BOOK REVIEWS

Scripted for Change: The Institutionalization of the American Presidency, by Victoria A. Farrar-Myers, reviewed by Raymond Tatalovich
 
The American Vice Presidency Reconsidered, by Jody C. Baumgartner, reviewed by Joseph A. Pika
 
The Matador’s Cape: America’s Reckless Response to Terror, by Stephen Holmes, reviewed by Yannis A. Stivachtis

 

 

ABSTRACTS

Presidential Policy Initiatives:
How the Public Learns about State of the Union
Proposals from the Mass Media

Jason Barabas
Florida State University

Media coverage of State of the Union proposals increases public knowledge on presidential policy initiatives, especially for individuals who follow highlights in the news.   These estimates are based upon within-survey/within-subjects comparisons of answers to factual questions for respondents who are simultaneously unexposed and exposed to media coverage on the same issue.   In this powerful but underused design, individuals serve as counterfactuals for themselves, which holds constant all relevant observed and unobserved characteristics.   The findings are based upon statistical analyses of data from four national surveys since the late-1990s covering a range of topics from health care to Social Security reform.   Watching or listening to the address directly does not appreciably affect knowledge once control variables are added for whether individuals follow news coverage of the speech, the amount of news coverage, and the interaction of these two factors.

 

“An Informal and Limited Alliance”:
The President and the Supreme Court

Brett W. Curry
Georgia Southern University

Richard L. Pacelle, Jr.
Georgia Southern University

Bryan W. Marshall
Miami University

Presidential influence transcends some of the barriers imposed by the separation of powers to influence decision making by the Supreme Court.  Specifically, the authors test Robert Scigliano’s proposition that an informal and limited alliance exists between the president and the Court.  The analysis utilizes Supreme Court decisions on civil rights and civil liberties cases from 1953 to 2000 to assess the effects of the presidency, Congress, judicial policy preferences, and legal factors on the Court.  The findings demonstrate that presidential ideology influences Court decisions, while the effects of Congress are more conditional and limited.  The results provide support for Scigliano’s notion of an informal alliance.

 

The Last Word:  Presidential Power and
the Role of Signing Statements

Christopher S. Kelley
Miami University

Bryan W. Marshall
Miami University

   
Signing statements have become an important device that both protects and enhances presidential power by signaling how legislation is to be implemented, offering a mechanism of electoral reward, and serving to protect presidential prerogatives.  We offer a first cut at explaining signing statements by applying the theory of unilateral action (Howell 2005).  The evidence shows that presidents use signing statements as conditions of gridlock, such as divided government, erode their influence in Congress.  The findings also suggest a strategic element to signing statement behavior.  Presidents issue significantly more signing statements on major legislation—when the policy and political stakes are greatest.  The results provide insight into the theory of unilateral action and how signing statements complement, rather than contradict, the Neustadt view of power.           

 

Presidential Decision-Making and
Minority Nominations for the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Mitchell Killian
George Washington University

Substantive and descriptive representation of racial minorities bolsters the legitimacy of governmental institutions.  Prior research on the judicial branch has examined what influences the proportion of minorities on U.S. District Courts.  However, there are no quantitative analyses on what factors affect presidential decisions to nominate minorities for seats on the U.S. Courts of Appeals.  The U.S. Courts of Appeals is effectively the court of last resort for nearly all federal cases.  Drawing on data from a variety of sources, I show that these decisions are strategic, primarily reflecting presidents’ own ideology and minority representation in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Substance vs. Style: Distinguishing
Presidential Job Performance from Favorability

Gregory E. McAvoy
University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Although much of the systematic, over-time research on the presidency has focused on presidential approval and how it varies in response to economic conditions and world events, there is growing interest in the impact that the public’s character evaluations of the president can have on presidential approval.  In an age where “image is everything,” it is important to understand how these character evaluations of the president vary over time and to assess their impact on presidential approval.  In this paper, I use a measure of the favorability of the president and show its utility for studying the personal dimension of the public’s assessment of the president and its impact on the president’s job performance rating.

 

CONTROVERSY

Evolution of the Modern
Rhetorical Presidency: A Critical Response

 

Chad Murphy
University of California, Riverside

In his article on the evolution of presidential rhetoric, Teten (2003) finds that there are three distinct time periods in the rhetorical presidency.  In his paper, Teten asserts that the modern rhetorical presidency is characterized by greater use of group words and shorter addresses, and begins with Woodrow Wilson. By expanding his analysis to all State of the Union addresses rather than a sample I repeat his analysis of group word usage and show that the enduring change in rhetorical styles occurred during and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration rather than Wilson, and can potentially be attributed to the advent of radio and other forms of mass media rather than the personal style of one particular president.

The Evolution of the Rhetorical Presidency
and Getting Past the Traditional/Modern Divide

Ryan Lee Teten
Northern Kentucky University

Scholars of the presidency often begin research or examination of the institution with the “modern” presidential era that is said to begin with Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  This kind of approach, as well as the “traditional/ modern” paradigm in general, is problematic because it tends to summarily dismiss a large percentage of the executive officeholders due to their seeming lack of contribution to our understanding of the contemporary presidency. Instead, when the presidents of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are closely examined alongside all of their peers, they are remarkable not for the ways in which they fail to resemble today’s executive, but for the ways in which they are similar.  As such, we, as scholars who are looking for the most complete examination of the presidency, its evolution, and its changes, must move past the adoption of easy handles and evaluate the entirety of presidential history to ensure each era be recognized for its important contributions to the twenty-first century presidency.   

 

FEATURES

 

The Contemporary Presidency

Executive Privilege and the U.S. Attorneys Firings

Mark J. Rozell
George Mason University

 Mitchel A. Sollenberger
George Mason University

 

Political observers have debated whether George W. Bush’s exercises of secrecy have shielded him from accountability for many of his administration’s actions.  In particular, the president’s use of executive privilege to try to conceal information about the controversial U.S. attorneys firings set off a firestorm of protest, especially among members of Congress who sought documents and testimony from White House aides.  This essay describes and analyzes the president’s controversial use of executive privilege in this latest dispute between the political branches.  It examines President Bush’s actions in the context of his various uses of executive privilege during two terms in office.  The essay assesses means by which controversies over executive privilege can be managed by the political branches without resorting to intervention by the courts.

 

The Law

Saving the Presidency From Lawyers

Robert J. Spitzer
State University of New York

 

Legal training is well suited to prepare lawyers for the study and practice of law in the advocacy-based legal system.  But when lawyers as academics enter the realm of constitutional law, legal training offers poor preparation for academic analysis. Worse, the vast realm of legal publishing, law reviews, is run by students who do not rely on peer review, unlike every other academic discipline.  The result of these two factors is great potential for wayward constitutional theorizing, which has adverse consequences not only for academic constitutional debates, but for political debate and policy outcomes.  This article examines two cases where lawyer-made theorizing has deformed constitutional meaning pertaining to the presidency: the inherent item veto, and the unitary executive view of the commander-in-chief power.

 

Polls and Elections

The Ground War 2000-2004:
Strategic Targeting in Grassroots Campaigns

Costas Panagopoulos
Fordham University

Peter Wielhouwer
Western Michigan University

This article uses survey data from the National Election Studies to examine personal contacting and grassroots mobilization strategies in presidential election campaigns, focusing on the 2000 and 2004 elections. Consistent with widespread journalistic accounts, we find that respondents overall report higher levels of mobilization in 2004. We also find evidence of strategic targeting and mobilization and report on shifts in targeting strategies between the two election cycles.