When George W. Bush and his staff finally got word he had won the 2000 presidential election, they had only thirty-seven days left to shift from campaign mode to governing. Fortunately for the Bush team, a group of presidency scholars had gathered and provided them with a wealth of substantive analysis about presidential transitions and White House operations. The project was sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts and carried out by members of the Presidency Research Group of the American Political Science Association.
With information covering six administrations and interviews with...

At the intersection of law and politics stands the U.S. Solicitor General. Although even the informed public rarely thinks of the solicitor general in relation to the major issues that have challenged American society, this office actually has considerable control over the cases the Supreme Court addresses. To bring the Office of Solicitor General (OSG) out of the shadows and into the clear light of public attention, "Between Law and Politics" looks at three hotly contested policy areas--race, gender, and reproductive rights--to see how the office balances the goals of the president,...

Although no woman has yet served as president of the United States, women have played important roles within the executive branch--and they have found many ways to exert pressure on the president. In this imaginative and illuminating work, presidential scholar Janet M. Martin studies the influence of women on and in the American executive branch.
During the Kennedy administration, the President's Commission on the Status of Women (1962) and the passage of the Equal Pay Act (1963) were milestones in the history of the relationship between women and the executive branch. The growing...

Presidential approval ratings appear on the evening news every time they are announced. They also are required reading for the president's staff. As a result, modern presidents operate under conditions similar to a perpetual reelection campaign. With constant attention to approval ratings and other indicators of public opinion, why do so many presidents lose favor by the time their terms end? Why are they so often unable to address and reverse their slippage in the polls?
"Out of Touch: ""The"" Presidency and Public Opinion" compares the changes in the ways the Truman, Johnson, and Carter...

When George H. W. Bush took office in January 1989, he brought to the presidency an impressive resume. A former member of Congress, national party leader, CIA director, ambassador to China, and two-term vice president, he had the credentials and experience for a uniquely successful presidency. Less than four years later, the American electorate resoundingly proclaimed his administration a failure. Many pundits and scholars have echoed the voters' judgement. In a considered and balanced reassessment, Mark J. Rozell and Ryan J. Barilleaux ask whether the public and the pundits have applied the...

WATERGATE. MONICA LEWINSKY. PAINKILLERS IN THE OVAL OFFICE. IRAN-CONTRA. READ MY LIPS. THE CHARACTER FACTOR.
The American president's character matters. To most Americans, it matters deeply. But how do we define what character means, and why can't we agree?
In this sober, probing consideration of "the character factor" and the presidency, veteran political analyst James P. Pfiffner leads us through a survey of three aspects of presidential character that have proved problematic for recent chief executives: lies, promise-keeping, and sexual probity. His goal is not to tell us which...

In what James A. Baker III has called the "worst job in Washington," the chief of staff orchestrates the president's conduct of the U.S. government. He holds the unique responsibility to magnify the time, reach, and voice of the president of the United States. "You need a filter, a person that you have total confidence in who works so closely with you that in effect he is almost an alter ego," Gerald Ford has said. In this volume, resulting from the Washington Forum on the Role of the White House Chief of Staff held in 2000 in Washington, D.C., twelve of the fifteen men who have held the...

Richard Nixon considered establishing a strong peacetime economy one of his most important political objectives, not least for] distinguishing himself from the cautious policies of President Dwight Eisenhower. Using Richard Neustadt's analytical framework of presidential power, Nigel Bowles develops five case studies around President Nixon's economic policies. The thoughtful, insightful analysis goes far to help us understand the sources of Richard Nixon's authority and power, and his use of both.
For each of the "issue-stories" (as Bowles terms them), he considers the president's...

." . . required reading for all presidents and White House aides to come . . . "--from the foreword by Richard E. Neustadt
What did the president know, and when did he know it? Once again, only a dozen years after Watergate, the nation faced these troubling questions. Would we see another president forced to resign or be impeached? Could our democracy survive another presidential scandal so soon? As the Iran-Contra affair unfolded, the nation waited tensely for answers.
At this crucial moment, advisors to President Ronald Reagan called home the Ambassador to NATO, David Abshire, to...

Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress bears responsibility for establishing national policy through legislation, but in recent years that power has often been eclipsed by presidents adopting public policy by other means. Steven A. Shull offers a systematic study of the relative importance of four tools presidents use to create policy without going through Congress: budgeting, executive orders, executive agreements, and commitment of troops.
Using both statistical analyses of recent presidents= use of alternative policy means and case studies of each tool, Shull investigates the factors...