Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> American Government - Executive Branch

Asks whether it is ever possible for a president to nudge the nation toward war without lying. And if he does, is it sometimes all right? Most of these authors would vote no. Columbia Journalism Review

In the forty-year span between 1968 and 2008, the United States underwent great change in nearly every avenue of life--economics, social mores, demographics, technology, and, of course, politics. The way Americans chose Richard Nixon as their president was very different from the way they chose Barack Obama. The process of selecting Obama was more open and inclusive in a number of ways. In "Grant Park," Candice J. Nelson examines the democratization of the presidential election process over four turbulent decades.

Nelson examines her topic through the metaphor of Chicago's famous Grant...

Since he first began writing in the 1950s, Dr. Paul F. Boller Jr. has had a passion for sharing the humorous, intriguing, and little-known or widely misunderstood aspects of the American presidency. Boller has authored many beloved books on American presidents, the first ladies, presidential anecdotes, quotes, campaign strategies, and common myths.

This wide variety of topics has been collected for the first time in "Essays on the Presidents," along with new essays and forewords. Boller's prose, distinct and inviting, causes the reader to see what is often overlooked in the history of...

In this provocative book, Knott offers a measured critique of the professoriate for its misuse of scholarship for partisan...

Government bureaucracy is something Americans have long loved to hate. Yet despite this general antipathy, some federal agencies have been wildly successful in cultivating the people s favor. Take, for instance, the U.S. Forest Service and its still-popular Smokey Bear campaign. The agency early on gained a foothold in the public s esteem when President Theodore Roosevelt championed its conservation policies and Forest Service press releases led to favorable coverage and further goodwill.

Congress has rarely approved of such bureaucratic independence. In "Congress vs. the Bureaucracy,"...

A governor's mansion is often the last stop for politicians who plan to move into the White House. Before Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, four of his last five predecessors had been governors. Executive experience at the state level informs individual presidencies, and, as Saladin M. Ambar argues, the actions of governors-turned-presidents changed the nature of the presidency itself long ago. "How Governors Built the Modern American Presidency" is the first book to explicitly credit governors with making the presidency what it is today.

By examining the...

The selection of federal judges constitutes one of the more significant legacies of any president; the choices of Lyndon Baines Johnson affected important social policies for decades. This book explores the process of making judicial appointments, examining how judges were selected during Johnson's administration and the president's own participation in the process. Appointment of Judges: The Johnson Presidency is the first in-depth study of the judicial selection process in the Johnson years and is one of the few books that has analyzed any individual president's process.

How do presidents lead? If presidential power is the power to persuade, why is there a lack of evidence of presidential persuasion? George Edwards, one of the leading scholars of the American presidency, skillfully uses this contradiction as a springboard to examine--and ultimately challenge--the dominant paradigm of presidential leadership. The Strategic President contends that presidents cannot create opportunities for change by persuading others to support their policies. Instead, successful presidents facilitate change by recognizing opportunities and fashioning strategies and...

The debut of a brand-new civics series for high school seniors and college freshmen, that clearly, concisely and cleverly explains how the United States elects its president

Selecting a President explains the nuts and bolts of our presidential electoral system while drawing on rich historical anecdotes from past campaigns. Among the world's many democracies, U.S. presidential elections are unique, where presidential contenders embark on a grueling, spectacular two-year journey that begins in Iowa and New Hampshire, and ends at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Modern presidential campaigns...

Almost every politician has occasionally misspoken, sometimes with disastrous effect, sometimes with little effect at all. "O.O.P.S.: Observing Our Politicians Stumble: The Worst Candidate Gaffes and Recoveries in Presidential Campaigns" observes and analyzes this phenomenon to document why some gaffes prove fatal while others are easily survived.

Combining humor with a thorough knowledge of American politics, author Stephen Frantzich uses detailed vignettes to showcase a wide range of slipups committed by presidential candidates from 1968 through 2008. He looks at what really happened...

There is no more important decision an American voter can make than selecting who will become the next president of the United States, and voters should not be forced to guess whether a candidate is qualified to become president. In Qualified, author Jamin Soderstrom proposes a resume challenge that could revolutionize the election system and help to bring the presidential hiring process into the twenty-first century.

Qualified presents a tool, developed by Soderstrom, to help voters compare presidential candidates with each other and with past presidents. This...