American presidents enter office ready to enact a policy-making agenda that will satisfy partisan interests and facilitate reelection to a second term. Economic circumstances, however, may catch presidents in a vicious cycle of economic growth and inflation versus recession and unemployment. Faced with a public that assigns to the chief executive responsibility for the nation's economic health, presidents are often forced by the dynamics of this cycle to make tradeoffs between pursuit of political objectives and stabilization of the economy. Vicious Cycle: Presidential Decision Making in the...