Cary R. Covington

'Staying Private': Gaining Congressional Support for Unpublicized Presidential Preferences on Roll Call Votes

Presidents are known to have strong incentives to publicize their positions on legislation before the Congress. This paper examines the obverse of that proposition: that under appropriate circumstances, presidents have strong incentives not to publicize their positions. Data from the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies uncover 36 instances of unpublicized presidential preferences. The paper rejects apolitical explanations for their existence, and then presents four political reasons why presidents might avoid publicly expressing their views. Tests of inferences about congressional voting behavior based on those reasons are formulated, and the findings conform to the expectations. On the basis of those findings, I argue for additional research that examines various facets of the process by which presidents influence the Congress.

Comparing Floor-Dominated and Party-Dominated Explanations of Policy Change in the House of Representatives

We test two explanations of the legislative process for their ability to account for the ideological pattern of policy change produced by bills enacted by the House of Representatives, 1953–1996. The Floor-Dominated explanation argues that the floors median member largely determines legislative outcomes, while the Party-Dominated explanation claims that power for the majority party. We develop three measures of the ideological pattern of policy change and independent variables that reflect the predictions of the two explanations. While we find support for both explanations, the greater significance, both substantively and statistically, of the Party-Dominated explanation leads us to conclude that the Houses agenda-setting process is largely controlled by the majority party.

Congressional Support For the President: the View From the Kennedy/Johnson White House

This paper describes characteristics of presidential support scores compiled by the Office of Congressional Relations (OCR) from 1961 to 1967. These characteristics are compared to similar scores compiled by Congressional Quarterly (CQ). The OCR scores were based on votes known to be important to the presidents, while CQ could not make such distinctions. This difference in vote selection generated important substantive and methodological implications. For example, the OCR scores reveal that Republicans and southern Democrats were much less supportive of the presidents than CQ suggests, while northern Democrats were much more supportive. This, along with other CQ shortcomings revealed by the analysis of CQ-OCR differences, argues for the use of the OCR scores when attempting to explain presidential influence, and a sensitivity to important problems with the CQ scores when the OCR data are not available.

Development of Organizational Memory in Presidential Agencies

This article models how organizational memory develops and applies that model to three presidential agencies. Such memory is information generated within an organization, providing a sense of identity and an ability to learn. It enables staff agencies to ground information and advice to the president in sound historical knowledge. Presidential demands and extrapresidential responsibilities influence six organizational features, which in turn affect how memory develops. Usually, presidential requirements disrupt memory, and extrapresidential demands facilitate it. Data from staff interviews allow application of the model to staff components of the National Security Council, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Council on Environmental Quality. As expected, OMB receives the most extrapresidential pressures and the fewest presidential demands, and its organizational features help memory to develop. NSC depends on the president alone, and its features deter memory development. CEQ receives few external demands from any source, and its features mildly support some types of memories. Hence OMB has the most extensive memory, strongest learning capability, and clearest identity; NSC has the least memory, learning capacity, and sense of identity; and the CEQs memory results in strong identity but weak learning.

“GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER” The Distribution of White House Social Invitations and Their Effects on Congressional Support

Presidents use the perquisites of their office to build support and goodwill among members of Congress, which they then use to increase support for their legislative agendas. Among those perquisites is the ability to invite members to social functions at the White House. This article determines what types of members received invitations between 1961 and 1967 in order to discern the strategies guiding their distribution. It then assesses their impact on the subsequent support provided by those recipients. The findings concerning the distribution of invitations show that presidents Kennedy and Johnson allocated invitations according to a “reward strong supporters” strategy: A presidents favors go to his strongest supporters. They also show that party and committee leaders benefit more than rank-and-file members. The most surprising finding is that a members party makes little difference. These findings indicate the presidents Kennedy and Johnson adhered to a fairly conservative approach to building coalitions, preferring to reward known supporters rather than to try to entice additional support from more marginal sources. The findings concerning the effects of receiving invitations indicate that southern Democratic support was increased, while support from northern Democrats and Republicans was not. The findings also demonstrate the value of complementing, when possible, knowledge about the presidency obtained from more traditional sources of information with knowledge derived from the systematic analysis of aggregate data.