highlighting the official statements and documents related to the topic.

Syntactic and Rhetorical Analysis of Joe Biden’s Inaugural Speech at Washington D.C.

Inaugural speech is the first chance for a president to engage the public in new strategies for success. Every inaugural speech is an example of the aims and objectives of the future. As president of America, Joe Biden has faced many challenges, including foreign affairs, a poor economy due to COVID-19, and, most importantly, American unity. The focus of the present investigation is to lead a stylistic examination from the viewpoint of syntax and rhetoric on Joe Biden's inaugural speech in Washington,D.C., on January 21, 2021. The researchers discovered that the speech is full of rhetorical and syntactic devices. The analysis revealed that the speech emphasized on unity and solidarity to preserve and promote American Identity through the excessive use of First-person pronouns and planned use of similes, repetitions, modality and conjunction. In this way, Biden made his speech productive and readily revealed his plans and motives to his audience.