Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Is it “President” or “president” of the United States? Why do many political scientists and other authors now capitalize “Congress” and “Supreme Court” but not “president”? Why has this lowercase referent become so commonplace, and who, if anybody, is responsible for this trend? The purpose of this article is to address these very questions. After perusing references to the “President” and “president” in classic political documents, we examine the critical nature of political symbolism, the profound importance of the “President” as a national symbol, and the perceived status of that symbol as reflected in its capitalization. Next, we offer a typology for analyzing the grammatical changes that have occurred in leading political science monographs, introductory college textbooks, professional journals, popular periodicals, newspapers, and style manuals over the past three decades. The data clearly reveal that before the Nixon Administration, the vast majority of publications employed the uppercase referent to the “President.” However, beginning with the Nixon Administration and accelerating in the late-1970s, this near universal standard changed dramatically. Moreover, our study suggests that, contrary to popular belief, it was neither journalists, grammarians, publishers nor politicians, but prominent presidential scholars (viz., Thomas E. Cronin and George E. Reedy) who led the nation’s intellectual charge to make the lowercase “president” the rule rather than the exception. We believe this grammatical relegation represents, to a large extent, both a desire by leading political scientists to make the office appear less “imperial ” and a significant symbolic reaction to presidential transgressions concerning the Viet Nam War and, most importantly, the Watergate Scandal. These alterations, we contend, thus redound more from the desire by prominent political scientists to “de-imperialize” or “de-glamorize” the office than any concerted effort to establish “grammatical correctness.” The article concludes by offering suggestions for standardized grammatical references to both our nation’s highest elected office and the occupant of that office.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The study of the political socialization of children has seen a significant lapse in research since the 1950’s and 1960’s. Indeed, most scholars still look to Fred Greenstein’s Children and Politics (1965) for information on youth political socialization when they conduct research today. The purpose of this paper is to update contemporary understanding of children’s political socialization and development, and specifically political comprehension and cynicism regarding the President, by asking questions such as “What changes have taken place in children’s political beliefs since the Greenstein work?” and “Are the children of today as politically optimistic as they were in the last century?” and “How do the children of today view the President of the United States?” Using survey data that replicates Greenstein’s original study, we examine the political viewpoints of over 2000 children in 2005 in the third through the twelfth grades. Specifically, we look at today’s children’s evaluation of the office of the presidency and their approval rating of the officeholder, compared with the children of the past. We find here that although the children of the new millennium still view the office of the presidency with high importance, they are willing to negatively evaluate the President himself in ways not even suggested in the studies of the past. In addition, we find that optimistic presidential evaluation is directly related to education level, and that the highest approval ratings emerge with the third grade responses, while the lowest come from the high school students. A lack of consistent evaluation of children’s political development over the past fifty years makes the suggestion of an evolution of political socialization impossible. However, these new data propose that children today begin to form political opinions, significantly, negative opinions, in ways that were never observed nor recognized in the past. As a result, there needs be a call to arms of sorts to re-examine the voters of tomorrow for the changes and cynicisms that are taking place in their political beliefs far prior to their voting ability at eighteen years old, and possibly as early as the third grade.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper analyzes how presidents balance the competing
desires for both loyalty and competence in agencies in the Executive
Office of the President (EOP) like the Office of Management and Budget,
the Council on Environmental Quality, and the National Security
Council. Presidency scholars historically have expressed concerns about
presidents focusing too much on securing loyalty in EOP agencies to the
detriment of bureaucratic capacity. In this paper I explain when
presidents have incentives to place loyal political appointees into
important bureaucratic posts formerly held by career professionals or
in new positions over career employees as a means of gaining more
control over administrative decision making. I summarize my claims into
a series of general propositions and test them with data on EOP
agencies from 1939-2002. I find that agencies in the EOP are becoming
more politicized over time and that electoral turnover in the White
House is a primary cause of politicization. I also find that presidents
try to balance needs for both responsiveness and competence in their
relationship with agencies in the EOP.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores how presidents seek to redeem themselves in the wake of major scandals that cannot be dismissed, and what role the media plays in fostering or undermining that goal. Two specific examples of presidential framing are looked at in-depth – the frames emphasized in President Reagan’s March 4th, 1987 address admitting that mistakes were made by his administration in the Iran-Contra affair, and in President Clinton’s August 17th, 1998 speech confessing to an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky that he had previously denied. Several key frames are found in Reagan’s statement including describing himself as in the dark about much of the affair in order to limit his responsibility, and depicting the trouble that caused the scandal as a problem with particular individuals which could therefore be easily remedied. Among the frames employed by Clinton include his portrayal of himself as a persecuted figure victimized by unsavory enemies to generate some sympathy from the public, and his framing of the affair as a personal mistake in order to distance it as much as possible from his official capacity as president.
The paper then turns to press coverage of these two speeches, looking at the next day’s New York Times and Washington Post and the following week’s Newsweek and Time magazine. Each article was analyzed line by line for the appearance of the president’s frames and a count was made of how many times that each appeared. A discussion is also undertaken about whether the frames are presented in a way that challenges or echoes the president’s version of events. The conclusion of the paper finds that when presidents emphasize frames that fit in with the already established norms of media coverage such as personalization of problems, partisan conflict and the ways in which the president’s character and flaws have been portrayed in the past, they will be most successful at obtaining media coverage that reflects their frames and aids in their rehabilitation project. Public reactions and polling numbers are used to help illustrate the degree of presidential success at acquiring his “pardon” from the people for his actions in this manner.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Much has been written on religion and the presidency, yet precious little is scholarly work has been done, especially when compared to the growing literature on religion and Congress as well as religion and voting behavior (See Fowler et. al. 1999 Religion and Politics in America: Faith, Culture, and Strategic Choices; Green et. al. 1996 Religion and the Culture Wars: Dispatches from the Front; Wald 2003 Religion and Politics in the United States). Since Robert Bellah’s articulation of American Civil Religion and the president’s role as priest and prophet in Civil Religion in America (1974), it has been clear that presidents must consider the role religion will play in their conduct and policies, particularly given the religious character of the nation.

Here a typology is developed which examines four distinct religious roles presidents take based on the salience of religion in their personal and public lives. Personal religious salience is examined using three indicators, commonly employed in the study of religion and voting behavior, including religious belief, belonging, and behavior. Concurrently, the salience of religion in a president’s public life is scrutinized by investigating the extent to which religion is manifest in the construction of his (and someday her) policy views, approach to church and state relations, articulation of civil religion, and reliance upon religion as a foundation for his public character. Archetypes are used to illustrate each of the presidential typologies. Finally, I discuss the relationship between presidents' religious types and their leadership styles, policy orientations, and political skills.