Senate Seats Research Articles

The Conversion of Senator Arthur Vandenberg: From Isolation to International Engagement by Lawrence S. Kaplan

Reviewed by: The Conversion of Senator Arthur Vandenberg: From Isolation to International Engagement by Lawrence S. Kaplan Gregory L. Schneider Lawrence S. Kaplan, The Conversion of Senator Arthur Vandenberg: From Isolation to International Engagement. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. 294pp. $45.00. Any student of the origins of the Cold War has probably heard about or read a story about a meeting between Michigan Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, consummately described as an old Right isolationist, with President Harry Truman. The date was January 1947 and the subject was Soviet pressure on Greece and Turkey. The new Republican majority, skeptical of the containment idea and of an expanded foreign presence in Europe, had to be scared about the threat of communism and the necessity of aiding Greece and Turkey with military and economic aid to resist Soviet pressure. Vandenberg was said to be so scared and wound up eschewing his isolationism and embracing the Truman Doctrine. Nothing in history is ever so neat. Vandenberg, a former Teddy Roosevelt progressive in his youth, had not been so scared. Rather, as this superb biography of the Senator and his transition to internationalism reveals, the transition from isolationism to internationalism was more gradual and evolutionary. It was not Soviet pressure on Greece and Turkey which played the major role in this transition; rather, it was Pearl Harbor six years before which played the crucial role in turning a skeptic about internationalism into an internationalist. Lawrence Kaplan is well positioned to tell this story as the master historian of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and as a student of American–European relations. Vandenberg was a Grand Rapids newspaperman, who spent one year at the University of Michigan before becoming editor of the Grand Rapids Herald. The editorial line was progressive Republican and so were Vandenberg’s politics. In 1928 he was appointed to an open Senate seat to fill a vacancy and during his time in Congress pursued a working relationship with both Herbert Hoover and with Democrat Franklin Roosevelt. While no New Dealer, he was also not a laissez-faire conservative and not a practitioner of the conservative anti-New Deal politics embodied on the political Right in those years. Vandenberg’s true interest remained foreign affairs and he was a committed isolationist. He had been a member of the Nye Committee hearings and had fought against the power of the munitions makers and war profiteers, giving many speeches in Michigan about the desire to keep out of foreign wars. Amazingly, given the drift toward New Deal liberalism in Michigan [End Page 139] and the sight of sit-down strikes in early 1937, Vandenberg easily won reelection as a Republican, showing his fungible manner in representing himself as an isolationist on foreign affairs and as a progressive on domestic matters. World War II changed Vandenberg’s views and moderated his prewar isolationism. He gained significant national attention for a speech reiterating a desire for a strong internationalism given on the floor of the Senate on January 10, 1945, a few weeks before FDR departed for the Yalta conference. The speech showed his growing internationalism and pursuit of clarification of the necessity for a new approach in American foreign policy. (Kaplan considered it such an important turning point that it is republished in the index to the book.) The speech drew notice from the administration and Vandenberg was named a delegate to the San Francisco conference to establish the United Nations. He worked diligently and sought the advice of both John Foster Dulles, the senior delegate to the conference and columnist Walter Lippmann. He took the work seriously and supported the San Francisco Treaty and the establishment of the UN. At the same time he developed a realistic assessment of the Soviet Union and was not prepared to accept the administration’s approach that Josef Stalin could be worked with to shape the peace. In this question regarding the onset of the Cold War it would have been nice to see more engagement with recent assessments of Truman by scholars like Wilson Miscamble’s From Roosevelt to Truman, which shows that the president was not the hard liner on the Soviets until late...

Conservative Bias: How Jesse Helms Pioneered the Rise of Right‐Wing Media and Realigned the Republican PartyBryan HardinThrift. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014.

Conservative Bias: How Jesse Helms Pioneered the Rise of Right-Wing Media and Realigned the Republican Party Bryan Hardin Thrift. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014.Current debates over gay marriage, Obamacare, the role of the federal government in the economy, as well as the racially divisive tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri have again highlighted the differences between liberal and conservative. It appears impossible for the two sides to ever agree. In Conservative Bias, Bryan Hardin Thrift provides a historical explanation for this ideological and rhetorical divide by making a compelling argument for the influence of Jesse Helms in the creation of the modern conservative movement. Some historians such as Dan T. Carter have suggested a top-town theory on the rise of conservatism, pointing to Wallace and Nixon leading a conservative Southern revival during the 1968 presidential campaign. Others, like Matthew Lassiter, have argued that grassroots movements against liberal programs like welfare, civil rights, busing, and the ERA are what have created the new conservative movement. Thrift's perspective is significant because he bridges these two divergent theories by arguing that control of the media and the repackaging of the conservative message are what brought about a political sea change after the 1960s. In Thrift's view, Helms's deft use of the media allowed him to develop his right-wing position and gain white supporters during the 1960s.After winning his Senate seat in 1972, Helms noted that, 'Nothing pleased me more than to have had a part in demonstrating that the lib'rul editors are virtually without influence-if those of us on the other side simply fight hard enough (193). In this statement, he encapsulated a strategy focused on intractable adherence to a conservative position leaving little room for compromise. Thrift traces the evolution of this point of view through Helms's work in newspapers and television during the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1950s, Helms, like most Southern whites, was a solid Democrat from North Carolina. He was the editor of the Tarheel Banker, a conservative magazine committed to free enterprise. It was in this capacity that Helms began his attacks on the mainstream media, believing it to be too liberal. By 1960, Helms had joined the team at WRAL-TV in Raleigh where his conservative message was able to reach a much broader audience. Up until his successful run for the Senate in 1972, Helms remained free of the constraints that a political office imposed and was able to push his conservative agenda without having to adjust this message to be elected. …

Making JFK Matter: Popular Memory and the Thirty-Fifth President by Paul H. Santa Cruz

Reviewed by: Making JFK Matter: Popular Memory and the Thirty-Fifth President by Paul H. Santa Cruz Emilie Raymond Making JFK Matter: Popular Memory and the Thirty-Fifth President. By Paul H. Santa Cruz. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2015. Pp. [xxiv], 363. $29.95, ISBN 978-1-57441-597-1.) Making JFK Matter: Popular Memory and the Thirty-Fifth President is the first book to analyze how various institutions and individuals have used popular memory of President John F. Kennedy to shape America’s political culture. While the book is somewhat incomplete, Paul H. Santa Cruz, an archivist at the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, does launch an important discussion. Santa Cruz emphasizes the “mixed blessing” of JFK’s popular memory, which is considerably more adulatory than scholars’ assessments (p. 130). The public has named JFK one of the top five American presidents, while scholars list him somewhere in the middle. Although the author obviously understands the gap between JFK’s captivating image and his actual record, Santa Cruz wisely refrains from laboring on those differences. Instead, Santa Cruz uses individual case studies of the city of Dallas, Texas, President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Robert F. Kennedy to show how the “practical quality” of public memory is often used for political ends (p. 7). Santa Cruz also warns against the possibilities of setting impossible standards and getting “used by” the same memory in the public realm (p. 114). In his discussion of Dallas, Johnson, and Robert Kennedy, Santa Cruz shows the motivations, execution, and results of their efforts to invoke JFK’s memory. Dallas civic leaders remade the city’s image from one of violent extremism tied to the Old South to one that was “moderate, progressive, [and] tolerant” (p. 38). City leaders also launched civic improvements while downplaying JFK’s actual murder in their city. A citizens’ memorial for the president was purposely located away from the site of his death, but public interest in his assassination—fueled in part by conspiracy theories—ultimately led to the establishment of the Sixth Floor Museum. President Johnson used the slain president’s memory to pass legislation, such as a tax cut and a civil rights bill that JFK had already introduced, to solidify his credentials as a liberal Democrat in anticipation of the 1964 election. However, soon after the election, Johnson distanced himself from JFK in order to sell his antipoverty measures and establish his own legacy. Johnson was only moderately successful, especially as growing social turmoil led many to wonder about what would have happened if JFK had lived. Meanwhile, Robert Kennedy used his brother’s memory much more deliberately in selling his political candidacies to the public, but with mixed results. His close working relationship with JFK surely helped Robert win a Senate seat in 1965, but it did not decisively boost his 1968 presidential bid. It possibly even undermined his candidacy, as he argued against his brother’s Vietnam policies and did not connect as well with working-class white voters. [End Page 485] The second half of the book, unfortunately, loses steam. Especially puzzling is the lack of a chapter about Jacqueline Kennedy. Santa Cruz states that her use of the term Camelot, which she introduced to Life magazine within two weeks of JFK’s death, did more than anything else to shape the president’s memory in popular culture. She dramatized JFK’s funeral and burial and played important roles in the construction of the Kennedy Space Center and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. These actions beg for the same kind of analysis as the other case studies. The final chapter, titled “Observations,” asserts that JFK had a positive vision and stirred civic engagement but also sensationalized American politics by contributing to a culture of celebrity. Perhaps Santa Cruz could have achieved a more innovative conclusion by consulting recent scholarship on public memory and on the conflation of Hollywood and politics. Nevertheless, his book provides a good starting point and will be especially useful to scholars interested in public history. Emilie Raymond Virginia Commonwealth University Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association

Forecasting the 2012 and 2014 Elections Using Bayesian Prediction and Optimization

This article presents a data-driven Bayesian model used to predict the state-by-state winners in the Senate and presidential elections in 2012 and 2014. The Bayesian model takes into account the proportions of polled subjects who favor each candidate and the proportion who are undecided, and produces a posterior probability that each candidate will win each state. From this, a dynamic programming algorithm is used to compute the probability mass functions for the number of electoral votes that each presidential candidate receives and the number of Senate seats that each party receives. On the final day before the 2012 election, the model gave a probability of (essentially) one that President Obama would be reelected, and that the Democrats would retain control of the U.S. Senate. In 2014, the model gave a final probability of .99 that the Republicans would take control of the Senate.

The Top Two Runoff – An Assessment

The Top Two Runoff – An Assessment Tony Quinn The most important impact of California’s new open primary and Top Two general election is that all the voters in a district are able to participate in choosing their elected officials. Under the prior system, voters in a closed primary chose party nominees, and in more than 90 percent of the cases, the party nominee was easily elected in November. Allowing all voters in a general election – not just partisans in a low-turnout primary – to make the decision is now beginning to have an impact, and those politicians who ignore this new system do so at their own risk. Just ask former Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra. Bocanegra was elected to a heavily Democratic Assembly seat in the San Fernando Valley in a same-party runoff in 2012, and was not term-limited until 2024. An up-and-comer among Assembly Democrats, he spread his campaign cash around in 2014 hoping to curry favor for a leadership post. But Bocanegra overlooked one little detail: He was running in another same- party runoff in 2014. His opponent was a totally unknown community activist named Patty Lopez. So Bocanegra, who had bested Lopez by 63 to 24 percent in the June primary, ignored the Lopez challenge in November. No Republican could ever have won this seat; it has only 17 percent GOP registration. But Lopez was a fellow Democrat, and on November 4 she shocked the Sacramento political establishment by ousting Bocanegra. No one to this day is exactly sure why, except for the obvious fact that Bocanegra considered himself so safe he did not spend any money on his own reelection. Birds on a telephone line notice when one bird falls, and Sacramento legislators noticed the Bocanegra upset. So now we have one very real impact of the new Top Two runoff – legislators who would have been safely nominated and assured reelection under the closed primary can be vulnerable if they are challenged by members of their own party in the runoff. In 2014, there were 25 same-party runoffs for Assembly, Senate, and Congress. Not all, of course, were serious campaigns, but some candidates understood the new dynamics of the same party runoff and appealed to members of the other party, which had no candidate on the ballot. This happened in the heavily Democratic 6 th Senate district, which covers mostly the city of Sacramento. The two top finishers in the primary were the two Assembly members, Assemblymen Roger Dickinson and Richard Pan, both Democrats. Assemblyman Pan, a pediatrician, was strongly supported by an independent expenditure committee called Californians Allied for Patient Protection. It flooded Republican and independent voters’ mailboxes with direct appeals for these voters to cast a ballot for Democrat Pan. “California’s open primary law allows the top two vote getters to face off in the November election,” explained one pro-Pan mailer. “In this Senate seat, the choice is between two Democrats. Study the records of Dr. Richard Pan and Roger Dickinson

The Rule of 13 in House and Senate Elections

As I document in this note, the party of a candidate for a U.S. House or Senate seat cannot be too out-of-line with his or her district. Specifically, if the district is more than 13 points different from the candidate’s party (as judged by the most recent presidential election), then he or she has essentially zero chance of winning. In an earlier version of this note (published on Ricochet.com, approximately one week before the 2014 midterm elections), I used the Rule to make predictions about four races: the Kentucky and Arkansas senate races and the 2nd and 3rd House races in West Virginia. All four predictions were correct even though many pundits called the races tossups or near-tossups. The rule predicts that Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) has no chance of winning reelection in 2018 (unless Manchin becomes a Republican or West Virginia voters trend significantly leftward during the next few years).

Washington View

The outcome of the November elections in Washington for House and Senate seats, along with the 36 governor offices up for votes means that there may be a very different political landscape come January. But perhaps the greatest promise of the results of the upcoming elections is that Congress and state houses could find some common ground and new leaders may emerge to move the nation toward addressing sorely neglected education issues.

Latin Women Take the Helm

Latin Women Take the Helm

The Republican Wave of 2014: The Continuity of the 2012 and 2014 Elections

AbstractThis article examines the influences on the 2014 midterm congressional elections. The election was a decisive victory for the Republican Party. Republicans picked up nine Senate seats and with them control of the Senate. They also gained thirteen House seats, extending their House majority to its largest size in over 80 years. Although Republican seat gains can be explained at one level by the normal processes of surge and decline plus the midterm as a referendum on the performance of the presidential party, this does not explain why the midterm referendum was so lopsidedly against the Democrats that it created a Republican wave in the election. This analysis traces the reasons for the Democrats’ “shellacking” to the 2012 presidential election. The reason for President Obama’s reelection in 2012 has been misinterpreted as an ideological triumph or as a positive referendum on the president’s job performance. Neither was the case. As a first party-term incumbent, President Obama was given additional time to revive the weak economy that he inherited from President Bush. The 2012 referendum on the president’s performance was a suspended referendum, not a vote of confidence. The analysis shows that the economy was weak by historical standards in 2012 and remained so in 2014 and that voters realized that the economy was weak in 2012 and continued to believe so in 2014. The crucial political difference was that voters blamed former President Bush in 2012, but held the Democrats responsible in 2014.

Was it a Wave? What does it Mean?

AbstractIn the instant analysis that followed, pundits dubbed the 2014 midterms an election “wave” for the Republican Party. Our article argues that “wave” is one of the most abused terms in American political discourse. Although political waves do exist, our article argues that they come in a variety of shapes, are created by a constellation of factors beyond anti-incumbency, and can have a number of different effects on the next national election cycle. Our analysis shows that the 2014 wave (if there was a wave in the ocean) was neither as large as pundits suggested nor as politically impactful as some spinners have claimed. Elections are determined by terrain and climate, both of which favored Republicans in 2014. Republicans captured or defended Senate seats where they should have in nine deep-red states. Focusing on gubernatorial and Senate campaigns in seven purple states, we see that Republicans won eight out of the 12 contests and five out of the nine most competitive contests. Although there has been an immense amount of attention to turnout, our analysis demonstrates that Republican victories were sometimes due to turnout, sometimes due to performance among independents, and sometimes due to a combination of these factors. This mixed picture complicates the analysis of the Republican victories, suggesting that the Rising American Electorate (youth, minorities, women) will not simply carry the Democrats to victory in 2016, and that anti-Obama public opinion alone will not be enough to deliver the White House to Republicans. It also provides yet more evidence that there is not a one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to campaign focus and targeting.

A party reborn? The new Democratic Labor Party in Australian politics

This article analyses the new Democratic Labor Party (DLP) in Australian politics. Created in the 1950s, following a split in the Labor Party, the original DLP primarily aimed to stop Labor from regaining government while opposing communism. It won a number of Senate seats from 1955 to 1970 but failed to win further parliamentary representation once Labor regained government in 1972. In recent years, however, the DLP has won representation in Australian parliaments. It won a seat in the Victorian Parliament in 2006, and in 2010 the party returned to federal politics when it won a seat in the Senate. This article argues that the modern party is significantly different to its earlier incarnation. Rather than seeking to oppose Labor or communism, the new DLP is primarily concerned with advancing a conservative moral agenda linked to broad social movements. In analysing the new DLP, it is argued that the party resembles a modern “issue-competitive” type of minor party rather than the spoiler type of party it was from the 1950s to 1970s.

Lincoln's tragic pragmatism: Lincoln, Douglas, and moral conflict

In 1858, challenger Abraham Lincoln debated incumbent Stephen Douglas seven times in the race for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. More was at stake than slavery in those debates. In Lincoln's Tragic Pragmatism, John Burt contends that the very legitimacy of democratic governance was on the line. In a United States stubbornly divided over ethical issues, the overarching question posed by the Lincoln-Douglas debates has not lost its urgency: Can a liberal political system be used to mediate moral disputes? And if it cannot, is violence inevitable? As they campaigned against each other, both Lincoln and Douglas struggled with how to behave when an ethical conflict as profound as the one over slavery strained the commitment upon which democracy depends--namely, to rule by both consent and principle. This commitment is not easily met, because what conscience demands and what it is able to persuade others to consent to are not always the same. While Lincoln ultimately avoided a politics of morality detached from consent, and Douglas avoided a politics of expediency devoid of morality, neither found a way for liberalism to mediate the conflict of slavery. That some disputes seemed to lie beyond the horizon of deal-making and persuasion and could be settled only by violence revealed democracy's limitations. Burt argues that the unresolvable ironies at the center of liberal politics led Lincoln to discover liberalism's tragic dimension--and ultimately led to war. Burt's conclusions demand reevaluations of Lincoln and Douglas, the Civil War, and democracy itself.

Raphael Cilento in Medicine and Politics

At the end of his working life as a medical bureaucrat, Raphael Cilento twice tried his hand at Australian federal politics. After an initial joust at a Senate seat, he was encouraged by the fledgling Australian Democratic Union to try the House of Representatives. His choice of electorate was heroic. The seat of McPherson (Qld) was held by Arthur Fadden, one time prime minister and perennial member for this Darling Downs electorate. Standing as an ‘Independent Democrat’, Cilento targeted the Italian community in Stanthorpe, a district where he picked up half the vote in his otherwise unsuccessful campaign. His candidature attracted some notice. Brisbane's Truth described Sir Raphael as ‘the most distinguished Queenslander to ever enter the Federal political arena’. This might seem a little hyperbolic, but seen in the larger context of Cilento's national and international work, it was a defensible proposition. Seen literally, it is slightly less defensible since Cilento was not Queensland born. Rather, he came to adopt Queensland — and to seek to advance its standing as an example of successful white settlement of the tropics.

Election Results Suggest Little Will Change on the Hill

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Capitol CommentsFull AccessElection Results Suggest Little Will Change on the HillScott Barnes, and Nicholas MeyersScott BarnesSearch for more papers by this author, and Nicholas MeyersSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:21 Dec 2012https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2012.12b25While there was potential for the political climate in Washington, D.C., to look much different come January, very little changed on November 6. President Obama won a second term in an election that ended up not being nearly as close as late polls had suggested. And as the APA Department of Government Relations (DGR) predicted, the House of Representatives remains in Republican control, and Democrats remain in power in the Senate.Despite the numbers favoring Republicans this election cycle, with 23 Democratic seats up for reelection compared with just 10 Republican seats, Democrats were able to pick up two seats in the Senate, giving them a total of 55 in the chamber, which includes the two Independents who will be caucusing with the Democrats. Among the surprises was that the Democrats were able to win Senate seats in states that were long expected to go Republican, including Missouri, Indiana, and Montana. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will continue to lead their parties in the chamber.In the House, the Democrats picked up eight seats, making the party breakdown in the 113th Congress 234 Republicans and 201 Democrats. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are expected to keep their positions in the new Congress.Two physicians were newly elected to Congress: Ami Bera, M.D. (D-Calif.), and Raul Ruiz, M.D. (D-Calif.), after both defeated Republican incumbents. There will be 18 physicians serving in the House come January, 15 Republicans and three Democrats. There are three physicians in the Senate, all Republicans.APA’s political action committee, APAPAC, contributed more than $300,000 to candidates in the 2012 election cycle, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans in both chambers. Of the candidates supported by APAPAC, 97 percent won their races in November.With Congress and the White House remaining under the same control as prior to the election, it is difficult to imagine Washington operating more smoothly in the 113th Congress than it did in the last one. While the leaders of both parties are publicly acknowledging the desperate need for bipartisanship, neither side wants to give in. As we are seeing with the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, it appears at press time as if it will take a last-minute deal to avert the consequences of inaction. While reforming Medicare’s sustainable growth rate formula is a top priority for APA and other physician organizations, it is just one of many major issues on a long list Congress must attend to before January.DGR will continue to advance APA’s legislative agenda in the new Congress, strengthening relationships with key members and educating new members on our issues, specialty, and patients. We will continue to rely on APA members for grassroots action. Members of Congress and their staffs must hear from psychiatrists in the field; there is no one better to deliver our message. If you are not yet a member of APA’s Grassroots Network, sign up today at http://www.psychiatry.org/. Your participation is vital to our success in the legislative arena. ■Scott Barnes is director of APAPAC and deputy director for political affairs and grassroots; Nicholas Meyers is director of APA’s Department of Government Relations. ISSUES NewArchived

Kentucky, the Civil War, and the Spirit of Henry Clay

Kentucky, the Civil War, and the Spirit of Henry Clay James C. Klotter (bio) Henry Clay was dying. The Great Compromiser could not compromise that situation. In November 1851, after a twelve-day trip, he had arrived in Washington, D.C., the site of his last great effort at keeping the Union intact, just the year before. Many accolades had come his way following the resulting Compromise of 1850. Now he had returned to Congress to do his duty as senator and also to argue a potentially lucrative case before the U.S. Supreme Court. But almost immediately on his return, Clay began to experience increasingly bad health. He made a brief appearance in the Senate but returned no more; he turned over his oral arguments before the court to an ally, and they split the resulting sizable fee that followed a favorable decision. All the while, Clay's health worsened. He began to spit up blood and could not sleep because of the constant coughing. The man who once exuded energy and vitality now complained of a lack of strength, no appetite, and a constant cold. Clay took opiates to help him get some rest and, displaying his famous wit amid the adv [End Page 243] noted that he had "nearly emptied an apothecary shop" with the various medicines he took. Seldom venturing from his room in the National Hotel, he resigned his Senate seat in December, effective the next September. Ever the politician, Clay had chosen that date to ensure that a Whig administration would choose his successor early, rather than the Democrats who would soon take the reins of state office.1 By January 1852, Clay told a fellow member of Congress that his situation remained "very critical." Two months after that, Clay reported to his wife Lucretia, back in Kentucky, that "I may linger for months, but I cannot get well." He told her that while he had expected he would return to the folds of family and home, he had not the strength to make the taxing trip. As the last days approached, Clay stressed he was ready to go, though, he said with a smile perhaps, "I welcome death but do not desire an exciting one." Finally, in the late morning of June 29, 1852, at the age of seventy-five, Henry Clay died, in the arms of his country, in the nation's capital, hoping that his last compromise would bind the bleeding sections together and keep his beloved Union intact but fearful that it would not.2 For almost a half-century, Henry Clay had served the United States well, as representative, Speaker of the House, senator, diplomat, secretary of state, spokesman for the American System, twice-rejected Whig presidential hopeful, three-time presidential nominee, respected party chief, Great Pacificator, and honored leader—but never as president. But even his many enemies respected the record he had forged, and Clay became the first person to lie in state in the [End Page 244] capitol. Then his casket made its roundabout way back to Kentucky, covering twelve hundred miles and passing through five state capitals, so that the crowds of Americans could honor their hero one more time and offer one last farewell. The body was interred in the Lexington Cemetery on July 10, 1852, before a crowd of as many as thirty thousand people. Henry Clay had finally returned home, one last time. But his service to his country had not ended with his death. The United States would need his spirit again and again.3 For as the nation mourned Clay, it also worried. He had dominated his political world as perhaps no one else of his generation, usually building up rather than tearing down, creating rather than destroying, producing optimism rather than pessimism. Clay had helped frame the Missouri Compromises of 1820-21, had forged the 1833 Compromise after South Carolina and Andrew Jackson had taken the nation to the edge of conflict, and had crafted the peace plan that eventually became the Compromise of 1850. With his presence in Washington, D.C., no more, with his ability to craft workable plans now absent, with his eloquent voice calling for...

Skeletons in White House Closets: A Discussion of Modern Presidential Scandals

Undoubtedly, we live in a period of media-stoked scandal. Actorsʼ and actressesʼ substance abuse, arrests, affairs, divorces, racially insensitive remarks, and indiscretions dominate entertainment news. Athletesʼ steroid abuse, drunk-driving arrests, extra-marital affairs, and extra-legal enterprises feature prominently in sports news. We should hardly be surprised to also find political news filled with scandals. Countless stories have addressed one governorʼs attempt to sell vacant Senate seats, anotherʼs international trips for extra-marital trysts, and anotherʼs penchant for escorts. Presidential candidates have been caught having affairs, fathering children out of wedlock, and raising “slush funds” of cash for personal expenses. Executive branch and judicial nominees have been exposed for cheating on their taxes, cheating on their spouses, sexually harassing their staffs, and hiring undocumented workers. Members of Congress have been caught accepting bribes, employing escorts, sexually harassing pages and staff members, and engaging in embarrassing communications online. American presidents seem to be particularly susceptible to the rising tide of scandal. The president is the most visible figure of national government and manages thousands of employees. Presidentsʼ political fortunes and legacies

Not in His Image: The Moderating Effect of Gender on Religious Appeals

AbstractReligious appeals have been part and parcel of campaign strategy for decades. Most often, however, these appeals to have come from men, but little is known about howwomenwould fare using religious appeals on the campaign trail. To remedy this, we used an experimental design to examine voter reaction to religious appeals from a female and a male candidate competing for an open United States Senate seat. We find that women's use of religious appeals is governed by the dynamics of tokenism — reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes and serving to reduce voter support of the female candidate. This suggests that women must be careful in using a key campaign tool traditionally employed by men, and that this may affect the extent to which female candidates can effectively shape voter perceptions on the campaign trail.

The Midterm Landslide of 2010: A Triple Wave Election

Democrats were trounced in the 2010 midterm elections. They lost six seats in the U.S. Senate, six governorships, and about 700 seats in state legislatures. Compared to 2008, Democrats lost 64 seats in the House and Republicans regained their House majority. The Republican majority elected in 2010 was the largest number of Republicans elected since 1946. The analysis finds that Republican seat gains resulted from the receding of the pro-Democratic waves of 2006 and 2008 as well as the incoming pro-Republican wave of 2010. Voters rejected Democrats in 2010 for their failure to revive the economy, but also for their advancement of the national healthcare reform and other liberal policies. The analysis speculates that Democrats are likely to gain House seats and lose Senate seats in 2012. Finally, President Obama’s prospects of re-election have probably been improved because of the Republican gains in the 2010 midterm.

Health Care in the 2010 Congressional Election

Eight months after the enactment of historic health care reform legislation (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), the country faces a midterm congressional election with all seats inthe House of Representatives and one third of Senate seats up for election. The election has significance for health care because most of the provisions of the national reform law do not take effect for years, and some of them could be altered by the next Congress. Such alteration might involve expanding the government's role in the plan — for example, by adding a public insurance option to compete with those of . . .

Healthcare reform legislation signed into law

After nearly nine months of con-gressional committee hearings, contentious town hall meetings, and a bipartisan summit hosted by the White House, President Obama signed the primary healthcare reform legisla-tion into law on March 23, 2010 and the change package into law on March 30, giving the President a huge victory on his top domestic priority. When Congress returned to Washington, D.C. in January to begin the Second Session of the 111th Congress, many thought the House and Senate were close to a compromise on the content of health-care reform legislation. However, negoti-ations on a final bill were stalled when, on January 19, Republican Scott Brown was elected to the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by the death of Senator Edward Kennedy. Brown's election effectively took away the Senate Democratic leader-ship's 60th vote in support of healthcare reform legislation. Without the fi libuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate, Democrats would not have been able to overcome the procedural hurdles to passing a fi nal House-Senate compromise bill without Republican votes. As a result, pressure mounted on Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for the House to take up and pass the Senate-approved healthcare reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, H.R. 3590. However, Speaker Pelosi and the House Democratic lead-ership did not have the votes needed to pass H.R. 3590 without changes. Thus, the House and Senate Democratic lead-ership began to pursue the budget rec-onciliation process to move healthcare reform legislation through Congress in two pieces. The White House and House and Senate Democratic leadership agreed on a two-step process in which the House would pass the Senate-approved healthcare reform bill and then vote on a pack-age of changes to the bill negotiated by Democrats in both chambers. Under budget reconciliation, the Senate would be able pass the package of changes with a simple majority vote. The provisions do not preclude CMS from including oral drugs without an injectable equivalent in the bundled payment system in 2011. With the Senate's commitment to pass the package of changes, the House approved H.R. 3590 by a vote of 219 to 212 on March 21. President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law on March 23. Subsequent to President Obama signing H.R. 3590 into law, the House approved the reconciliation bill amend-ing H.R. 3590 by a vote of 220 to 211, sending the package of changes to the Senate. The Senate then voted 56 to 43, approving the reconciliation bill. However, before passing the bill, it omitted two provisions in the student loan section that were ruled non-germane by the Parliamentarian. The leg-islation had to be returned to the House for final approval before being sent to President Obama for his signature. The House cast the final vote on health-care reform legislation, 220 to 207, and approved the amended reconciliation bill. President Obama signed the recon-ciliation bill into law on March 30. With the President's signature, the end-stage renal disease (ESRD) provisions in the Senate bill became law. Under the new law, the one percent reduction to the ESRD market basket is eliminated and replaced by a productivity adjustment. The law also requires a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study of including oral drugs in the bundled pay-ment system and a report on Medicare beneficiary access to high-quality dialy-sis services. The study will include analysis of a provider's ability to furnish specified oral drugs, defined as a drug or biologic for which there is no injectable equivalent, or to arrange for the provi-sion of oral drugs and a provider's abil-ity to comply with State laws in order to furnish specifi ed oral drugs. The study will also evaluate wheth-er appropriate quality measures exist to protect beneficiary access to speci-fied oral drugs and other areas to be determined by the Comptroller General. The GAO report is required no later than March 23, 2011, one year from the enactment of healthcare reform. It is important for the kidney-care commu-nity to note that the healthcare reform provisions do not preclude the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from including oral drugs with-out an injectable equivalent in the bun-dled payment system in 2011. The final rule on the ESRD pro-spective payment system (PPS) has not been released. It is expected that CMS will issue a final regulation this spring, since the bundled payment system will replace the current payment system on January 1, 2011. The full impact of the bundled PPS on patients and providers is still unknown, and only time will tell if CMS agrees to delay the oral drug provisions until after the completion of the GAO study. The authors are with the Prime Policy Group based in Washington, DC.