The US Presidency

Question 1

Skrowonek’s alternative contribution to looking at the presidency

Answer 1

“The Politics Presidents MAKE”

Reconstruction, articulation, disjunction

Question 2

Changes in powers of the president

Answer 2

Growth in Presidential support staff in Exec Office.

Heightened capacity but also expectations

Now means that President judged on legislation impact

Do not need to “Politically engineer” in the same way as a PM. “They simply decide” (Neustadt)

Question 3

Standards of successful Presidency

Answer 3

Legistation: 100 days test/ congressional quaterly measurement

Question 4

Constraints on the Executive

Answer 4

Many decisions taken that the president has no control over and yet is held responsible for (product of intentionally divided system)

Question 5

Paradoxes of the President’s position

Answer 5

Party leader AND impartial head of state
Innovative AND pragmatic
Powerful AND democratic
What it takes to BECOME president is perhaps not what it takes to Be president

Question 6

Year in which Republicans regained control of congress

Answer 6

1994 (After 20 years Democratic control)

Question 7

What was the conservative coalition?

Answer 7

Period from New Deal, particularly strong 1950s/1960s in which Southern Dixiecrats cooperated with Republians (in committees) to resist progressive legislation from Democrats.

Question 8

Factors that encouraged consolidation in parties

Answer 8

1965 Voting Rights Act 
New consistently Liberal Democrats
Gerrymandering 
Creation of party whips 
Mass media
Candidates rely on parties for funding

Question 9

Aldrich and Rhode on political parties

Answer 9

Parties more willing to delegate power to centralised leaders when the party is “more homogenous internally and more polarized from the majority”

Question 10

The powers of committees

Answer 10

Negative and positive agenda setting powers (House Rules committee)