“At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million.”

Former president Jimmy Carter weighs in on the war on drugs in the New York Times. Here’s an excerpt:

New review of our book in POP

The recent issue of Perspectives on Politics included a review of our book, “Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Constructing the War on Drugs” by Diana Owen (Georgetown University). Here’s a selected passage:

In this important study, Andrew B. Whitford and Jeff Yates move beyond the standard focus on persuasion and build upon the established theoretical frameworks of “agenda setting” and “going public.” They explore the ways in which presidential rhetoric can not only shape opinion but also can influence policy implementation and bureaucratic action. Focusing their analysis on drug policy, the authors demonstrate that presidents can exert leadership authority and change the behavior of even entrenched administrative constituencies through public rhetoric. The detailed case study provides rich historical context documenting presidential administrations’ responses to the “war on drugs” dating back to the 1930s. The authors use a multimethod approach in order to provide empirical evidence that supports their argument that persuasion can translate into action. This study establishes a new benchmark for research on presidential rhetoric.

Executive branch ideology reconsidered

Anthony Bertelli (USC) and Christian Grose (USC) have posted “The Lengthened Shadow of Another Institution? Ideal Point Estimates for the Executive Branch and Congress “ on SSRN. It will soon be appearing the American Journal of Political Science. Here’s the abstract:

While the president’s relationship to Congress has been carefully studied, the broader executive branch has received far less attention in that context. Scholars rely on assumptions about the relationship between the president and cabinet departments that remain untested. We construct the first statistical portrait of executive branch ideology by estimating ideal points for members of Congress, presidents, and the heads of cabinet-level departments between 1991-2004 in a Bayesian framework. We empirically assess claims about the composition of the president’s administrative team and the influence of institutions on the ideology of principal executive decision-makers. We also test an important claim regarding the tradeoff between ideological congruence and budgetary authority to demonstrate the utility of our estimates for other scholars. Our analysis reveals a new picture of the executive branch as ideologically diverse, casting into doubt some essential assumptions in a substantial body of work on the separation of powers.

New review of our book

We were very pleased to see a new review of our book, Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Constructing the War on Drugs, in The International Journal of Press/Politics (by Brandon Rottinghaus). The review is not available online, but here’s a small sample:

Supply and demand … and corporate culture

h/t reddit

Presidential Opera – “Nixon in China”

Personally, I think I’ll wait for the Broadway musical, but for lovers of opera there is “Nixon in China”. Here’s some wikipedia background for those not familiar with this thrilling musical endeavor:

Nixon in China (1987) is an opera with music by the American composer John Adams and a libretto by Alice Goodman. It is about the visit of United States President Richard M. Nixon to China in 1972, where he met with China’s Chairman Mao Zedong and other Chinese officials.

The work was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Houston Grand Opera and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It premiered at the Houston Grand Opera, October 22, 1987 in a production by Peter Sellars with choreography by Mark Morris.

The opera focuses on six key personalities: Nixon and his wife Pat; Jiang Qing (spelled “Chiang Ch’ing” in the libretto) and Chairman Mao (“Mao Tse-tung”); and the two close advisors to the two parties, Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai (“Chou En-lai”). It is composed of three acts. The first details the anticipation and arrival of the Nixon cortege and the first meeting and evening in China. The second act shifts focus to Pat Nixon, as she makes tours of rural China, including an encounter at a pig farm. The second scene includes a performance of a Communist propaganda play, in which first Pat Nixon, then her husband and then Jiang Qing, intercede in the performance. The last act chronicles the last night in China, in which the characters dance a foxtrot, their thoughts wandering to their own pasts.

Musically, the opera owes more influence to minimalism than any Asian styles. (John Adams adapted the foxtrot theme from the last act into a concert piece entitled “The Chairman Dances“, published before the opera in 1985. In the intervening period, Adams switched publishers, hence the Foxtrot for Orchestra being published by G. Schirmer and the opera by Boosey & Hawkes.) The libretto, by contrast, was written completely in rhymed, metered couplets, reminiscent of poetic and theatrical styles native to China.

Here’s a clip from  a “Nixon in China” production (Airforce One never looked so good) — Enjoy!

Presidential pants

This is, quite simply, an audio clip (with accompanying animated video) of President Johnson ordering pants from Haggar Clothing. Caution: LBJ (and the accompanying animation) gets a bit bawdy in places. H/T Buzzfeed

Congress is, um, not popular right now …

Actually, it rarely is incredibly popular. But recently it hit its all-time low mark since its popularity started being systematically measured in the 1970s. Perhaps puzzling is why we don’t obsess over congress’s popularity as we do with the president – perhaps with the president it’s personal and with congress it’s just business. It will be interesting to see who fares relatively better as we move our way toward the 2012 elections – President Obama or congress. See more on NPR here.

Another Review of “Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Constructing the War on Drugs”

A review of our book by Chad Murphy can be found in Political Communication. Here’s an excerpt:

Review of “Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Constructing the War on Drugs”

Here’s an excerpt of a review of our book, “Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Constructing the War on Drugs,” in the journal Contemporary Sociology.

Presidential birthday cake…

… can be yours! Specifically, you can bid on JFK’s 1962 birthday cake (yes, the one where Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday to You” to him). Check it out on Boing Boing.

Cool books on presidents and by presidents

A listing of books on the presidency – by president. Here’s a sample:

Are presidential video games next?

Apparently, sitting presidents are free game for video game cameos due, in part, to their reluctance to sue. See the story here. In the video below (depicting Madden NFL 11), you can see President Obama make his appearance at about the 2 minute mark. [h/t Gawker.com]

Remembering the Gipper, tax policy, and Judas Priest

A recent article in Yahoo news recalls the tax policies of Ronald Reagan in relative space. Perhaps surprisingly, tax policy and Ronald Reagan weren’t high on my list of relevant topics during this time period. Here’s a random eighties music video to provide the flavor of the times …

“I’ve got nothing to hide”

I’m really glad that Daniel Solove (George Washington University) recently posted ” ‘I’ve Got Nothing to Hide’ and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy” on SSRN. Now I can simply tell people to read this paper when they make this argument. Here’s the abstract:

Abstract:
In this short essay, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: “I’ve got nothing to hide.” According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.

On the relative wealth of presidents

The relative wealth of US presidents is outlined here. Surely there is an empirical study here somewhere — there are some problems in that this apparently looks at their wealth at the time of their death or maybe at different times – it’s interesting though.

Is the Ninth Circuit Really That Liberal?

The NY Times carries an interesting story on this question, prompted perhaps by President Obama’s recent nomination of ‘liberal Berkeley law professor” Goodwin Liu to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Times turns to political scientists for empirical analysis of this proposition – I don’t know why the media would do this, surely Tucker Carlson, Keith Olbermann, or some other pundit was available to tell us whatever was passing through their tiny brain at the moment — it seems odd that they would turn to people who might have something insightful to say. Anyway, here are some excerpts:

Andrew D. Martin, a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis, said that his research suggested that the Second Circuit, based in New York, and the Third Circuit, based in Philadelphia, “are about as far left as the Ninth,” he said.

The Bush appointees, Mr. Martin said, had “caused the Ninth Circuit to drift back to the right a little bit.” Other circuits, especially the Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans, and the Sixth, based in Ohio, are on the right. “The differences correspond to the local politics of those areas,” he said, and he argued that the attacks on the Ninth Circuit were politically motivated.

But wait, there’s more:

Susan B. Haire, an associate professor of political science at the University of Georgia, has done extensive research into the rate of reversal for the various circuits and said that, in fact, the reversal rates for the Ninth are generally higher than for other circuits. However, Ms. Haire noted that the Ninth hears far more cases than any other circuit.

It is by far the largest of the circuits, with nearly 30 active judges across nine Western states and two Pacific territories, and had more than 12,000 new cases filed in 2009.

In the context of the total volume of cases, she said reversals are “marginally higher than the other circuits, but such a teeny-tiny difference from a substantive perspective even if it is statistically significant, people might say that’s to be expected when you have such a high volume” of cases.

[h/t http://twitter.com/abwhitford%5D

Getting a shout out from the president in the SUA

The American Presidency Project has a listing of all presidential personal acknowledgments during the State of the Union Message since Reagan. Here are his shout outs:

Bush/Blair – Endless Love

Just because you might need something like this on a Monday…

All the president’s pens

Cool graphic on the State of the Union Address

State of the Union Message Wordle

Courtesy of the LA Times. [Hat tip to Enik Rising]

“You see, it’s about the PEOPLE and the AMERICANS …”  Perhaps I should start issuing a wordle from my lectures – but I’d be afraid that the big words would be “um” and “well”  🙂

Obama’s appointments – not fast

Well, at least not as fast as the Bush Administration.

The Bush team, after a transition shortened by hanging chads and such, managed to fill 348 of 508 positions (just under 69 percent) that were tracked by the Brookings Presidential Appointee initiative. Seventy-two more people had been nominated for such jobs — which did not include ambassadors, U.S. marshals, judges or federal prosecutors — for a grand total of 420 folks.

The Obama team ended the year with 305 of 515 similar appointees confirmed (just under 60 percent), with an additional 91 nominated but not confirmed by the Senate, according to The Washington Post’s interactive Head Count feature online.

More interesting:

More than half of Obama’s picks (56 percent) are inside-the-Beltway types. The second-largest groups come from California and New York (each with 7 percent), while Obama’s home state of Illinois ties Massachusetts for fourth with 3 percent.

The Obama appointees generally have substantial government experience, with about two-thirds having most recently worked in the federal government, academia or think tanks (among which the Brookings Institution leads with seven appointees), the House or Senate (evenly split between the two), and state governments. The other third came from the private sector, including 34 from law firms.

You’d think that an incoming administration would know how important it is to hit the ground running. We’ve only been talking about it for years.

Do political independents matter in elections?

Independents important?

Or, perhaps we should ask – how much do they count? On the Monkey Cage Blog, John Sides takes on three claims regarding political independents:

1) Independents are the largest partisan group.

2) Independents are actually independent.

3) Change in the opinions of independents is always consequential.

Or is their relative importance a myth?

He argues that none of these claims accurately depict political independents in the election game and that independents are neither very independent thinking nor very consequential as a group. This view runs counter to popular media accounts of the importance of independent voters in many political elections. Opposing views to Sides’s arguments can be found here and here.

Hawaii and healthcare

The New York Times reports on the Hawaii healthcare system and how it compares against the rest of the nation. Since 1974 the state has required all employers to provide healthcare benefits to any employee working twenty hours a week or more. As the chart at the left indicates this situation has not led to an explosion in health care costs.

“But perhaps the most intriguing lesson from Hawaii has to do with costs. This is a state where regular milk sells for $8 a gallon, gasoline costs $3.60 a gallon and the median price of a home in 2008 was $624,000 — the second-highest in the nation. Despite this, Hawaii’s health insurance premiums are nearly tied with North Dakota for the lowest in the country, and Medicare costs per beneficiary are the nation’s lowest.

Hawaii residents live longer than people in the rest of the country, recent surveys have shown, and the state’s health care system may be one reason. In one example, Hawaii has the nation’s highest incidence of breast cancer but the lowest death rate from the disease.”

But the system is certainly not perfect:

“There are clear problems with Hawaii’s system. Hospitals on the outer islands are small and losing money. With unemployment rising, so, too, are the ranks of the uninsured — which is now 10.7 percent of nonelderly adults. Only Massachusetts has a lower share of uninsured adults, and the national share is 20.4 percent. And there is growing evidence that as the economy has slowed and premiums have risen, employers have hired more part-time workers who are ineligible for benefits.”

It might be interesting to hear what Hawaiian policy makers think of the proposals currently circulating in DC. Given the state’s success, it is rather surprising that other states haven’t done more experimenting with such a system.

Protecting insurance companies ‘PSA’

A good ‘public service announcement’ from the folks at “Funny or Die” with a lot of TV faces you might recognize. Somehow it’s kind of funny to see ad executive Don Draper taking a poke at insurance executives – still works though – but doesn’t everything John Hamm seem just a little better? [hat tip Rorie Spill Solberg on FB]

Ten people who almost became president

This is a very interesting piece on some close, but no cigar stories on the presidency. Here’s a taste:

Thomas Riley Marshall

Marshall was Vice President under Woodrow Wilson, and he probably had a legitimate reason to become president. In 1919 Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke which left him unable to carry out his duties as president. Marshall, though, had one major obstacle standing in his way to the presidency. This obstacle was the president’s wife, Edith Wilson. She was going to make sure that her husband finished his term in office, and did so by taking on many of the executive duties herself. She also kept the knowledge of Wilson’s condition a secret. Marshall reportedly never found out the true extent of the president’s stroke until his last day in office. Many go so far as to say that Edith Wilson was the first woman president, but no matter what her real standing was she was certainly closer to the office than Marshall.

The Place of Women on the Court

In today’s New York Times Magazine, Emily Bazelon has a very interesting interview with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – a small sample below the fold:

Howard Dean on American healthcare …

… in Esquire magazine. A sample below the fold.

Issue agenda setting on SCOTUS

Our paper, “Agenda Setting, Issue Priorities and Organizational Maintenance: The U.S. Supreme Court, 1955 to 1994” (c0-authored with William Gillespie) is now available for download on Social Science Research Network here. The abstract is available after the jump:

On elite education, Supreme Court appointments, and meritocracy

Following up on our last post on elite education and academic careers, we now look into the role of elite education and Supreme Court appointments – specifically, President Obama’s upcoming appointment to the Court. On the pol sci Law and Courts discussion listserve participants have debated the role of elite education in considering candidates for the Court.

Some argue that nominees must either have an elite JD degree or a darn good reason for why they do not have one. Others argue that an elite education isn’t so crucial and that the president should be more concerned with the potential nominee’s present abilities and their achievements over the entire life span rather than an admission decision that was made when the nominee was 22 years of age and in most situations was based primarily on their parents’ socio-economic status. Perhaps providing some insight on the relative utility of an elite degree is Walter Kern, whose new book “Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation  of an Overachiever”  details his experience at Princeton. Here’s some ad copy from the book’s website:

“Percentile is destiny in America.”

So says Walter Kirn, a peerless observer and interpreter of American life, in this whip-smart memoir of his own long strange trip through American education. Working his way up the ladder of standardized tests, extracurricular activities, and class rankings, Kirn launched himself eastward from his rural Minnesota hometown to the ivy-covered campus of Princeton University. There he found himself not in a temple of higher learning so much as an arena for gamesmanship, snobbery, social climbing, ass-kissing, and recreational drug use, where the point of literature classes was to mirror the instructor’s critical theories and actual reading of the books under consideration was optional. Just on the other side of the “bell curve’s leading edge” loomed a complete psychic collapse.
LOST IN THE MERITOCRACY reckons up the costs of a system where the point is simply to keep accumulating points and never to look back—or within. It’s a remarkable book that suggests the first step toward intellectual fulfillment is getting off the treadmill that is the American meritocracy. Every American who has spent years of his or her life there will experience many shocks of recognition while reading Walter Kirn’s sharp, rueful, and often funny book—and likely a sense of liberation at its end.

You might also check out his recent interview on the Colbert Report.  Uh oh, I hope that this doesn’t upset the elites. And what if Obama picks a non-elite nominee? What will we do? How will we live? Quick, play me off, Keyboard Cat!

In Alien v. Predator – who would you be? Or, why breaking into legal academia is like purgatory for some people

I love great matchups – Alien v. Predator, Ali v. Frazier, Laverne v. Shirley (no, wait that’s a friendship, although I always saw them more as sort of ‘frenemies’). Recently, we have witnessed a small flurry of blogging on the difficulties that non-elite school graduates face in attempting to break into legal academia. Posts on this are available on the Faculty Lounge, Prawfsblawg, and Concurring Opinions among others. Indeed, one non-eltite grad commentator likens breaking into legal academia without an elite degree to being in purgatory.

So, if this were the great matchup of Alien v. Predator what camp would the elite grads and the non elite grads fall into? Somehow I see the non elites as Alien and the elites as Predator – it’s just a feeling. 

Recently, the Aliens (non-elites) have struck back at the Predators (elites) for years of snubbing and bias by denying one of the elites a coveted honor. President Barack Obama (a Harvard grad and former University of Chicago professor of law) was denied the traditional honorary doctorate when he gave the commencement speech at Arizona State University. So, Aliens = 1, Predators = 0. Although, as the Daily Show reports it, maybe not so much….

The world of unusual book titles

It seems like Andy and I have gone through endless alternative titles for our book (no, it is not the one pictured above) which should be out this summer on Johns Hopkins Press. However, I’m really glad that none of our tentative titles really rivals (in terms of oddness) any of the titles you will find in Oddee’s collection of strange book titles. You’ll note that one of the books is written by a famous academic. Another one, “Foreskin’s Lament” I have actually read, or more accurately, listened to on Itunes. It’s very funny and you might recognize the author, Shalom Auslander, from his guest appearances on Chicago Public Radio’s program “This American Life.”

Race in the War on Drugs: The Social Consequences of Presidential Rhetoric

The Voir Dire team has recently publicly posted on the Social Science Research Network their paper from the Empirical Legal Studies conference, “Race in the War on Drugs: The Social Consequences of Presidential Rhetoric.”  The abstract is available below the fold.

Your brain on the War on Drugs

This is a really funny cartoon attached to an interesting post on the ACS Blog. To be fair, I think that you could insert just about any government policy you wanted in the second panel of the cartoon and it would be just as funny.

 

Great moments in presidential rhetoric – the Bush years

Presidential Researchers 1, Bush Administration 0 (for now)

A little bird just told me this:

The House of Representative just passed legislation (H.R. 35) by a vote of 359-58 to overturn a Bush E.O. and help researchers gain access to presidential records.

Today in Presidential History: Up in Smoke Edition

1.11.1964: The Surgeon General releases the first report saying that smoking may be dangerous to your health.

President-elect Obama says he will quit. Soon.

Today in Presidential History: 60 Minutes Edition

1.10.2005: CBS fires three for their roles in the Bush/National Guard scandal at 60 Minutes.

Here’s the Terence Smith report on the scandal. Mary Mapes is now occasional blogger at the Huffington Post.

Today in Presidential History: Yorba Linda Edition

1.9.1913: Nixon was born in Yorba Linda.

A dynasty:

One of Yorba’s daughters, Maria Rosa, married Leonardo Cota, a renown ranchero-pueblo descendant, of Mexican-American war fame, later to be one of the early Los Angeles County Supervisors. Another daughter, Ramona, married Benjamin Davis Wilson, one of the first mayors of The City of Los Angeles. Soon after their marriage, they settled in the San Bernardino area and through Ramona’s marriage dowry, obtained Rancho Jurupa from her father, which would become the predecessor community of Riverside County.

Today in Presidential History: Johnny Horton Edition

1.8.1815: Jackson leads American troops against the British at the Battle of New Orleans.

Government Performance Czar

For those tracking such things, Obama just named Nancy Killefer from McKinsey & Company as “chief performance officer.”

WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) – President-elect Barack Obama, who faces trillion-dollar government deficits stretching into coming years, named on Wednesday a former Treasury official as the first U.S. “chief performance officer” to oversee budget and spending reform.

Nancy Killefer, a director at McKinsey & Company and a former assistant Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, will work with economic officials to increase efficiencies and eliminate waste in government spending.

“We can no longer afford to sustain the old ways when we know there are new and more efficient ways of getting the job done,” Obama told a news conference just hours after new official projections put the fiscal 2009 U.S. budget deficit at a record $1.186 trillion.

“Even in good times, Washington can’t afford to continue these bad practices. In bad times, it’s absolutely imperative that Washington stop them,” Obama said.

Obama has repeatedly promised that his administration will go “line by line” over its budgets — a task that will now fall to Killefer and Obama’s nominee to as White House budget chief Peter Orszag.

Obama, who takes over from President George W. Bush on Jan 20, is seeking quick action from Congress on a package of spending and tax-cut measures that would total nearly $775 billion over next two years, which could add to the deficit hole. (Editing by Jackie Frank)

REGO II. Excellent.

Today in Presidential History: First Race Edition

 

 

1.7.1789: The first U.S. presidential election is held.

The electoral count is here.

The Constitution left it up to each state to choose the manner in which their Electors were chosen (Article II, section 1). North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified the Constitution and had no Electors in the election of 1789. The New York legislature was unable to pass an election act in time to choose its allotted 8 Electors, failed to appoint any by 7 January, and cast no electoral votes on 4 February. A total of 69 Electors voted in the first Presidential Election (2 Electors in Maryland, and 1 in Virginia failed to cast ballots). Each elector had two votes, at least one of which had to be cast for a person outside their state. The votes were to be forwarded to Congress, where they would be counted in the presence of the Senators and Representatives. The person with the most votes would be President; the one finishing second in the balloting would be Vice President. Congress convened in New York on 4 March 1789; quorums were achieved in the House and Senate on 1 and 6 April 1789, respectively. Congress confirmed the results of the first presidential election (see below) when it officially counted the ballots on 6 April 1789. Vice President John Adams assumed his duties as president of the Senate on 21 April and George Washington was inaugurated as President of the United States on 30 April 1789.

Today in Presidential History: TR Edition

 

 

1.6.1919: TR dies.

But the “bully pulpit” lives!

The Next Solicitor General

The Economist’s Democracy in America writes:

ELENA KAGAN, the dean of Harvard Law School, will be America’s next solicitor general. That probably won’t get A1 coverage, but it’s pretty important.

Call it a “prelude”:

But the selection of Ms Kagan also invites further speculation about just how far she will rise. On the DC cocktail circuit, the dean is often mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee. In the next breath, though, Washington’s politicos add that she doesn’t have experience on the bench—despite her vast experience elsewhere—which might raise concerns about her suitability. Though recent solicitor generals haven’t made their way onto the Supreme Court, the perch will give Ms Kagan ample opportunity to burnish her credentials as a top constitutional scholar as she engages regularly and directly with the justices.

The Chronicle recounts recent achievements:

At Harvard, Ms. Kagan is credited with bridging ideological gaps on the faculty, raising funds, reworking the first-year curriculum, and attracting major legal scholars to Harvard, especially Cass R. Sunstein from the University of Chicago and, more recently, Lawrence Lessig from the Stanford University Law School.

What Historians are Saying about Bush/Cheney

From the Chronicle:

But at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association here, the collective judgment seems to be that those trends haven’t been all that new — and won’t be easy to change.

None of those trends are new in the last eight years, Ms. Kessler-Harris said. The emphasis on free markets, for example, goes back at least 20 years. But the ideological trends have “reached an apogee” in the Bush-Cheney administration. Look, she said, at the language of class: In the recent presidential election, “nobody talked about the working class. We’re all the new middle class.” That means that the ideological shifts are deep-seated. While the election of Barack Obama may contain the seeds of change, it is far from clear how much change there will be, Ms. Kessler-Harris concluded.

So caution was the word of the day among progressives. The scholars who spoke were some of the most influential in the profession. The audience was clearly responsive, breaking out clapping at some criticisms of Bush-Cheney policies. But, whether because the session was not advertised in the program or for other reasons, there was also little disagreement here. The past will not be going away.

So, “continuity and change”?

Today in Presidential History: Coolidge Edition

 
 

1.5.1933: Calvin Coolidge dies.

Interesting:

Although Calvin Coolidge is widely judged to have been a weak and even an incompetent president, this study concludes that he was a leader disabled by a crippling emotional breakdown. After an impressive early career, Coolidge assumed the presidency upon the death of Warren Harding. His promising political career suffered a major blow, however, with the death of his favorite child, 16-year-old Calvin Jr., in July 1924. Overwhelmed with grief, Coolidge showed distinct signs of clinical depression. Losing interest in politics, he served out his term as a broken man. This is the first account of Coolidge’s life to compare his behavior before and after this tragedy, and the first to consider the importance of Coolidge’s mental health in his presidential legacy. Gilbert carefully documents the dramatic change in Coolidge’s leadership style, as well as the changes in his personal behavior. In his early career, Coolidge worked hard, was progressive, and politically astute. When he became Vice President in 1921, he impressed the Washington establishment by being strong and activist. After Harding’s death, Coolidge took control of his party, dazzled the press, distanced himself from the Harding scandals, and showed ability in domestic and foreign policy. His son’s death would destroy all of this. Gilbert documents Coolidge’s subsequent dysfunctional behavior, including sadistic tendencies, rudeness and cruelty to family and aides, and odd interactions with the White House staff.

Today in Presidential History: Great Society Edition

 

1.4.1965: LBJ speaks about the “Great Society” in his SOU address.

For your reading pleasure: Shapers of the Great Debate on the Great Society: A Biographical Dictionary, by Lawson Bowling.

Today in Presidential History: March of Dimes Edition

 

1.3.1938: The March of Dimes is organized.

In 1937, after he was already president, Roosevelt established the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. Comedian Eddie Cantor suggested a plan to help raise money for the foundation, whose goal was to provide care to polio victims and to support research. Call the foundation “The March of Dimes,” Cantor said, and suggest that everyone send a dime for polio research to the president. The dimes poured into the White House, and in 1938, the March of Dimes made its first research grant, to Yale University. By 1955, the year the Salk vaccine was declared safe, effective, and potent, the March of Dimes had invested $25.5 million in research. Although Roosevelt did not live to see the vaccine, he and the March of Dimes were so closely associated that the U.S. Congress honored his memory by putting his face on the dime. The government released the first Roosevelt dimes on January 30, 1946, FDR’s birthday and the start of the annual March of Dimes campaign.

From HHMI.

Today in Presidential History: Kennedy Announces Edition

1.2.1960: Kennedy announces his candidacy for the presidency.

Today in Presidential History: John C. Calhoun Edition

12.28.1832: Calhoun resigns as Old Hickory’s Veep. Quotes John Yoo:

By 1831, the break with Calhoun became complete when Jackson obtained documents showing that Calhoun had attacked him during the invasion of Florida. In a letter to Calhoun accusing him of “endeavoring to destroy” his reputation, Jackson wrote “in the language of Caesar, Et tu Brute,” and declared that “[n]o further communication” between the two would be necessary.

Sounds like 24 or something.