Contrasting Models of White House Staff Organization: The Eisenhower,Ford, and Carter Experiences

Analysts of the presidency agree that White House staffs may be organized along one of three lines: a competitive model, a hierarchical model, or a collegial model. This article details the interaction patterns of the Eisenhower, Ford, and Carter senior White House staffs in an empirical test of the basic assumptions of these models of staff organization. These three administrations represent very different conceptual approaches to the problem of staff interaction. The results of the analysis of private and group meeting access by the senior staff with the President clearly indicate that our models do not capture the full range of staff interaction and that other factors need to be given more serious consideration in our conceptualizations of the operation of the White House.     

Oral History and the Gerald R. Ford White House: The Specter of Watergate

For the last sixty years, presidential libraries have providedand preserved critical source materials essential for the studyof the history of presidents of the United States. Oral historiesat those libraries have become an increasingly important partof their key archival collections, with one or two major exceptions.This article analyzes and compares official oral history collectionsat the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library with those of othertwentieth century presidents and seeks to explain why the oralhistories currently available for research there were so limiteduntil Mr. Ford's death in 2006. The reasons for this are anintriguing blend of developed White House policy, benign neglect,the role of tape recorders in bringing Ford to the Oval Office,and the continuing influence of the ghost of the Watergate scandaleven well beyond the years Gerald R. Ford occupied the nation'shighest political office.     

Presidents as Supreme Court Advocates: Before and After the White House

Eight men who took the presidential oath also appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States as advocates. From Senator John Quincy Adams at the outset of the Marshall Court to Richard M. Nixon during the high-water mark of the Warren Court, future and past Presidents have argued before the Supreme Court on such varied and important topics as land scandals in the South, slavery at home and on the high seas, the authority of military commissions over civilians during the Civil War, international disputes as an aftermath of the Alaskan Purchase, and the sensitive intersection between the right to personal privacy and a free press. Here, briefly, are stories of men history knows as Presidents performing as appellate lawyers and oral advocates before the nation's highest court.     

The Wrong King: Apocalypse and Transformation (or Not) in the White House

Abstract

Jonathan Z. Smith has argued that apocalyptic discourse grew out of a political desire to remove the "wrong" king from the throne. Later, though, the same discourse was used to prevent a "wrong" king from taking the throne. Thus apocalyptic discourse can either motivate or resist transformative change. In US political history it has served both purposes. This article focuses on the trend in presidential discourse, especially in foreign policy, since Franklin D. Roosevelt to use apocalyptic language to resist transformation. The electorate's desire to prevent substantive change was the determining factor in the presidential election of 2008. In Barack Obama's first year in office, though he seemed to promote transformation, his dominant message was a reassuring one: The threat of fundamental change would continue to be contained both at home and around the world. No "wrong" rulers would be allowed to disturb the security of America.     

From Sacred Mystery to Divine Deception: Robert Holkot, John Wyclif and the Transformation of Fourteenth-Century Eucharistic Discourse

In his extremely popular preaching handbook the Summa praedicantium , in a chapter devoted to the Eucharist, the fourteenth-century Dominican John Bromyard relates an exemplum about a certain holy man. This man's "faith towards the sacrament was so great," Bromyard writes, that it was often said that were Christ himself to enter "the church during the elevation of the host, the man would not go to look at him, and in so doing lose sight of the host." ¹ While it lacks the spectacular firepower that characterizes so many Eucharistic miracle stories, that characterize so many of Bromyard's own stories — like the one about the bees who construct a honeycomb tabernacle and buzz chants to honour a hive-hidden host — in many ways it does more than most to move us to the very centre of the medieval Eucharistic experience. ² It is, when all is said and done, a story about belief and about the miracle of the Eucharist. This unnamed holy man does not need to get up, does not need to hurry over to greet Christ at the door. He does not need to do any of these things because he already sees Christ right there in the upraised hands of the priest, in the consecrated host.