The chapter begins by describing the presidents relations with Congress, backed the threat of presidential vetoes on one side and impeachment on the other. It then traces the rise of the federal bureaucracy as an independent policymaker, asking whether and to what extent presidential power, rule of law norms, and bureaucratic incentives can ensure broadly democratic outcomes. The chapter concludes with a detailed discussion of the Presidents War Powers, the dynamics of wartime elections, and the Executives alarming authority to impose emergency measures without Congress.

This chapter identifies the several factors (such as precedent, congressional deference, and Supreme Court decisions) that have allowed the executive branch to dominate American foreign policy making.

It should not surprise us if voters are as much persuaded by the charisma of a politician’s personal performance as by their policies. Neither should it surprise us that actors have sometimes successfully made the move from showbiz to the business of government. President Reagan and Governor Schwarzenegger are well-known examples. Sometimes the substance exceeds the show, as it does in the case of the actor Volodymyr Zelensky who went on to become the celebrated wartime president of Ukraine. With other performers, a spectacular show might make up for lesser substance. Donald Trump has been a major beneficiary of voters’ susceptibility to persuasive political performance. What Donald Trump lacks in political education he has made up for through practical experience in the entertainment industry, and especially through his role as host of the popular programme The Apprentice. This chapter examines the arts of political performance including, but not exclusively, in relation to the ways in which the speech, gesture, and costume of Donald Trump, exploit the Making Sense.

Zimbabwe’s longest election season span from the February 2000 referendum to the 2002 presidential election. In 2002, voters became wary and weary of violent elections. Politically motivated violence continued as Mugabe and Tsvangirai had their moment of reckoning as to who should be president of Zimbabwe. Over time, Mugabe become ever more dependent on violence and dictatorial methods, and less and less interested in the welfare of his people, treating Zimbabwe’s wealth and resources as rewards for loyal Zanu PF supporters, boasting that there was no vacancy at State House. A closer study of the incidence of election violence shows voter resilience amidst cyclical bouts of state-sponsored udlakela. Voter resilience in the ruling party and opposition showed the potential and capability of the electorate to recover from crises and shocks. Zimbabwe voter resilience revealed that no matter the number of violent disturbances Zimbabweans absorbed over time, they remained within a relatively similar political state domain without imploding. Voters in Zimbabwe were remarkably resilient, displaying abilities of self-organization under extreme periodic election stresses. They built capacity and adaptation in the face of election adversities without resorting to civil war.

The revelation that David Foster Wallace voted for Ronald Reagan caused surprise among Wallace’s readers, many of whom had seen Infinite Jest’s Johnny Gentle as an excoriating parody of Reagan’s persona and politics. While Gentle is undoubtedly a partial caricature, Wallace’s connection to Reagan, and indeed the concept of political leadership, is more complicated than it might first appear. In his essay on John McCain, Wallace uses Reagan to outline a difference between two political personae, suggesting that the first figure, a “leader,” whatever their moral foibles, has the ability to “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.” The second figure is a “salesman,” whose “ultimate, overriding motivation” (despite having the charisma of a leader) is “self-interest.” During Wallace’s career, his position on Reagan’s status gradually changes from the former to the latter, and this transition illuminates an important shift in both Wallace’s politics and the subjects of his writing, one particularly evident in the increased focus on “civics” in the later fiction.

Central to this shift is the short story “Lyndon,” which I argue is partially an analogy for Reagan’s second term and his response, or lack of response, to the AIDS crisis. The story is also, crucially, a dramatization of the death of “New Deal” politics and the steady encroachment of neoliberalism, this latter famously becoming the subject of intense critique in Wallace’s later writing, especially The Pale King, which is itself set in Reagan’s second term. Through a discussion of “Lyndon,” Infinite Jest, The Pale King and the McCain essay, and concluding with an analysis of Wallace’s unpublished short story “Wickedness” that features a dying Reagan, I argue that Reagan comes to stand as perhaps the figure of single widest-ranging importance to understanding the politics of Wallace’s writing.

While virtue ethics is distinguished from deontology and consequentialism by its focus on the actor and their character rather than specific acts, it can nonetheless be illuminating to analyze particular acts through a virtue ethics prism. Such an analysis may be helpful in coming to understand why, in a specific situation, the actor came to their act. The point here is not so much to appraise the act and assess whether it was good or bad but rather whether the act can be made understandable – and perhaps justifiable – in light of the circumstances of the case and the agent’s character. Put differently, and perhaps more accurately, the idea underlying what follows is that their conduct tells us something about the individual concerned and simultaneously suggests how difficult situations can be approached – atypical though they may be. Much conduct is hemmed in by the context in which it takes place, and thus there is little point in copying other people’s conduct. But it may be possible to draw broader lessons from looking at specific situations and how people responded.

In 1960, Mailer published his famous essay on JFK, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” a defining and significant contribution to New Journalism. The essay frames JFK as a kind of existential hero and a beacon of hope for America’s future, and is representative of the lasting influence Kennedy had on Mailer’s political views and conceptions of America, the American Dream, and American masculinity. Much of The Presidential Papers, a miscellany of writings published in 1964, is also devoted to the Kennedys, and the figure of JFK haunts more than one of Mailer’s later works as well.

This chapter examines budgeting in the United States, its budgetary institutions, culture, and policies, from the founding of the republic in the 1700s through the Trump administration. The US Constitution is the world’s oldest functioning government document, and its budgetary rules reflect the country’s ongoing debate about fiscal federalism, and how the federal goverment should manage its fiscal and macroeconomic policies.

With the conclusion of each presidential election, scholars, commentators, and political junkies begin the quadrennial exercise of discussing reform of the presidential nomination system. If we could alter the process in just the right way, goes the thinking, we would get better nominees, a more informative campaign, and everyone, or at least a lot of people, would be happier with their choices on the next presidential ballot.

And why not? How hard can it be to improve our presidential nominating system? After all, in 2016, both Gallup and Pew reported that voters had historically negative impressions of both major party nominees, so changes that would improve voter satisfaction must be low-hanging fruit. Indeed, the authors in this volume have offered up a number of thoughtful, intelligent suggestions for reform.

It has been nearly two centuries since an American presidential election has evoked a crisis of confidence like that following the election of 2016. Not since the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 has there been such a public display of anxiety concerning the methods by which we choose our chief executive. As in the contest of 1828 pitting the Democrat Jackson against his Federalist opponent John Quincy Adams, the presidential nominating process of 2016 produced a contest between a celebrity populist, widely seen as unqualified by experience or temperament, and a highly experienced and competent but deeply uninspiring political insider who had been anointed by establishment elites.

National convention delegates are chosen through a bewildering array of procedures that vary from state to state. Because states, for the most part, determine not only whether parties hold a primary or caucus, but also which voters are eligible to participate, delegates arrive at the national convention having been selected by very different constituencies that have very different policy ideas and very different levels of commitment to their respective parties.

The result is that neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party is able to express a clear ideological message through its presidential nominations. Presidential candidates seeking to win delegates in different state elections must appeal to the electorate in each state—and the state electorates differ greatly because the state-imposed voter eligibility rules differ greatly from state to state. As a result, candidates who articulate a clear and consistent message will draw different levels of support from the primary electorate in the various states, even when their messages appeal to similar proportions of party members and non-party members in each state.

This chapter unpacks the federal intervention in the War on Drugs and analyzes the strategies the president followed across states depending on governors’ political affiliations. We disaggregate the intervention on the military, judicial, communicative, and social policy dimensions and assess patterns of cooperation and conflict between federal and subnational authorities. Using extensive interviews with federal and subnational elites and case studies from three cities in three states, we show how Mexico’s federal government followed differentiated strategies to deal with drug violence. The president protected subnational co-partisans (PAN) in Tijuana (PAN); partially cooperated with centrist opposition authorities (PRI) in Ciudad Juáreza; but confronted leftist governors and mayors (PRD), leaving them at the mercy of drug cartels in Apatzingán. Cartels responded by launching strategic attacks and challenging their rivals in municipalities with vulnerable leftist states.Thus, the politicization of law enforcement in the War on Drugs – which was possible because Mexico transitioned to electoral democracy without developing the rule of law – became a major stimulant of violence.

Chapter 8 concludes with a summary and synthesis of the book’s findings. It discusses the book’s implications for theories of public support for courts, and situates the book within the broader literature on public opinion and political institutions. The chapter anticipates and responds to criticisms of the book’s theoretical and empirical sections, and explores broader implications for the Court’s independence and power within the American political system.

Chapter 6 explores the highly mediatized issue of constitutional limits to the number of mandates that African presidents can serve, whether consecutively or not. It looks at how term limits were widely adopted on the continent during the reforms of the 1990s, and how in many countries they became the object of fierce political struggles and social tensions that in a number of cases turned violent. We look at the factors that explain why some leaders respected the term limits to which they were subject, while others tried to bypass such constraints, and, among the latter group, why some succeeded while others failed. The role of constitutionally limited mandates is examined in the broader context of the changing dynamics of leadership duration in office and increased rotation in power. Finally, the comparatively few cases of dynastic or familial successions in office are discussed to complete this overview of unlimited (and post-death) continuity in power