Historical analysis of the American presidency has focused largely on periodization. By chunking up our history, it becomes easier to interpret a president’s relative success or failure. So the theory goes, the times dictate the response; a president’s actions are more or less a reaction to the current political atmosphere. Perhaps not obvious to those immersed in political science, this presents a problem as presidential patterns are not congruent. If they aren’t congruent, how can one construct a scientific explanation for how presidencies function that withstands the test of time and general inference?

Another theory, championed by Stephen Skowronek, takes a more institutional approach to the presidency and looks instead at the different layers of power a president inherits upon entering office and how those layers interact with one another over time. The three layers or patterns Skowronek proposes are persistent patterns–allowable presidential actions as defined in the Constitution; emergent patterns–those dictated by the organizational structure surrounding the presidency; and recurrent patterns, which primarily encompass political coalitions such as parties and how they form and break apart. Each of these layers finds itself in a different position for an incumbent based on the former president’s actions resulting in differentiated performance.

What emerges from this second theory is a complex web of presidential actions and the reality of an executive’s decisions having long-term implications for the office of the president and the nation as a whole. George Washington’s choices, so this theory argues, would have resonated down the line of presidential succession via one of the aforementioned patterns and had a real impact on modern-day presidential opportunities. No president can be evaluated in isolation; consideration must be given to the impact of those that served before.

However, though each president finds himself laden with the judgments of his predecessor, he nevertheless flexes his power within the boundaries of these pattern to accomplish his political goals. After all, political actors are primarily, according to rational-choice theory, self-interested people. This boundary-pushing itself, while assuredly divisive, serves a beneficial role in a democratic society. We couldn’t be living in a better time in history to observe this.

George W. Bush’s presidency was unquestionably divisive. Though the nation remains divided over whether torturing terrorists is allowable, or whether a trickle-down economic policy is a superior one, I think one point we can all agree on is the previous administration succeeded in pushing the boundaries of our democracy in a host of new directions. For better or worse, this enabled our country to consider and debate whether or not we wish to weave these changes into our national fabric. In a governmental system such as ours where gridlock and cycling are inherent (see Arrow’s Paradox or Riker’s disequilibrium of majority rule) a disruptive force is required at times to advance the national dialogue. Our history is rife with examples, such as Jackson and the Bank Wars, Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation and FDR’s New Deal.

What results from this is an abstract conversation between our country and the presidency where the latter proposes or chases new frontiers while the former discusses the merits of them. This may seem suboptimal at any given moment (the Iraq war comes to mind), but in the long run, a president cannot escape the judgment passed by the citizens of his nation. Nor, for that matter, can citizens escape the benefit of a political actor who often pushes the nation to contemplate its sense of self.

I stole the title for this post from Skowronek’s book The Politics Presidents Make.

This is the second paper written for my American Political Institutions course. Our readings for this week focused on Congressional policymaking, namely the logic behind it. The prevailing theory for explaining legislators’ actions centers on rational decisions aimed at securing re-election. Many factors play into the decision making process, including constituent needs, personal policy preferences, and party alignment. But they all are weighed in accordance with their ability to get the legislator re-elected.

Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution grants Congress the right to establish their own procedural rules. Combine this with self-interest and you can imagine a framework would evolve that maximizes positive perception while minimizing costs of legislative decisions. There are specific tactics legislators employ to prevent their constituents from discovering the true, almost always negative, effects of a policy decision. The goal of any of these tactics is to reduce the traceability back to a particular legislator to avoid electoral accountability. What my paper focuses on is how citizens could use the Internet to maximize traceability.