Everybody Loves a Winner: On the Mutual Causality of Presidential Approval and Success in Congress

A large literature argues that approval affects presidential legislative success, but Washington observers often believe that legislative success leads to higher presidential approval ratings, that is, success and approval may be endogenous. This article tests for the endogeneity of approval and success. After building a theory that links success to higher approval, annual aggregate data from 1953–2011 are used to test for the endogeneity between approval and success. All statistical tests indicate that approval and success affect each other. This article concludes by putting the findings into perspective and suggesting new research directions.     

Constituting "The People": National Identity Under William H. Taft and Richard M. Nixon

This project is focused on the long-term constitutive elements of presidential discourse; in other words, how rhetoric helps frame and determine national identity. Seemingly innocuous, and appearing in both ceremonial and policy addresses, presidential language concerning national identity helps shape the context, and thus sets the terms for more substantive, issue-laden debates. While one cannot measure the impact of this type of rhetoric in terms of specific issues and time frames, its influence is apparent in a broader and more diffuse perspective. This research compares the public rhetoric of presidents William H. Taft and Richard M. Nixon specifically in terms of their definitions of national identity. Both Republicans, albeit with very different political contexts and time periods, exhibited marked similarities in their strategies for defining the American polity, particularly with respect to their view of the president as the national representative, the idea that the nation is a unified whole, the belief that the nation follows the greatest good for the greatest number, the belief that each citizen occupies a natural place in the hierarchy of American society, and finally, the conviction that liberty is the most important foundational value of the country. The evidence suggests that rhetorical conceptions of national identity are important over time in the United States. Enjoying a broad audience, the president has the ability to shape national debate according to which groups and issues he includes or excludes from the polity.     

Presidential Management of the Bureaucracy and the Johnson Presidency: A Preliminary Exploration

Drawing upon documentary sources and interviews with administrative officials, this article takes a broad look at presidential management of the bureaucracy during the Johnson presidency. The various managerial techniques used by President Johnson are examined, along with some of the purposes of presidential management. Contrary to the historical stereotype, Johnson was a managerial activist who had a substantial impact on the bureaucracy and “permeated” it by his many actions     

Executive Publicity and Congressional Resistance, 1905-1913: Congress and the Roosevelt Administration's PR Men

Theodore Roosevelt circumvented Congress and expanded presidential power at the beginning of the 20th century, in part, by using the press to establish executive leadership of public opinion. This article describes how Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, launched a crusade in the press for Progressive conservation despite the opposition of congressmen who tried to block the use of publicists by executive agencies. Although Congress forbade the hiring of "publicity experts" in 1913, they were already common in executive agencies.