Presidential Leadership of Congressional Civil Rights Voting: The Cases of Eisenhower and Johnson

Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson presented dramatically contrasting styles of leadership in their relationships with Congress. Yet each was successful in securing passage of monumental civil rights legislation in very different political environments. Focusing on the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we show that both Eisenhower and Johnson attracted support from the opposition party's faction at the far end of the ideological spectrum while retaining support from his own party's dominant faction. The analysis suggests that it is not the president's leadership style alone that produces legislative results, but a proper mixture of leadership style and the political environment.     

1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War

Shulamit Laskov, ed., Haim Hissin, Memoirs and Letters of an Early Pioneer (Hebrew), Jerusalem, Yad Izhak Ben‐Zvi, 229 pp.

Ilan Schori, The Dream turned into a Metropolitan — The Growth of Tel Aviv, the First Hebrew City in the World, Tel Aviv, Avivim Publishers, 423 pp.

Ran Aaronsohn. Baron Rothschild and the Colonies; The Beginnings of the Jewish Colony of Eretz Israel, 1882–1890, Jerusalem, Yad Izhak Ben‐Zvi, 322 pp.

Meir Avizohar, National and Social Ideals as Reflected in Mapai, 1930–1942, Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 447 pp.

Aviva Halamish, Exodus — The Real Story, Tel Aviv, The Association for the Study of Illegal Immigration in Memory of Shaul Avigur at Tel Aviv University and Am Oved, 325 pp.

Eli Shaltiel, Pinhas Rutenberg: 1879–1942, Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 2 vols., 703 pp.     

Before the Honeymoon Ends: Presidential Leadership and Congressional Response

Academicians and journalists inevitably pass judgment on the progress of a president's major "honeymoon period" initiatives. Obviously, the success of those initiatives will depend on how Congress responds to new presidents. Data on aggregate congressional response to the "honeymoon" initiatives of the Carter and Reagan presidencies are presented in order to explore how members of Congress react as they evaluate and interact with a new president. Evidence suggests that, despite the conventional wisdom regarding Carter's limited political ability and inflexible nature, members of Congress were more inclined to emphasize organizational deficiencies. Conversely, while Reagan was perceived to be almost as inflexible as Carter, he received superlative marks for organizational efficiency and for providing access to Congress. The analysis then considers the importance of organization to future presidential effectiveness, and the importance of organizational concerns with respect to personal characteristics for overall presidential success.     

Public Presidential Appeals and Congressional Floor Votes: Reassessing the Constitutional Threat

The assertion that public appeals by presidents can create electoral threats to noncompliant members of Congress is central to arguments about the value of "going public" as a legislative strategy. Although recent scholarship suggests a link between popular presidential rhetoric and the likelihood of bill passage, researchers have yet to examine the impact of public presidential appeals on individual legislators. This study examines the logic of electoral threats imposed by going public. We test whether a president's going public with increased intensity leads individual members of Congress to increase their support for presidential preferences on congressional floor votes. We employ several measures to assess the intensity of presidents' public appeals, including domestic speeches, nationally televised addresses, and speeches in legislators' home states. Several logistic regression models are tested to determine whether congressional support for presidential preferences on the floor is influenced by the interaction between members' electoral vulnerability and presidents' use of popular appeals. The findings suggest that presidential speechmaking has very little impact on the likelihood that members of Congress will support the president's position on roll call votes. We argue that this suggests a necessary revision of criticisms of the "rhetorical presidency." Public presidential appeals do not seem to present a considerable threat to a constitutional order that is predicated on congressional autonomy and deliberation.     

Racial Stratification, Intellectual History, and Presidential Action in the Civil Rights Domain

Using an historical approach, this paper assesses the role of the American presidency in the pursuit of civil rights policy. The basic argument is that the drivingforces in the passage of civil rights policies since Reconstruction have been external pressures on the presidency. Rather than being protagonists in the progression of civil rights, presidents are portrayed as political actors primarily interested in maintaining social order and attracting African-American votes. Rarely have presidents pushed for civil rights progress outside of that context.