Sidney M. Milkis

What Happened to Post-Partisanship? Barack Obama and the New American Party System

Ascending to the presidency in the midst of a severe economic crisis and an ongoing war on terrorism, Barack Obama faced numerous political and policy challenges. We examine the responsibilities he faced in assuming the received tasks of modern presidential leadership amid a polarized political system. To a point, Obama has embraced partisan leadership, indeed, even further articulating developments in the relationship between the president and parties that Ronald Reagan had first initiated, and George W. Bush built upon. Thus Obama has advanced an executive-centered party system that relies on presidential candidates and presidents to pronounce party doctrine, raise campaign funds, mobilize grassroots support, and campaign on behalf of their partisan brethren. Just as Reagan and Bush used their powers in ways that bolstered their parties, so Obamas exertions have strengthened the Democratic Partys capacity to mobilize voters and to advance programmatic objectives. At the same time, presidential partisanship threatens to relegate collective responsibility to executive aggrandizement. Seeking to avoid the pitfalls that undermined the Bush presidency, Obama has been more ambivalent about uniting partisanship and executive power. Only time will tell whether this ambiguity proves to be effective statecraft—enshrining his charisma in an enduring record of achievement and a new Democratic majority—or whether it marks a new stage in the development of executive dominion that subordinates party building to the cult of personality.

Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, and the Future of the "New American Party System"

Ascending to the presidency in the midst of a severe economic crisis and an ongoing war on terrorism, Barack Obama faces numerous political and policy challenges. We examine an oft-obscured facet of presidential leadership: the presidents relations with his party. We argue that Obama has benefited from and abetted the development of a new relationship between the president and the parties that features presidents as strong party leaders who invest heavily in mobilizing voters, raising campaign funds, and articulating party doctrine. As we show, Obamas party leadership may hold both promise and peril for the practice of American democracy. Just as previous Republican presidents such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush used their powers in ways that bolstered their parties, Obamas exertions have strengthened the Democratic Partys capacity to communicate with constituents, mobilize voters, and raise funds. However, Obama must take care to avoid the pitfalls of presidential party leadership that ultimately undermined Reagans and Bushs presidencies. In particular, recent history suggests that Obama must avoid forms of administrative aggrandizement that alienate citizens from government; and that he must forego leadership strategies that threaten the independence and integrity of the party apparatus.

Barack Obama, Organizing for Action, and Executive-Centered Partisanship

This article examines the historical significance of Barack Obamas creation of “OFA,” a presidential grassroots organization. It attempts, as Theda Skocpol has put it, to analyze American political development “as it happens.” Born as “Obama for America” during the 2008 campaign, OFA was renamed “Organizing for America” and ensconced in the Democratic National Committee during Obamas first term, where it served as the “grassroots arm” of the party. After 2012, it was spun off as a nonprofit social-welfare entity called “Organizing for Action” dedicated to advocating for Obamas second-term objectives: immigration reform, efforts to fight climate change, gun safety legislation, LGBT rights, and the implementation of health reform in the face of continuing intense opposition. That OFA was kept intact after Obamas successful election and reelection efforts marks it as an especially pioneering effort. Making use of several personal interviews, a wealth of primary documents, and data on spending and mobilization tactics, we explain how Obamas paradigm-shifting organization marked an effort to meet the challenges of forging a new progressive coalition in a fractious polity. More broadly, the article considers how this digital age grassroots effort has been influenced by, and in turn has contributed to the advance of an executive-centered partisanship characterized by high expectations for presidential leadership in a context of widespread dissatisfaction with government, strong and intensifying political polarization, and high-stakes battles over the basic direction of domestic and foreign policy programs.

Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government and Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency. By William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe. New York: Basic Books, 2016.

more familiar ground. One may not be convinced that the novel theory advanced fully explains all the variation, but it is a compelling account. For my own taste, the risks and benefits of judicial extraterritoriality could have been exploredmore. But these are quibbles, andminor ones at that. As awhole, the book is a thoughtful, insightful, and welcome entry in a growing and important area. AUSTEN PARRISH Indiana University Maurer School of Law

The Search for American Political Development

motives,” most notably a perceived need to make “symbolic responses to racial incidents on campus” and remaining “within what top officials saw as the mainstream of higher educational administration” (8). Critical race theorists, typically more interested in other matters, usually had little influence on the decision to adopt speech codes and even less influence on how they were implemented. That administrators concerned with pacifying particular groups played a greater role than minority rights advocates in the framing and implementation of campus codes may explain their tendency to ensnare drunken frat boys rather than more committed public racists. The judicial failure to stop the spread of campus speech codes offers an important codicil to Professor Gerald Rosenberg’s insistence that courts, acting without adequate support from other institutions, cannot effect liberal constitutional change. Gould, a Rosenberg student, demonstrates that courts, under similar conditions, are no better vehicles for effecting conservative constitutional change. As was the case with southern school officials in the wake of Brown, college administrators had no incentives to respond to court decisions ruling that practices favored by crucial constituencies were unconstitutional. While massive resistance has not taken place in the academy, little effort has been made to conform speech policies to legal decrees. At most, Gould observes, hostile court decisions have led campus administrators to rely more on informal proceedings for sanctioning hate speech. These findings of judicial weakness, combined with Martin Sweet’s study suggesting that conservative decisions outlawing minority set asides in contracting have not changed local practices, suggest that the Roberts Court may have less of an impact than liberals fear in many areas of constitutional law. Conservative court decisions, Speak No Evil indicates, will not dramatically change behaviors in urban areas and universities that are still largely controlled by political liberals. Professor Gould’s study also makes an important contribution to the growing concern with the Constitution outside of the courts and popular constitutionalism. Previous scholarship emphasizes the important roles legislative and executive officials play in forging constitutional meaning. Speak No Evil highlights the crucial role of nongovernmental actors. “The essential arbiter for legal meaning is civil society and its institutions,” Gould writes, “which themselves construct constitutional law.” Although the law as handed down by justices has declared that persons may engage in hate speech and that law has not been contested by elected officials, the American people by and large have declared that racist speech is beyond the pale. Formal punishments may be legally banned, but both universities and other institutions in civil society provide substantial informal punishments for any person who violates written or unwritten speech codes. Gould notes that “the prevailing norm now is to quash hate speech, even if in extra-judicial settings” (8). The forms of campus expression have changed in the past decades, as have ethnic comedy and political campaigning. If, following Professor Nelson at his best, we understand freedom in terms of what people feel free to express, then Americans at present are not free to make racial insults. Combined, Professor Nelson and Professor Gould provide us with a vocabulary for thinking about the status of free speech on American campuses and with reasons for being concerned about the health of free speech in the academy. Beyond the First Amendment highlights how most crucial questions in institutional settings concern the value that ought to be placed on certain expressions rather than the legal right to engage in that expression. Speak No Evil highlights how crucial free speech questions on campus are increasingly decided by administrators more concerned with fundraising and placating students than with establishing a climate in which challenges to the status quo, including weak forms of gender and racial equality, may be freely expressed. These problems transcend hate speech as the academy is being transformed from places of higher learning to research universities aimed at spurring economic growth. Academic administrators whose primary goal is fundraising and constituency control are bad for the First Amendment, even if their appointment does not violate any principle of constitutional law.

The Search for American Political Development – By Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek

motives,” most notably a perceived need to make “symbolic responses to racial incidents on campus” and remaining “within what top officials saw as the mainstream of higher educational administration” (8). Critical race theorists, typically more interested in other matters, usually had little influence on the decision to adopt speech codes and even less influence on how they were implemented. That administrators concerned with pacifying particular groups played a greater role than minority rights advocates in the framing and implementation of campus codes may explain their tendency to ensnare drunken frat boys rather than more committed public racists. The judicial failure to stop the spread of campus speech codes offers an important codicil to Professor Gerald Rosenberg’s insistence that courts, acting without adequate support from other institutions, cannot effect liberal constitutional change. Gould, a Rosenberg student, demonstrates that courts, under similar conditions, are no better vehicles for effecting conservative constitutional change. As was the case with southern school officials in the wake of Brown, college administrators had no incentives to respond to court decisions ruling that practices favored by crucial constituencies were unconstitutional. While massive resistance has not taken place in the academy, little effort has been made to conform speech policies to legal decrees. At most, Gould observes, hostile court decisions have led campus administrators to rely more on informal proceedings for sanctioning hate speech. These findings of judicial weakness, combined with Martin Sweet’s study suggesting that conservative decisions outlawing minority set asides in contracting have not changed local practices, suggest that the Roberts Court may have less of an impact than liberals fear in many areas of constitutional law. Conservative court decisions, Speak No Evil indicates, will not dramatically change behaviors in urban areas and universities that are still largely controlled by political liberals. Professor Gould’s study also makes an important contribution to the growing concern with the Constitution outside of the courts and popular constitutionalism. Previous scholarship emphasizes the important roles legislative and executive officials play in forging constitutional meaning. Speak No Evil highlights the crucial role of nongovernmental actors. “The essential arbiter for legal meaning is civil society and its institutions,” Gould writes, “which themselves construct constitutional law.” Although the law as handed down by justices has declared that persons may engage in hate speech and that law has not been contested by elected officials, the American people by and large have declared that racist speech is beyond the pale. Formal punishments may be legally banned, but both universities and other institutions in civil society provide substantial informal punishments for any person who violates written or unwritten speech codes. Gould notes that “the prevailing norm now is to quash hate speech, even if in extra-judicial settings” (8). The forms of campus expression have changed in the past decades, as have ethnic comedy and political campaigning. If, following Professor Nelson at his best, we understand freedom in terms of what people feel free to express, then Americans at present are not free to make racial insults. Combined, Professor Nelson and Professor Gould provide us with a vocabulary for thinking about the status of free speech on American campuses and with reasons for being concerned about the health of free speech in the academy. Beyond the First Amendment highlights how most crucial questions in institutional settings concern the value that ought to be placed on certain expressions rather than the legal right to engage in that expression. Speak No Evil highlights how crucial free speech questions on campus are increasingly decided by administrators more concerned with fundraising and placating students than with establishing a climate in which challenges to the status quo, including weak forms of gender and racial equality, may be freely expressed. These problems transcend hate speech as the academy is being transformed from places of higher learning to research universities aimed at spurring economic growth. Academic administrators whose primary goal is fundraising and constituency control are bad for the First Amendment, even if their appointment does not violate any principle of constitutional law.