Presidential Studies Quarterly back issues from June 2008:
Presidential policy initiatives: how the public learns about State of the Union proposals from the mass media.(Essay)
Jun 01, 2008; ... State of the Union (SOTU) addresses are highly visible moments in a presidency. They offer unparalleled opportunities for presidents to communicate their priorities and accomplishments. Aside from the pageantry, however, what do citizens learn from these important speeches? Scholars have ...
"An informal and limited alliance": the president and the Supreme Court.(Essay)
Jun 01, 2008; ... The framers of the Constitution did not make policy making easy. By separating governmental power into multiple institutions and providing for checks and balances between the three branches, the framers created a fragmented, decentralized political system. A cursory look at the ...
The last word: presidential power and the role of signing statements.(Essay)
Jun 01, 2008; ... The presidential bill signing statement is one of many devices that contemporary presidents have developed for use against a recalcitrant Congress, joining with the executive order, memoranda, proclamations, pocket vetoes, and primary unilateral policy devices, to name but a few ...
Presidential decision making and minority nominations to the U.S. Courts of Appeals.(Essay)
Jun 01, 2008; ... Institutions whose members fail to reflect the diversity of the population are often taken to be unrepresentative of citizens' policy preferences and potentially undemocratic (Mansbridge 1999; Pitkin 1978). For the courts to be viewed as legitimate, they must be at least marginally ...
Substance versus style: distinguishing presidential job performance from favorability.(Essay)
Jun 01, 2008; ... No question about politics has been asked with as much frequency and on a topic of such general interest as the Gallup presidential approval question. And few items of public opinion research have garnered as much ink, both inside and outside academia. Unlike most survey instruments, which ...
The evolution of the modern rhetorical presidency: a critical response.(CONTROVERSY)(Critical essay)
Jun 01, 2008; ... In his study of presidential rhetoric, Teten (2003) asserts that contemporary State of the Union addresses evolved in the early twentieth century. They are shorter and use more inclusive language than the annual presidential addresses of the nineteenth century. Today, presidents use fewer ...
The evolution of the rhetorical presidency and getting past the traditional/modern divide.(CONTROVERSY)(Critical essay)
Jun 01, 2008; ... Almost six years ago, as a graduate student at Vanderbilt University, I was first introduced to a division that exists in the classification of presidential rhetoric and, indeed, of presidents themselves. The "modern" rhetorical presidency, a term largely coined by James Ceasar, Glen ...
Executive privilege and the U.S. attorneys firings.(The Contemporary Presidency)(Essay)
Jun 01, 2008; ... President George W. Bush's penchant for secrecy is widely acknowledged by his detractors and even many of his supporters. Although the president says that the war on terror and other contemporary threats to U.S. interests necessitate his expanded use of various powers, even prior to ...
Saving the presidency from lawyers.(The Law)(Essay)
Jun 01, 2008; ... The second Bush presidency has made at least one major contribution to the study of the presidency: It has put the lie to the notion that constitutional powers and institutional relations are less than central to the contemporary presidency and to any methodology selected to study that ...
The ground war 2000-2004: strategic targeting in grassroots campaigns.(Polls and Elections)(Essay)
Jun 01, 2008; ... Following the epitaphs written for American political parties in the wake of political and legal changes during the post-World War II era, a resurgence of sorts has occurred that would make George Washington Plunkitt proud. The political parties have long shown themselves to be adaptable ...
Scripted for Change: The Institutionalization of the American Presidency.(Book review)
Jun 01, 2008; ... Scripted for Change: The Institutionalization of the American Presidency. By Victoria A. Farrar-Myers. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. 268 pp. The thesis of Scripted for Change is that "shared understandings" or norms between the president and Congress are the ...
The American Vice Presidency Reconsidered.(Book review)
Jun 01, 2008; ... The American Vice Presidency Reconsidered. By Jody C. Baumgartner. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. 184 pp. Until Richard B. Cheney entered the office, only a small group of academics paid much attention to the growing power and influence of vice presidents. Cheney's controversial ...
The Matador's Cape: America's Reckless Response to Terror.(Book review)
Jun 01, 2008; ... The Matador's Cape: America's Reckless Response to Terror. By Stephen Holmes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 367 pp. Following the events of September 11,2001, many international relations scholars and security analysts argued that before the U.S. presidential ...