Stephen Skowronek

The Reassociation of Ideas and Purposes: Racism, Liberalism, and the American Political Tradition

Racist and liberal ideals are said to anchor competing political traditions in America, but a juxtaposition of ideals obscures key processes of change in the cultural lexicon and misses much about how a political tradition comes to bear on the development of a polity. Attention to the reassociation of ideas and purposes over time points to a more intimate relationship between racism and liberalism in American political culture, to the conceptual interpenetration of these antithetical ends. Cuing off issues that have long surrounded the reassociation of John C. Calhouns rule of the concurrent majority with pluralist democracy, this article examines another southerner, Woodrow Wilson, who, in the course of defending racial hierarchy, developed ideas that became formative of modern American liberalism. Analysis of the movement of ideas across purposes shifts the discussion of political traditions from set categories of thought to revealed qualities of thought, bringing to the fore aspects of this polity that are essentially and irreducibly “American.”

Notes on the Presidency in the Political Order

The American presidency reflects nothing so clearly as the idiosyncrasies of personality and circumstance. The discrete dynamics of the men and their times are naturally pronounced; the general dynamics that define the institution in time, correspondingly obscured. This makes thematic analysis of the presidency peculiarly dependent on uncovering broad-ranging patterns in institutional history. By isolating different historical regularities we can locate different dimensions of the problem and significance of presidential action.

Leadership by Definition: First Term Reflections on George W. Bush's Political Stance

George W. Bush elevated the value of definition in presidential leadership and made it central to his political stance. This was as much a strategic calculation of political advantage in the moment at hand as it was a reflection of the mans innate character. Accounting for Bushs leadership posture in this way helps to situate it on a larger historical canvas as a particular rendition of a familiar type; reference to general characteristics of the type facilitates, in turn, an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Bushs performance over the course of his first term. Conclusions consider deviations from the patterned political effects of leadership of this sort and weigh their possible significance. Stephen Skowronek is the Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University (stephen.skowronek@yale.edu). He is author of The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton and more recently with Karen Orren, The Search for American Political Development . Earlier versions of this paper were presented at CIDE in Mexico City, at the University of Texas, and the University of Tulsa. It was also featured as the Abbott Memorial Lecture at the Sondermann Symposium on the Presidency at Colorado College, Colorado Springs (December 2004). The version printed here was completed on May 10, 2005.

Woodrow Wilson's Critique of Popular Leadership: Reassessing the Modern-Traditional Divide in Presidential History

Long a favorite of political scientists who worried about the limitations of the Constitution and looked to the presidency to meet the governing challenges of the twentieth century, Woodrow Wilson has more recently been taken to task for rejecting the wisdom of the founders and fostering developments productive of a systemic crisis of national authority. Curiously, this critique proceeds on a view of Wilsons historical significance that is not all that different from the one previously offered by his champions. Wilson appears in both the old and new assessments as the repudiator of original understandings of the presidents role and the seminal advocate of changes we now associate with modern modes of leadership. Drawing on the histories of the United States that Wilson wrote in the 1890s, we step further down the path of revision.

Franklin Roosevelt and the Modern Presidency

The political foundations of the modern presidency were laid during the New Deal years. Franklin Roosevelt was the New Deal president. The relationship between these two facts is a matter of some consequence. On it hinges our understanding of presidential leadership and modern American government generally, not to mention the political significance of Roosevelt himself.

[Milkis, Arnold, and Young]: Response

I am delighted that Sidney Milkis, Peri Arnold, and James Sterling Young have taken the time to consider The Politics Presidents Make in this forum. Each of them was successfully mining presidential history for insight into American politics long before the publication of this book, and in no small measure their efforts inspired my own. As their commentaries suggest, the book touches a variety of different issues, broad ones about the presidency, leadership, institutional politics, and American political development, as well as specific ones concerning the dozen or so incumbents that it examines. Their criticisms reflect genuine engagement with the text and a determination to draw me out on some subtle but sensitive points. For that I am especially grateful. One hopes that a book like this will attract readers with a variety of different interests, and it is to be expected that in reading it they will focus on one or another aspect of the analysis or one or another piece of the story. The last thing I would want to do in responding to particular readings is to limit what others might find useful in the work. I hasten to add, however, that The Politics Presidents Make was not conceived in bits and pieces. It aimed at a theoretically integrated and historically comprehensive view that would be more than the sum of its parts. While recognizing that what I actually intended may now be beside the point, I think I can best respond to these three assessments of what I was up to by reclaiming a sense of how the analysis works as a whole.

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

Have We Abandoned a “Constitutional Perspective” on American Political Development?

Defining terms is a serious undertaking and one bound to stir controversy. When we decided to devote a book to this task, we were under no illusion that everyone would readily sign on to our proposal. We thought, however, that it was worth calling attention to certain conceptual problems that currently beset the study of American political development (APD). We wanted to underscore the value of tractability in claims about change over time and to demonstrate the benefits of specificity in moving this venerable research tradition forward. We regret that Professor Thomas finds our proposal objectionable, but we are even more concerned that his alternative seems to do little to address the issues that prompted our effort.