Untitled

The battle in the large states was intense and supporters of the new Constitution won only by narrow margins after promising to add a bill of rights.

The new government, headed by President Washington, was welcomed enthusiastically despite the bitterness of the ratifi cation struggle.

James Madison introduced a set of proposals that were based on the Virginia bill of rights.

The Bill of Rights was extended by the Fourteenth Amendment in order to limit state governmental actions.

The promise of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" was betrayed by the failure of the Constitution to address the question of slavery.

It is easy to accuse the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of hypocrisy because of the criticism of slavery mounted during the Revolutionary period.

George Mason, a prominent Virginia slave owner and delegate to the convention, was one of many Southerners who deplored slavery without knowing how it could be abolished.

The federal government had no power to free slaves because the Constitution was silent on the subject, according to those who opposed abolishing slavery.

Those who favored abolishing it argued that the Constitution had to be interpreted in light of the Declaration of Independence.

In the second view, the Constitution is a charter designed to put into effect the political and moral principles of the Declaration.

Powers not delegated to the United States or a person for a serious crime must be indicted by a grand jury.

Scholars have debated if the Constitutional Convention was made up of opposed groups that spoke and voted in ways that would protect their own economic interests.

Beard tried to show that the convention and the ratifi cation process were dominated by well-off urban and commercial leaders to the disadvantage of small farmers and the propertyless.

Though they played a role in the adoption of the Constitution, the economic interests of the Federalists and Antifederalists were so complex that they did not follow any neat class lines.

Some people are wondering if the Framers did not end up creating a government too weak to reduce social inequality because they were concerned about preserving liberty from tyranny.

They believe that the acquisitive talents of people in the marketplace lead to inequalities in economic power.

The government should be powerful enough to restrain these tendencies and produce a greater degree of equality than society allows.

The Framers wanted the government to be limited so that it wouldn't create the worst kind of inequality: political privilege.

Government must be strong enough to reduce the worst kind of inequality: differences in wealth.

The male to "persons" or "citizens" was often used in legal documents to make no mention of gender.

No bill of attainder or ex post facto law will deny women many rights that men enjoyed.

Several senators in your party have declared their support for the bill that the Assembly passed last week.

Most of the changes described in Chapter 15 have been the result of the slow accumulation of new ways of thinking and acting.

The United States rarely does this because the American Constitution requires that a broad coalition of interests be mobilized behind almost any change.

Over two centuries ago, the American Constitution was ratifi ed to govern thirteen states with a few million inhabitants.

The Framers of the Constitution wanted to create a government that could protect liberty and order.

They chose a government based on a written constitution that combined the principles of popular consent, the separation of powers, and federalism.

The electoral college system for selecting a president limited popular consent in the procedure for choosing the House of Representatives.

The power of the three branches of the government was to be shared in a way that would produce confl ict among them.

It was hoped that this confl ict, motivated by the self-interest of the individuals occupying each branch, would prevent tyranny even by a popular majority.

Federalism means a system in which both the national and state governments have independent authority.

The Philadelphia convention required delicate compromises to ensure that neither large nor small states would dominate the national government.

The positions people took in the drafting of the Constitution were not determined by their economic interests but by their political opinions.

The Continental Congress couldn't impose taxes or pay soldiers without the consent of most state governments.

They thought that people had enough virtue to make government possible, but that it wouldn't protect freedom without limiting the power of politicians.

Weak central authority makes it hard to start new programs and harder to get rid of bad ones.

Suggested Readings Bailyn, Bernard can be found at the Yale University Law School.

The Tea Party protest that erupted during the Obama administration, the lawsuits about our rights that preoccupy the courts, and the arguments about whether newspapers should be free to discuss military secrets are all examples of how we think about government.

The people's and government's preoccupation with rights is what makes American politics different from almost any other democratic nation.

After the Civil War, new amendments were added to the Constitution to ban slavery and protect freed slaves.

Immigrants fled here because of religious or political persecution abroad, and they came here to be sensitive to their rights.

The existence of an independent judiciary has allowed citizens to file lawsuits against the government in order to protect their rights, even if it means getting judges to declare Congress unconstitutional.

The government has the right to protect vital secrets if someone distributes classifi ed documents.

A high school student may think his or her locker is private, but the school principal will insist on his or her right to search that locker if it seems necessary to preserve order or prevent the distribution of drugs.

You can worship however you please, but you can't use your religious beliefs to justify killing your child or preventing medical care for them.

In 1798, it was against the law to publish false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the president or Congress.

In 1918, it was against the law to utter or print disloyal, scurrilous language that was intended to promote the cause of the nation's enemies.

It would not be grounds for a lawful arrest to condemn the United States in such a way.

It is difficult to find adult bookstores and movie theaters in a large city.

The Supreme Court has held that nude dancing and burning the American flag are forms of "speech" deserving of protection.

A Bill of attainder is a law that makes a person guilty of a crime without a trial.

The government has to prove that it can be justifi ed if it restricts speaking or publishing.

The courts will not allow the government to restrain or censor in advance any speaking or writing.

The court made it very diffi cult for public Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning.

A member of the Ku Klux Klan uses his right to free speech to make "white power" chants.

If you burn your draft card to protest the foreign policy of the United States, you can be punished for the illegal act even if you intended to communicate your political beliefs.

The government's only reason for banning burning is to restrict speech, which is impermissible under the Constitution.

When some students were punished for wearing black armbands in class, the court ruled that they were a protected form of speech.

The state can regulate obscene materials because they have no redeeming social value or are calculated to appeal to one's sexual rather than political or literary interests.

In one eleven-year period, 1957 to 1968, the Court decided thirteen major cases involving the defi nition of obscenity.

To be obscene, the work must be judged by the average person applying contemporary community standards to appeal to the prurient interest or to depict in a patently offensive way.

The Court upheld the city's decision to prohibit an "adult" movie theater from being located within 1,000 feet of any church, school, park, or residential area.

A state can't prevent a bank from spending money on votes in a local election, and an electric utility can't be required to have monthly bills written by groups attacking the utility.

When the Supreme Court upheld the campaign finance reform law in 2003 it was an exception to the free press rights of organizations.

The law banned "electioneering communications" paid for by funds from corporations or labor unions for sixty days before a general election for federal offices.

Hillary Clinton was criticized in a television film by a nonprofit organization before she ran for president.

The government's power to restrict political speech based on the speaker's corporate identity was denied by the First Amendment.

It was important that the paper was published using school money and that it was edited as part of a journalism class.

The majority of Americans have always supported freedom of expression in the abstract, but when we get to concrete cases they have not always been so tolerant.

Most people don't know how complex the law is when it comes to freedom of speech and the press, despite the fact that the plain language of the First Amendment protects them.

A man can't have more than one wife, even if it's on religious grounds, if the state passes a compulsory vaccine law.

Even if they do not believe in a Supreme Being or belong to any religious tradition, people can't be drafted if their consciences are spurred by deeply held moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.

The Supreme Court has interpreted this phrase to mean that the Constitution establishes a wall of separation between church and state.

It's not the Bill of Rights or the debates in the First Congress that drafted it, it's the pen of Thomas Jefferson, who was opposed to the Church of England being established in Virginia.

In countries that have recently had state ernments in England, Greece, Germany, and Norway, the national government supported churches.

In France, Italy, and Spain, there are state-supported churches that English and French attend at least once a week.

Busing is a religiously neutral activity that provides police protection to Catholic schools.

Since 1947, the wall of separation theory has been applied to every effort to have any form of prayer in public schools, even if it is nonsectarian, voluntary, or limited to reading a passage from the Bible.

It is permissible for the federal government to provide aid for constructing buildings on denominational (as well as nondenominational) college campuses and for state governments to loan free textbooks to parochial school pupils.

The Court wrote that they no longer assumed that public employees would get into religion because they were in a sectarian environment.

The court ruled that the constitution does not prevent a state from paying for vouchers that allow a child to attend a religious school.

The case began in Cleveland, Ohio, where the state offered money to any family that had children attend a public school that was so bad that it was under a federal court order to be run by the state.

The wall of separation principle has not been easy to apply, and the Supreme Court has begun to alter its position on church-state matters.

The court decided that it was all right for the government of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to put up a Nativity scene as part of the Christmas display in a local park.

It can't avoid being neutral by claiming that any involvement with religion violates the First Amendment.

The creche had to go because it was too close to the courthouse and implied a government endorsement, but the menorah could stay because it was next to a Christmas tree.

When the Commandments were part of a display of over thirty historical markers in Texas, the Supreme Court allowed it, despite the fact that it was unconstitutional for the Nebraska legislature to do this.

The law doesn't require public schools to teach creationism as an alternative to evolution.

A few years later, a school board in Pennsylvania required teachers to read a statement to their students about intelligent design being an alternative to evolution.

The problem of interpreting the religion clauses of the First Amendment has been to decide what they mean and how to put them into effect, whereas the problem of interpreting the Bill of Rights has been to decide what they mean and how to put them into effect.

One way to punish the police is to allow them to introduce court evidence relevant to the guilt or innocence of a person, no matter how it was obtained.

If the evidence is relevant to determining the guilt or innocence of the accused, the other way is to exclude it from the trial.

Opponents of these decisions argue that a guilty person should not be freed just because the police made a mistake.

Some claim that the rule has made crimes harder to solve without improving police conduct, while others claim that the rule has not impeded investigations and has made the police more law abiding.

The court ruled in 1979 that the police couldn't search a suitcase taken from a car of an arrested person.

The power of corporations to require employees to undergo drug tests is not restricted by the Constitution.

He signed an executive order in 1986 that required drug testing for many federal employees.

The due-process clause has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to mean that local police departments should issue warnings to people they are arresting.

The ban on being forced to give evidence against yourself was put in place to prevent the use of torture.

In the past, the Supreme Court had not ruled that confessions made involuntarily could not be used in federal criminal trials.

In a criminal inal trial, illegal gathering by police may not be used as evidence.

After two hours of questioning, Miranda signed a written confession that led to the conviction.

Miranda's conviction was overturned because his confession was not used in the trial because he did not have a lawyer present when he was questioned.

Pressure mounted to use an alternative as the rules governing police conduct became more complex.

The question of police conduct left to lawsuits or other ways of punishing offi cial misbehavior is what some thought.

The exclusionary rule was thought to serve a useful purpose but had become too technical to deter police misdeeds.

The exclusionary rule is a vital safeguard to essential liberties and should be kept intact.

Grand jury information can now be shared with other government offi cials.

The attorney general can hold anyone for up to seven days if they are thought to be a national security risk.

President Bush declared a national emergency about a month later in which anyone who is not a US citizen or who has harbored a terrorist will be tried by a military court.

If the suspect is found guilty, they can appeal to the secretary of defense and the president, but not to a civilian court.

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the use of that tribunal, arguing that enemy combatants who come secretly during wartime for the purpose of committing hostile acts are not citizens nor prisoners of war.

The biggest legal issue created by this country's war on terrorism is whether "enemy combatant" can be held without access to a court.

The law allows the FBI to get the records of possible terrorists from banks, businesses and libraries.

You support War on Terr, but are aware of the need to protect national security.

The Bureau of Investiga does not threaten human life if they have not violated a criminal law.

The law allows the government to delay mental constitutional guarantees that should fying people that their borrowing habits are not being violated.

A law was passed in 2006 that allows military missions to try foreign terrorists who are not in uniform.

In 2009, the attorney general decided to try the inmates in a civilian court in New York City, but that didn't go down well with the locals.

President Obama was unable to close the prison camp because he could not find a place to put many of the inmates.

The due-process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment have been used to apply to state governments' limits on federal power.

A recent ban on "electioneering communication" by unions and corporations sixty days before a general election is the only constitutional restriction on speech and press.

Unless they use religion to justify an illegal act, people can freely exercise their religious views.

It has not objected to printing "In God We Trust" on currency, opening sessions of Congress with a prayer, or assigning chaplains to military units.

It means writing or pictures that the average person believes appeal to the prurient interest and lack literary, artistic, political, or scientifi c value.

If the classifi cation relates to a legitimate government interest, the court will uphold it.

The courts will not allow classifi cation if it is related to apelling government interest.

The courts will assume that the classifi cation is wrong if you don't convince them that it's important to the government.

The Supreme Court accepted the classification of people on the basis of race for the purpose of assigning them to schools.

The Court believed that public education had become so important that it was incompatible with the concept of equality under the law, and that segregating schools had become harmful to blacks.

The campaign to strengthen federal civil-rights laws was a result of the protest march from Selma to Montgomery.

If the purpose of the law is to remedy the consequences of discrimination, racial distinctions may be made.

The busing of students to achieve racial equality in public schools is unconstitutional.

In 2003 the Supreme Court overturned the admissions policy of the University of Michigan, which gave every African American, Hispanic, and Native American applicants 20 points out of the 100 points needed to guarantee admission to its undergraduate program.

The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that racial advantages be tailored to achieve diversity.

If there was a history of discrimination, contractors can be required to set aside 10 percent of their contract funds to purchase services from minority-owned businesses, unions can be required to recruit black members, and state police departments and municipal fi re departments can be required to hire blacks on the basis Setting aside a percentage of city contracts for minority-owned businesses is unconstitutional if there is no clear evidence of discrimination.

If the school system has discriminated against black teachers, they cannot be given preferential promotions.

Despite the fact that it was the low bidder, the small construction firm of Adarand failed to get a government contract to build guardrails along a federal highway.

It lost because of a government policy that favors small businesses owned by minorities.

Discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin can be found in restaurants, hotels, lunch counters, gasoline stations, movie theaters, stadiums, arenas, and lodging houses with more than fi ve rooms.

The attorney general was authorized to bring a suit to force the integration of public schools.

Discrimination in hiring, fi ring, or paying employees on grounds of race, color, religion, national origin, or sexample was banned.

In areas where discrimination was found to be practiced or where fewer than 50 percent of voting-age residents were registered to vote in the 1964 election, the Civil Service Commission of voting examiners would be authorized to make appointments to register all eligible voters in federal, state, and local elections.

Private owners who sell or rent their homes without the services of a real estate broker are banned from being discriminated against.

Sex discrimination is not allowed in education programs that receive federal aid.

No part of an organization can be based on race, sex, age, or physical handicap.

The Supreme Court decisions narrowed the interpretation of federal civil-rights laws as they affected disputes between employees and employers over racial or gender discrimination.

The Court held that race could not be used in deciding who to admit to elementary or high schools.

Voters in California, Washington, Michigan, and Nebraska voted to ban the use of "race, sex, color, or ethnicity" to discriminate against or give benefi ts in 2008.

A growing proportion of whites express tolerant views about race, and the number of blacks holding elective offi ce has steadily increased.

The Supreme Court began changing the standards it applied to laws and practices that treated men and women differently.

No state law was ever held unconstitutional because of sex discrimination because of the traditional standard, which was protective paternalism.

The Idaho statute that gave men preference over women in the appointment of administrators of the estates of deceased children was overturned by the Court in 1971.

"exceedingly persuasive" justifi cation for a policy that has an important government objective.

The judge threw the case out of court because she didn't have enough evidence to make a compelling argument, even if the jury believed her.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that harassment can be one of two forms.

The "quid pro quo" rule states that it is illegal for someone to request sexual favors as a condition for employment or advancement.

The employer can be held liable even if he or she did not know that a subordinate was requesting sex in exchange for a promotion.

It is illegal for an employee to experience a work environment that is hostile or intimidating because of a constant pattern of offensive sexual jokes, teasing, or obscenity.

It held that a city is responsible for the sexually hostile work environment confronted by a female lifeguard.

Waiting periods and parental notifi cation were not judged to be burdens.

The 1973 ruling gave constitutional protection to abortion during the first six months of a woman's pregnancies.

The state might allow abortion to protect the woman's life or health after that point.

The decision deeply divided the nation into two camps: a "right to choose" group that wanted federal funds to help pay for abortion, and a "right to life" group that wanted states to ban abortion.

Congress passed a series of laws prohibiting the use of federal funds for abortions in all but a few special circumstances after they refused to adopt the consti tutional amendment.

consensual sexual relations between vent gays and lesbians from same-sex partners may not be banned by state law.

The state of Pennsylvania imposed a number of restrictions on women seeking abortions.

There was a mandatory 24 hour waiting period between the request for and the performance of an abortion, the obligation of teenagers to obtain the consent of one parent, and a state requirement that a woman contemplating an abortion be given pamphlets about alternatives.

Similar restrictions had been enacted in many other states, all of which looked to the Pennsylvania case for guidance as to whether they could be enforced.

A state law that would have required a married woman to get her husband's consent was struck down by the court.

When the Supreme Court held in 1986 that the right to privacy could not protect gay men from being prosecuted for engaging in consensual sodomy in their own home, the right to privacy suffered a blow.

Critics of the Texas decision worry that someday the Court will decide that a right to privacy means that gay and lesbian couples can get married.

Some states have taken steps to reserve marriage for heterosexual couples, but those decisions may not survive a court challenge.

In 2003 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court required that marriage licenses be issued to gay and heterosexual couples.

The Massachusetts legislature passed a bill that would amend the state's constitution to ban gay marriage but allow civil unions.

The mayor of San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to hundreds of gay couples after the law was approved by the voters.

The legislature voted to make same-sex marriages legal, but the governor vetoed the bill.

The Supreme Court must decide if a predominantly black col can receive state support.

The courts applied the strict scrutiny test to race but not to sexual classifi cations.

The use of contraception was protected by a "zone of privacy" that was derived from the "penumbras and emanations", according to the Supreme Court.

The relationship between the national and state governments has been the most persistent source of political confl ict since the adoption of the Constitution.

Many Americans think of the government in Washington as weak or unimportant, even though it is vastly powerful.

The United States, Canada, Australia, India, Germany, and Switzerland are the most important federal systems.

The special protection that local governments enjoy in a federal system derives from the constitution of the country but also from the habits, preferences, and dispositions of the citizens and the actual distribution of political power in society.

A large part of the welfare system, all of the interstate highway system, virtually every aspect of programs to improve cities, the largest part of the effort to supply jobs to the unemployed, the entire program to clean up our water, and even much of our military power.

To some critics, federalism means allowing states to block action, prevent progress, upset national plans, protect powerful local interests, and cater to the self-interest of hack politicians.

Allowing states and cities to make binding political decisions will allow some people in some places to maintain racial segregation, protect vested interests, and facilitate corruption.

It's true that this arrangement allows other people in other places to pass laws that attack segregation, regulate harmful economic practices, and purify politics--often long before these ideas gain national support or become national policy.

Drug laws, the death penalty, and the right to carry guns all affect where you live.

It is difficult to say if the Framers knew how the Constitution would affect public policy or political participation.

Gallup Orga and Switzerland are on nearly every expert's list of low trust in government.

Federalism was intended to protect personal liberty according to the general intention of the Framers.

They were worried that placing political authority in any set of hands would lead to tyranny.

The Framers didn't have a clear idea of how it would work in practice, and they assumed that the national government would only have powers granted by the Constitution.

The Framers were aware that they couldn't make an exact list of everything the federal government could do; circumstances would change and new exigencies would arise.

The national government was created by the people because the laws and treaties made pursuant to the Constitution were "the supreme law of the land" and because the most pressing needs were the development of a national economy and conduct of foreign affairs.

The federal government was the product of an agreement among the states and was championed by Thomas Jefferson, who had not attended the convention because he was serving abroad as minister to France.

The main threat to the people's liberties was likely to come from the national government.

The differing interpretations they offered of the Constitution were to shape political debate in this country until the 1960s.

The war's outcome made it clear that the national government was supreme, its sovereignty derived directly from the people.

Chief Justice John Marshall was the leader of the Supreme Court during the formative years of the new republic.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court answered two questions about the power of Congress and the supremacy of the federal government.

The question was whether Congress had the right to set up a bank, or any other corporation, because it is not mentioned in the Constitution.

The Supreme Court decided that the federal government couldn't tax state instrumentalities because it was sauce for the gander.

If you earned interest on a municipal bond, you don't have to pay federal income tax on it, just as you don't have to pay state income tax on interest from a United States bond.

The Civil War was caused by the battle over states' rights versus national supremacy.

It was like a stream of money that flowed through the country, drawing in contributions from thousands of scattered enterprises and depositing its products in millions of individual homes.

By the 1940s, the janitors and window washers in buildings that housed companies engaged in interstate commerce had been redefi ned by the Supreme Court because it allowed the federal government to regulate almost anything that affected this stream.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has breathed new life into the idea that the states have the authority to set their own rules.

In 1992, it struck down a federal law that dictated how states regulate radioactive waste within their borders, and in 1995 it said that the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce did not give it the right to ban handguns from being carried within one thousand feet of a school.

It's too early to tell if these court cases will restore authority to the Tenth Amendment, which has been meaningless for a century or more.

The Court almost always held that Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce gave Washington all the authority it needed.

Any attempt to pass federal regulations regarding the content of local school curricula would face strong congressional resistance.

In some cases, such as Boston, the implementation of these orders led federal judges to supervise countless details of local school policies--what supplies to buy, where to build schools, what teachers to hire, and the like.

Land grants made by the national government to the states in order to fund education began before the Constitution was adopted.

If Alabama could get Washington to put up money for navigation improvements on the Tombigbee River, the citizens of the entire nation would pay for it.

The governor of Alabama did not have to propose, collect, or take responsibility for federal taxes.

States may not make treaties with foreign nations, coin money, issue paper currency, grant titles of nobility, pass a bill of attainder, or impose taxes on imports or exports without the consent of Congress.

If the senator from Alabama votes for the project to improve navigation on the Tombigbee, his Senate colleagues will have to vote in favor of projects improving navigation on every other river in the country.

Security personnel demonstrate a new backscatter device, purchased with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago on March 15, 2010.

A variety of organized interests would push for grants to help farmers, build highways, or support Vocational education.

Federal offi cials were the main proponents of grant programs to aid the urban poor, combat crime, reduce pollution, and deal with drug abuse.

Governors were used to being the conduit for money on its way from Washington to local communities.

State and local offi cials, both elected and appointed, began to form an important new lobby.

Blocks were supposed to give states and cities the freedom to decide how to spend the money and relieve their tax burdens.

The amount of money available from federal grants did not grow as fast as the states had hoped.

State and local offi cials took a different view of people who are disabled.

Edward Koch, the mayor of New York at that time, argued that buying new buses and subways would make each trip by a wheelchair rider cost $38.

It seemed attractive to members of Congress to leave the cities and states to pay the bills and manage the problems.

The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act was signed into law by President Clinton in 1995.

Clean air, pure drinking water, and sew age treatment are federal standards.

The typical state depends on federal grants for a quarter or more of its budget, so it's hard to refuse.

To prevent a point of order, congressional committees will revise their bills.

Washington's attempt to pass unfunded mandates has had modest success, but it has not changed the federal government's view of what is best for the states.

In recent decades, the growth of population and employment has shifted to the South, Southwest, and Far West.

The change in the way the federal government distributes its funds and awards its contracts has caused an intense debate over whether the federal government is unfairly helping some regions and states at the expense of others.

Factors such as a county's population, personal income, and housing quality are taken into account.

The results of the census, taken every ten years, assume monumental proportions with the advent of grants based on distributional formulas.

It is possible for a city or state to lose millions of dollars in federal aid.

Senators and representatives now have access to computers that can instantly change the formula for federal aid in their states and districts.

Sometimes the results of these struggles are plausible, as when Congress decides to distribute money intended to help disadvantaged local school systems based largely on the proportion of poor children in each school district.

Tensions in the federal system do not arise from one level of government being callous or incompetent but from the kinds of political demands that each must cope with.

Because of these competing demands, federal and state offi cials are in a bargaining situation in which each side is trying to get some help.

The interstate highway system was created by President Eisenhower because he believed in the states.

Many state offi cials objected because the strings increased their local power, even though President Nixon suggested that many federal grants be given to the states with no strings attached.

President Reagan tried to divide government powers between the federal and state levels, but nobody could agree on what that division should be.

The Real ID Act created a national identity card after the 9/11 attacks.

The welfare reform act was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Clinton.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act gave the states the authority to run the federal welfare program.

Washington kept paying the bills, but the states made the rules, urging applicants to look for work before applying for benefi ts, and in part because of the law.

After the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act passed in 2010, a group of state attorneys general issued legal challenges because they claimed that the new federal law was unconstitutional because it requires people to purchase health insurance.

Yugoslavia shows what can happen when the central government tries to rule without changing its policies.

They reserve to themselves or the localities within them important powers over public services, such as schooling and law enforcement, and important public decisions, such as land-use control, that in a unitary system are dominated by the national government.

Federalism means that citizens living in different parts of the country will be treated differently, not only in spending programs, such as welfare, but in legal systems that assign varying penalties for similar offenses or that differentially enforce civil-rights laws.

There are more opportunities for participation in making decisions because of federalism, for example in deciding where to build highways and government projects.

Attempts to reverse the trend by shifting to block grants have only partially succeeded.

The states rely on the federal government for power over foreign and military relations and commerce.

Most of the time, it has expanded federal authority, but recently it has protected some state claims.

They choose senators and representatives, ask for and spend a lot of money from federal taxes, run programs dealing with highways and education, and oversee local government.

State and local gover Supreme Court decisions can be found at www.fi ndlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html.

Most Americans opposed the impeachment of President Clinton, but the House of Representatives voted to do so.

There are a lot of good reasons why government policy seems to be at odds with public opinion.

The right of the people to vote for members of the House of Representatives was one way to achieve these goals.

Representative government, federalism, the separation of powers, a Bill of Rights, and an independent judiciary were some of the other means provided.

The Framers knew that in a nation as large and diverse as the United States, there would be many "publics" holding many opinions.

The Framers hoped that the struggle among these many publics would protect liberty while at the same time permitting the adoption of reasonable policies that commanded the support of many groups.

The attitudes of the people who have been attracted into leading positions in journalism shape the media.

The split between liberals and conservatives is probably intensified by this because each side now has so many ways to strengthen their policy views.

Events of recent decades have made the relationship between those who govern and those who write even more strained.

In England, the laws governing libel are so strict that newspapers are often sued for defaming or ridiculing them.

The law of libel in the United States is loose enough to allow inaccurate criticism of anyone who is in the public eye.

The federal government doesn't have the power to censor or dictate the contents of radio and television stations in America.

The federal government's power to license broadcasters has been used to harass station owners who are out of favor with the White House.

In the 1960s, there was our unhappy war in Vietnam; in the 1970s, President Nixon had to resign because of his involvement in the Watergate scandal; and in the 1990s, President Clinton went through sexual scandals that led to his being impeached by the House of Representatives.

Twelve hundred local residents were asked by researchers at the University of Cincinnati if they favored passage of the Monetary Control Bill.

The members of Congress from Cincinnati would have been surprised to learn that there was no such thing as the Monetary Control Bill.

Only a small group of voters will be able to tell you the name of the secretary of defense, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, or several prominent presidential candidates.

We want to know if the public thinks the federal government should provide housing for people.

When President Eisenhower took office in 1952, we had won a war against fascists, had a near monopoly of the atom bomb, and had a currency that was the envy of the world.

Civil rights, crime, illegal drugs, the environment, the role of women, highway safety, and almost anything else that is related to the national agenda were not thought of by most people.

What we expected Washington to do was greatly increased by domestic turmoil, urban riots, a civil-rights revolution, the war in Vietnam, and a new concern for the environment.

On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington were attacked by terrorists.

In November of that year, half of Americans of both political parties said they trusted Washington to do what is right most of the time.

We can't all be puppets of Madison Avenue if we all believe that we decide for ourselves what to think.

It is not the case that television entices us to vote for a politician in a way that would make us buy a bar of soap.

The ability of the family to have a strong sense of party affiliation has declined in recent years.

Since the early 1950s, the proportion of citizens who consider themselves to be Democrats or Republicans has declined.

A lot of national surveys draw a sample of between a thousand and a hundred people.

A list of all geographic units in the country is made by the pollster by the size of their populations.

Within each selected county, smaller and smaller geographical units (cities, towns, census tracts, blocks) are chosen and then, within the smallest unit, individuals are selected at random.

At election time, most people know who they would prefer as president, and they also have opinions about what constitutes the most important national problems.

Few voters will have an opinion about our policy toward Bosnia or about the investment tax credit.

If everybody refused to answer questions about which they are poorly informed, no problem would arise, but unfortunately many of us like to pretend we know things that we don't, or to be helpful to interviewers by inventing opinions on the spur of the moment.

In 1971 the Gallup asked people if they favored a proposal to bring home Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning.

You don't have to worry about this when there are only two candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, and you want to know which one the voters prefer.

If you ask people if they approve or disapprove of how the president is handling his job, you will get one answer.

The differences in the two polls do not come from the competence of the two pollsters, but from the choice of answers that they include with their questions.

Sampling error and other factors make it hard for pollsters to predict the winner in a close election.

The winner of the presidential election has been picked by every major national poll from 1952 to 1998, but there may have been some luck involved in the close races of the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon and 1976 Carter-Ford contests.

Sometimes we agree with our parents but other times we disagree with them because of the way genes shape our views.

Religion seems to be an important factor in how the family forms and transmits political attitudes.

Religion in the United States and probably elsewhere conveys more than just a set of beliefs about God and morality.

College learning, even when taught in a politically neutral way, explains what might be wrong with the world as it is, offers models or ideals by which the world might be improved, and encourages critical thinking.

In bad economic times, the economy may push the culture war into the background.

The reason for the shift is that the political parties have changed their positions on issues that women respond differently to than men, such as prohibition and gun control and foreign policy.

In the 1930s and 1940s, more women than men wanted to ban the sale of liquor in order to keep the country out of war and this helped Republicans, who were more sympathetic to such policies than were Democrats.

In 1980, the Republicans were hurt by women's opposition to any policy that might increase the risk of war because they saw Reagan as ready to send troops into combat.

When war, gun control, or pornography are not in the spotlight, the gender gap disappears.

The opinions formed by heredity, family, religion, schooling, and sex are not the whole story.

Even with similar families, religious background and education, there are many splits among people.

It is diffi cult to study public opinion because a survey that would allow you to look at every relevant source would cost a lot.

Class may explain more of the differences in political attitudes in other democracies than it does in the United States.

Over a long period of time, the correlation between occupation and policy preferences has weakened.

It's not clear why this has happened, but it's probably due to the changing effects of education on all levels of society.

Whites and blacks differ on a number of issues, including busing to achieve racially balanced schools, the right of individuals to discriminate in housing sales, increased spending for national defense, and the death penalty.

Blacks who hold professional jobs are more likely to believe that whites get unfair advantages and that they have experienced discrimination.

To understand the effect of living in a certain region, one must look at people of the same race and religion.

If you only look at white Protestants, you will see that those in the South are more conservative on social issues than those in the North or West.

It helps explain why the South was part of the Democratic party coalition for so long.

The divisiveness produced by social issues involving race and liberty is threatening the coalition.

It gave more support to the third-party candidacy of George Wallace in 1968, which was a protest against big government and the growth of national power as well as against the extension of civil rights.

Someone else may think that the government should make all employers pay higher wages even if the person doesn't get any money.

The public-opinion polls need to ask simple questions, and so the apparent inconsistencies in the answers people give at different times may mean only that the nature of the problem or the wording of the question has changed in ways not obvious to people analyzing the surveys.

The dramatic events of the 1960s--the civil rights revolution, the war in Vietnam, and the riots and protest demonstrations-- increased the extent to which voters followed coherent ideological lines.

Activists have more structured opinions due to the fact that many of the motives that lead them to engage in politics arise out of strong convictions about how the country ought to be run.

Liberal people favor government efforts to ensure that everyone has a job, to spend more money on educational and social programs, and to increase rates of taxation for well-to-do persons.

They want the government to reduce economic inequality, regulate business, tax the rich heavily, deal with crime, protect the rights of accused criminals, allow abortion on demand, and guarantee the broadest possible freedoms of speech and press.

They want less government regulation of business, lower taxes, and a greater reliance on markets, and they advocate getting tough on criminals, punishing pornographers, and cutting back on welfare payments.

libertarians are advocates of free markets, low taxes, and small government, but they also support the greatest amount of personal freedom in social matters, such as speech, drug use, and abortion, which makes them social liberals.

If foreign policy were added, the clas sifi cation scheme would become even more complicated.

This applies to both congressional candidates and voters who have the highest levels of education and the most information about politics and government.

The process of political representation is one reason that some policies preferred by the voters get thrown out.

Ten years ago, an essay about the media and politics would have been about how newspapers and television are used.

Candidates for offi ce raise millions of dollars, mostly in small donations, from appeals sent out on the internet.

In the 1930s, the newspapers did not show a picture of Roosevelt in a wheelchair or report on his extramarital affair.

Television and newspapers did not report on President Kennedy's extramarital sexual escapades in and out of the White House.

The media reported in detail on President Clinton's sexual harassment charge by Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky in the 1990s.

The experience of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal made members of the press adversaries of the government.

At a time when most newspapers, magazines, and television stations were losing readers and listeners, there were vastly more reporters and editors struggling to fi nd stories.

Media competition has become brutal, relentless pressure forcing normally careful reporters and producers to yield to temptations of wildness and recklessness.

Politicians are increasingly using social media sites to raise funds and communicate with their supporters.

The Monica Lewinsky scandal consumed more time on network newscasts than the winter Olympics, the pope's visit to Cuba, and a military confrontation with Iraq combined.

There are scores of cable television systems serving more than 64 million people, and more than nine thousand radio stations, some of which broadcast nothing but news, whereas others develop a specialized following among blacks, Hispanics, or other minorities.

The local orientation of much of the American communications media is offset by the emergence of certain publications and broadcast services.

Most of the national news that local papers publish is supplied by the wire services.

cable and television stations carry the news broadcasts produced by ABC, CNN, CBS, FOX, and NBC.

The Web, linking millions of Internet users, is a check on the national media, it tests the accuracy of media stories, as it did with the CBS account about President Bush's service in the Air National Guard.

First, govern ment offi cials in Washington pay a lot of attention to what these media say about them, and less to what local papers and broadcasters say.

Before the national press began giving attention to them, automobile safety, water pollution, and the quality of prescription drugs were not major political issues.

A television station has to keep its stories short and to the point while facing brutal competition.

A variety of people, both liberal and conservative, write daily statements about politics and the media.

The most competitive branch of the media--radio and television broadcasting-- must have a governmental license to operate and conform to a variety of government regulations, whereas the least competitive branch--big-city newspapers--is almost entirely free from government regulation.

After writing an op-ed critical of the Bush administration, a columnist disclosed that a CIA officer helped send her husband to Africa.

The person who leaked the fact that Plame worked for the agency was appointed a special prosecutor.

The Plame and Miller stories led some members of Congress to propose federal legislation that would allow reporters to keep their sources, but by mid-2010 the bill had not passed.

The FCC has the power to change the way the station depicts ethnic groups.

Competition should be allowed to determine how each station serves a community's needs in order to deregulate broadcasting.

Unless some community group formally objects, licenses are automatically renewed unless the FCC holds a hearing.

Some of the old rules, for instance, that each hour on TV could contain only sixteen minutes of commercials, are no longer strictly enforced.

Today, the press secretary heads a large staff that meets with reporters, briefs the president on questions the president is likely to be asked, attempts to control the news from cabinet departments to the press, and arranges briefi ngs for out-of-town editors.

The Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning is the only nation in the world that has brought the press into such close proximity to the head of its government.

Until the 1974 Nixon impeachment hearings, House committees refused to allow electronic coverage.

The power of the medium was demonstrated in 1950 when Senator Estes Kefauver's hearings about crime were televised.

Washington is a city full of cameras and an investigation, a scandal, or an articulate and telegenic personality can usually get a senator on the air.

This competition has driven broadcasters to search for something to say to the public, often in the guise of scandals, accusations, and endless punditry.

Before the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the big news stories of the preceding years were the sexual conduct of President Clinton and the connection between California Representative Gary Condit and a missing young woman.

Other factors include the need to meet an urgent deadline, the desire to attract an audience, a professional obligation to be fair and tell the truth, and the need to develop sources among people holding different views.

During the 1980 presidential campaign, the national media gave evenhanded treatment to the opposing candidates, with Walter Mondale getting more favorable coverage than Reagan.

These are public events that are open to any reporter who wants to inquire, but involve acts and statements that are not covered by a group.

If something dramatic or unique happens, a routine news story can be incorrect.

The news stories reported that the Americans were powerless to oppose the North Vietnamese because they could move at will.

A liberal paper may choose to cover stories about white-collar crime, consumerism, the problems of minorities, and the arms race, while a conservative paper may choose to cover stories about street crime, the decline of the central business district, and the problems of drug abuse and welfare fraud.

Sometimes the answer is more complex: a belief in the virtue or threat of some cause or special interest.

The ten largest newspapers covered economic news when either a Democrat or a Republican was in office.

When a Democrat was in the White House, the news got a positive spin; when a Republican was there, it was a negative one.

One suspects that the reporter is dependent on highly placed sources and unwilling to compromise them.

Each branch of government competes to acquire power because we have separate institutions sharing it.

It is possible to use the press to advance your pet projects and to make someone else look bad.

The legislature has too little information to be a good source of leaks and power is centralized in the hands of a prime minister who doesn't need to leak information in order to get the upper hand.

We can't be certain, but the evidence seems to show that if the citizens have personal Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning.

It doesn't matter whether the media gives coverage to crime, interest rates, gasoline prices, or the quality of the public schools.

The media are not likely to affect the outcome of important elections because people have lots of sources of information about presidential candidates.

The media is likely to have the biggest effect on how people think about things they don't know.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 brought journalists to that country, a place that most Americans knew very little about.

When the major battles were over, the press focused on the terrorists who attacked the U.S. troops and not on the gains the Americans were making in Iraq.

The creation of a new interim Iraqi government has generated less attention because of attacks on Americans and Iraqis by dissident groups, even though reporting on war captured the public's attention and generated considerable support.

The most important effect television has had on politics is its ability to give candidates access to tens of millions of people.

Attacking your opponent has been part of American politics since the time of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, but a juicy scandal or personal criticism gets more attention today than ever before.

Tele vision doesn't want to be interested in long speeches or policy papers.

Politicians spend a lot of time posing in front of dramatic backdrop or with people who symbolize some message, such as police officers, factory workers, or senior citizens.

They prefer a sound bite that they air, which leads people to think that the whole message is conveyed.

It makes chubby people look obese and causes high-pitched voices to sound shrill because it penalizes youthfulness.

Young, attractive candidates who pose in interesting settings have an advantage over those who are old and ugly.

Offi cials who can make their point in a dramatic ten-second phrase-- especially one that attacks their rivals-- have an advantage over those who think that clarifying an issue requires ten minutes.

The most important political debates in American history took place between two candidates for the Senate.

A Senate race in one state was not as important as other events with more visual appeal that happened in 1858, such as a new stagecoach line completing its trip to San Francisco.

We wouldn't have known about the debate between Lincoln and Douglas over the morality of slavery, the meaning of popular sovereignty, and the future of the republic.

A shield law would allow any government to leak information without fear of being detected.

When a political event occurs, presidents and presidential candi dates rally key aides to contact reporters and appear on talk shows to shape the way the event is interpreted.

Special access to favored reporters and denying it to those who are disliked is the ultimate weapon a president has in his love-hate relationship with the press.

Presidents Kennedy and Johnson gave brutal but private tongue- lashings to journalists they did not like and exclusive interviews to those they did.

After the Vietnam War became unpopular, Lyndon Johnson didn't practice any of the tricks in the book anymore.

During his fi rst term, Bill Clinton was attacked by the press, but he admired it in his second.

With the increase in the number of people attending college and holding high-paying but nonbusiness jobs, economic and occupational sources of opinion have become less important.

People who are liberal on economic issues but conservative on social ones are likely to be citizens at large.

The role of journalists in a democratic society poses an inevitable dilemma: if they are to serve well in their functions as information gatherer, gatekeeper, scorekeeper, and watchdog, they must be free of government control.

In the United States, a competitive press that is free of government controls has produced a lot of opinion and a commitment to the goal of fairness in news reporting.

The representatives are not supposed to do what the people want in part because "public opinion" is often vague, changeable, and inconsistent.

Sex, region, social class, and occupation have some effect, but not as large as the fi rst four.

TV news tends to be dramatic, focused on blood and blunders, and with an emphasis on local community matters, because television must grab and hold an audience that quickly changes channels.

A penetrating analysis of our growing fascination with political scandal and the journalistic and governmental forces that pander to this obsession.

Experiments that test the effect of television news on how we think about politics have been reported.

A study of the political beliefs of elite journalists and how they affect what we read and hear.

The political parties of the United States are the oldest in the world and may be the weakest.

When they were a hundred years old, they were still vigorous and played a dominant role in national politics.

Changes in the legal rules under which they operate and in the attitudes of the citizens they seek to organize have led to their decline.

Many Americans think of parties and interest groups as self-seeking lobbies that should be abolished.

Every leader from Thomas Jefferson to the present has learned that you cannot run a democracy without bringing people together so that they can decide who should hold offi ce.

There are several factors that explain the differences between American and European political parties.

American parties are closely regulated by federal and state laws that have weakened them.

In most states, candidates are selected by the voters in the primary elections, which are unknown in Europe.

In European countries, if a political party wins control of Congress, it doesn't get the right to pick the chief executive.

Unlike Europeans who join political parties, pay dues, attend meetings, and participate in many party-organized social activities, Americans do not usually do that.

The political convention allowed for some measure of local control over the nominating process.

The Jacksonian party system was a true national system, with the Democrats and Whigs evenly balanced in most regions, but it couldn't overcome the deep split in opinion caused by the slavery issue.

The Progres sives, a group of outsiders, were losing their fight against machine politics in the late 19th century.

Primary elections to replace boss-manipulated nominating conventions, nonpartisan local elections, strict voter registration requirements, and civil-service reform were some of the measures they began to promote to curtail or even abolish political parties.

If not by a party, they must be arranged by another interest group, the mass media, or the candidates' supporters.

It is not easy to get tougher campaign fi nance rules that limit soft money.

The next chapter will show how the newest campaign fi nance law affects election money.

The chances for various presidential candidates are affected by the number of delegates and the manner of their selection.

The tendency of the two parties' conventions to move in opposite directions will be mentioned later in this chapter.

The Democrats have developed an elaborate set of rules designed to increase the number of women, young people, and minorities at the convention.

The general thrust of these rules commissions during the 1970s was to broaden the antiparty changes begun by the Progressives at the beginning of this century.

In order to increase the influence of elected officials and to make the convention more of a deliberative body, in 1981 another party commission changed some of these rules.

After a decade of reform, the Republican and Democratic parties each represented two different sets of white-collar voters.

Before 1972, the Democratic convention was where party leaders met to bargain over the selection of their presidential candidate; after 1972, it became a place where delegates met to approve decisions made by voters in primary elections and local caucuses.

Party leaders gathering in a smoke-fi lled room were replaced by activists assembling before television cameras.

Rules have to be judged by their practical results as well as their conformity to a principle of fairness.

We will look more closely at delegate selection rules later in the chapter to see how they affect who attends the convention and which presidential candidates are chosen.

Regular, ongoing party organizations are found at the city, county, and state levels.

The party can be understood only in terms of the informal processes where workers are recruited and leaders are selected.

The Hatch Act of 1939 took federal employees out of machine politics, as the abuses of the machine gradually diminished through stricter voter reg istration, civil-service reform, and competitive bidding laws.

Voters depended less on the advice and leadership of local party offi cials as they grew in education, income, and sophistication.

Even allowing for vote fraud, these organizations turned out huge votes: More people participated in politics when mobilized by a machine than when appealed to by television or "good government" associations.

The "reform" or "amateur" clubs that sprang up in the late 1950s and early 1960s in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are important examples of issue-oriented groups within the two main parties.

For a long time in California, the Republican Assembly was more important than the formal party machinery in promoting candidates.

Members of these clubs became active in politics because of their strong interest in issues, and they expected that the decisions within the party would be as Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning.

The ability of a club leader to make useful alliances is a weakness because politics requires that coalitions be built among groups and people who do not always agree on issues.

Democratic club members tend to be more liberal than the average Democratic voter, and Republican club members are more conservative than the typical Republican voter.

Sometimes a relatively strong party organization can be created among volunteers without heavy reliance on money or ideology.

The Democratic party in and around Detroit has been developed and led by the political arm of the UAW union.

In most areas candidates can't count on the backing of a machine because issue-oriented clubs are limited to upper-middle-class members.

Other powerful politicians who have relied on personal followings include Mayor James Michael Curley of Boston, Eugene and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, and Earl and Russell Long of Louisiana.

Radio and television allowed a candidate to speak directly to large numbers of voters, without editing, and thus to build statewide and even national followings completely outside the party structure.

Some readers may take it for granted that a personal following is a good thing because it makes it easier to vote for the person rather than the party and to keep party "bosses" from interfering with the popular will.

With so many offi ces to be fi lled and so many of personalities offering to fi ll them, the average voter will be lucky to form a reasonable judgement about even two or three of the candidates in the course of a year.

Political activists on the national scene don't work their way up from the local parties but enter the national party through interest groups, such as those concerned with abortion, civil rights, or union affairs.

Political elites come from social movements concerned with abortion, feminism, civil rights, or evangelical religions.

Most European democracies are multiparty systems and we have two parties with any chance of Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning.

The two-party system is permanent in American political life because of electoral laws and public opinion.

The presidency is the greatest prize of American politics, so parties that hope to win must be as broadly based as possible.

Major issues such as the nature of the economic system, the prerogatives of the monarchy, and the role of the church in government have been so divisive that they have prevented the formation of broad coalition parties in some European countries.

The two-party system has remained despite Americans having deep divisions between black and white or between North and South.

It's possible that electoral procedures are so important that it's impossible to form an allwhite or all black party except as an act of momentary defi ance or as a ploy to take enough votes away from the two major parties.

The Liberal Republicans of the post-Civil War era, the Bull Moose Progressives of 1912, and Robert La Follette were the minor parties that had the greatest inflexibility on public policy.

The formation of these groups probably encouraged the major parties to pay more attention to issues such as civil-service reform, business regulation, and the budget.

A desire to win the presidency pushes them in the direction of nominating a candidate who can appeal to the majority of voters and who will thus have essentially middle-of-the-road views.

The Democrats and Republicans have always faced confl icting pressures, but of late the strains have become more acute.

Parties seek a single policy, usually revealed by their names, and avoid other issues.

The views of party activists and rank-andfi le have changed a lot in recent years.

The post-1972 disparity in both parties between delegate opinion and rank-and-fi le voter attitude is still unexplained.

The revised rules that require increased representation for women, minorities, and the young have been blamed for the discrepancy.

Only about half as many people vote in a primary as in general elections, and those who do tend to be more educated than the average voter.

Jackson lost to Dukakis among white voters in states that held primaries.

Pat Robertson won the caucuses in Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington even though he couldn't win a primary.

The convention used to be dominated by professional politicians, but now more Republican and Democratic delegates are issue-oriented.

Larry Bartels has shown that partisan loyalties have rebounded among voters in both presidential and congressional elections.

Organized feminists, unionized school teachers, and abortion rights activists are some of the groups represented by the Democratic convention.

George Wallace, the third-party candidate for president in 1968, liked to say that there was not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties.

The need to win elections pulls each party to the political center as it tries to attract the uncommitted voter.

In favor of federal spending on day care, paying more attention to the needs of blacks, and reducing military spending, voters who identifi ed with the Democratic party were slightly more liberal than those who did not.

Welfare, busing, crime, and the military are some of the broad and basic questions that the delegates to the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating conventions oppose.

The activists, leaders, convention delegates, and offi ceholders within each party tend to be closer to the political extremes than to the middle.

America is a nation of many immigrants and many races, as well as divisions along lines of income and occupation.

The number and strength of interest groups may be explained by the weakness of political parties.

In the 1930s, the Democrats frenzy when you bolt might be ignored, but after that, you plucked Social Security from the Socialist par.

Almost half of all groups in Washington have opened their doors since 1970, with environmental, consumer, and political-reform organizations included.

State governments gave medical and legal societies the power to decide who could become a doctor or lawyer.

Congress outlawed many unfair labor practices in the 1930s, which led to unions in mass-production industries.

Young people caught in social change appear in larger numbers at certain times.

The Boy Scouts and the League of Women Voters are groups consisting of individual members.

Many organizations in Washington don't have individual members, but are run by a staff that gets most of their money from foundations or the government.

Business firms, local governments, foundations, and universities are represented by institutional interests.

The bread and butter issues of vital concern to their clients are what institutions that represent other organizations tend to be interested in.

Clear policies can be formulated and carried out based on business interests for those that represent a limited number of fi rms.

Its membership is so large and diverse that it can take clear positions on only certain issues, while ignoring others.

Perhaps the best known of the liberal public-interest groups are those founded by or associated with the man who became famous as a critic of unsafe automobiles.

From the sale of his books and lecture fees, as well as the money he made from an out-of-court settlement with General GM, Nader turned over to consumers.

He founded Public Citizen, which raised money by direct-mail solicitation from thousands of small contributors.

He helped create Public Interest Research Groups in a number of states and was concerned with organizing student activists to work on local projects.

Membership organizations that use their stated purpose as incentive tend to be shaped by the mood of the times.

They devote a lot of attention to getting publicity and developing good contacts with the media.

It is easier to raise money from small donors if they call attention to the organization's enemies.

An interest group exerts political influence on behalf of its members when there is a clear and similar stake in an issue.

If the members joined to get solidary or material benefi ts, they may not care much about the issues in which the organization gets involved.

The National Council of the Churches of Christ, an organization of various Protestant denominations with millions of members, is an example of how aggressive lobbying can be.

Membership organizations have more trouble raising money than most interest groups, and they rely on appeals to purpose more than most.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson received a grant from the National Alliance of Business for his organization, PUSH.

As late as the 1990s, conservative activists complained that federal money was still funding the left.

The sophistication with which computerized mailings are used to raise money and mobilize supporters is unique to the modern membership group.

To bring in more money than it spends, an organization must write a letter that will get at least 2 or 3 percent of the names on the list to send in a check.

80 or 90 cents of every dollar received is spent on fundraising and administrative costs for organizations that use direct mail.

Well-off people are more likely than poor people to join and be active in interest groups, and interest groups representing business and the professions are more numerous and better than those representing minorities.

Despite the fact that interest group leaders tend to be upper middle class, American politics is now more pluralistic than it used to be due to the fact that all these groups are represented by a variety of organizations that win a number of political victories.

Depending on the issue, the ability to generate a dramatic newspaper headline, mobilize a big letter-writing campaign, stage a protest demonstration, or supply information quietly to the government may be the key to political inference.

The ability to give credible information to the right person is the most important tactic open to interest groups.

Legislators have to take positions on a lot of issues that they can't possibly understand.

The kind of detailed, up-to-the-minute information that politicians need is normally unavailable in encyclopedias and other standard reference sources; it can be gathered only by a group that has a strong interest in some issue.

Most lobbyists are not arm-twisters, but specialists who collect information favorable to their client and present it in as organized, persuasive, and factual manner as possible.

Information provided by lobbyists can be valuable if it concerns a narrow technical issue rather than a broad policy.

Lobbyists need to keep their long-term credibility with legislators in mind when giving bad advice or misrepresenting an issue.

Many interest groups and political activists have fax machines that they can use to send a short document to their legislators.

They worked closely with a few key members of Congress, meeting them privately to exchange information.

It is possible to discuss matters of mutual interest while playing golf or over dinner.

Public opinion polls help generate support for or against proposed Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning.

Mailing lists of people with an interest in a given matter can be created by computerized databases.

It's hard to get people excited about complex tax legislation that only affects a few fi rms.

As the government's policies affect more and more people, more and more will join in grassroots lobbying efforts over issues such as abortion, Medicare, Social Security, and environmental protection.

Indian tribes that wanted to open gambling casinos were represented by Jack Abramoff, a member of a respectable lobbying organization.

A member of Congress, a former White House executive, and several congressional staffers were sent to prison.

Even though a lobbyist and not the president of the United States put the deal together, condemning it as an earmark is an inadequate complaint.

More than half of all political action committees are sponsored by corporations, with a tenth by labor unions, and the rest by a variety of groups.

The ideological PACs spent less on campaigns and gave less to candidates than business or labor.

Even a well-run ideological political action committee has to spend 50 cents on direct-mail solicitation for every dollar it takes in.

There is no evidence that political action committee contributions affect how members of Congress vote.

Money probably affects legislative behavior in ways that will never appear in studies of roll-call votes in Congress.

He was convicted of perjury in a case stemming from charges that he had illegally used his political connections to line his own pocket.

It's hard to know if using an ex-offi cial's political expertise for unfair gain is proper or not.

Government agencies that regulate business are the focus of the few studies done on the revolving door.

On the left, feminists, antislavery agitators, coal miners, auto workers, welfare mothers, blacks, antinuclear power groups, public housing tenants, the American Indian Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Weather Underground have created trouble.

On the right, the Ku Klux Klan has used terror, intimidation, and murder; parents opposed to forced busing of children have demonstrated; business used strong-arm squad against workers; and an endless array of "anti-" groups have taken their disruptive turns on stage.

Making trouble is an accepted political tactic of ordinary middle-class citizens as well as of the disadvantaged.

There is a long history of "proper" people using disruptive meth ods, dating back to early-twentieth-century British and American feminists who, campaigning for women's right to vote, would chain themselves to lampposts.

There are lawsuits that argue that Massachusetts should allow gay and lesbian couples to marry.

The civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s gave thousands of young people expe rience in these methods and persuaded others of their effectiveness.

They risk bad publicity and lawsuits if they call in the police, and are accused of arrogance if they ignore it.

In 1946, Congress passed the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act, which required groups and individuals to register with the Senate and the House.

Not all lobbyists took the trouble to register, and there was no guarantee that the statements they led were accurate or complete because no staff in the Senate or House was in charge of investigating violations of the law.

The law covers people and groups who lobby the executive branch and con gressional staffers as well as elected members of Congress.

The congressional offi cials may refer violations to the Justice Department for investigation, but no new enforcement organization was created.

The law bars tax-exempt, nonprofi t advocacy groups that lobby from getting federal grants.

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Some groups have crossed the line, but it is not clear what constitutes a substantial portion of its activities.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is tax exempt because it does not lobby, but some voluntary associations set up separate organizations to collect tax-exempt money.

The laws may have increased the amount of money different groups in the same sector of society are giving.

There is no system for controlling interest groups that would make a useful difference and leave important constitutional rights unimpaired, beyond making bribery or other corrupt forms of behavior illegal and restricting the sums that campaign contributors can donate.

A political system that gives all affected parties a chance to be heard on matters of public policy is the only remedy for imbalances in interest-group representation.

A political party exists in three arenas: among the voters who psychologically identify with it, as a grassroots organization staffed and led by activists, and as a group of elected offi cials who follow its lead in lawmaking.

The spread of the direct primary has made it harder for the parties to control the behavior of the people who are nominated for election.

The Democratic party's delegate-selection rules have helped shift the center of power in the national nominating convention.

Because of the diffi culty of organizing large numbers of people, a group purporting to speak for mass constituencies will often have to give material to members or get a sponsor.

Voters, candidate selection methods, and campaign-fi nance laws have made the parties weaker.

Voters now get a lot of information from the media and are more likely to think of themselves as independents; caucuses and primary elections have largely replaced a party choice of nominees; and campaign-fi nance reform laws have hurt the ability of parties to raise money.

State and local governments, as well as small groups, can bring suits in court to change laws.

A less open political system would be caused by fewer interest groups.

Interest groups affect national politics in agriculture, energy, health, and labor.

Incentives used to attract members are emphasized in a theory of interest groups and political parties.

Political parties play a smaller role in American elections than in other countries.

If we were to get rid of many lesser elective offi ces in order to focus public attention, we might get large turnouts and majority rule, but that majority would control only a small portion of the governmental structure.

All of the country's offi cials are appointed by the parliament after it assembles and forms the government.

In France and Great Britain, where voting is voluntary, turnout exceeds 70 or 80 percent of the eligible population.

Even voting imposes a number of burdens, such as waiting in line, missing work, and making sense of a long ballot, and hardly anyone ever casts a vote that affects the outcome of an election.

Americans face more diffi culties in registration to vote than citizens of almost any other country.

More of the variations in political participation in the United States are explained by educational differences than in any other country.

Over the last several decades, the rate at which people have been participating in politics other than voting has changed.

Kentucky and Virginia are two of the states where it is compulsory to register to vote, while Maine and Vermont allow felons to remain in their homes for life.

Some democracies deny prisoners the right to vote, "Felony Disenfranchisement in the United States," accessed May 2010; Kingdom.

The vote was limited to taxpayers or property owners, who made up a large portion of the white male population.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote was guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment after the Civil War.

Only a small percentage of southern blacks were able to register and vote after the Supreme Court overturned some of the rules.

The law allowed the appointment of federal examiners who could order the registration of blacks in states and counties where less than 50 percent of the voting-age population were registered.

George Wallace began courting the black vote after stopping making prosegregation speeches.

In the aftermath of days of racial violence, these blacks registered to vote in Americus, Georgia.

The national government was given the power to protect voting rights at the local level.

The size of the eligible voting population almost doubled, but no dramatic change occurred in the conduct of elections, the identity of the winners, or the substance of public policy.

In the 1972 presidential election, the turnout of voters between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one was lower than the population as a whole.

According to this theory, the parties fought hard, got voters to the polls, made politics fun, and looked forward to close elections.

The statistics of nineteenth-century election turnouts might have been lower if votes had been legally cast and honestly counted.

Before the beginning of the twentieth century, people could vote publicly, not privately, on ballots given to them by political parties, and they did not have to register in advance.

Nonvoters are subject to a small fine in Australia and other countries where voting is compulsory.

In America, the burden of register ing remains entirely on the citizens, and nonvoting is perfectly legal.

The authors of a 2008 study concluded that direct mail, radio or television ads, and election-day festivals did not have an effect on voter turnout.

The ability of party leaders to pick the nominee has been weakened by primary elections.

The control of political funds and jobs is now in the hands of candi dates and offi ceholders.

Most of the money used in presidential campaigns goes to the candidate or his or her personal organization, and is not funneled through the party.

In many places, the ability to reward followers with patronage jobs is in the hands of an elected official.

The increased reliance on the mass media for campaigning means that canates purchase advertising and give interviews to bolster their own chances of victory.

It doesn't make sense for one candidate to give others a free ride by including them on a slate because of the high cost of radio and television advertising.

The decline in party loyalty has made it harder to build a winning coalition.

Except in heavily Democratic or Republican areas, candidates don't mention their party in order to get voters to like them as individuals.

How the states hold primary elections and how the candidates mobilize their resources affect a campaign for president.

Many states rushed to hold their caucuses and primaries early so that they would become important places for candidates to campaign.

In that year, twenty-four states held their elections on February 5, including large ones like Illinois and New York, so the primary gained little.

Candidates are forced to run for president as early as two years before the general election.

A list of the kinds of people who vote in a primary election may or may not be party members.

Only the names of prospective delegates to the convention that you are a registered member, will appear on the ballot.

If you indicate their presidential preference in the political party's primary, they may or may not be involved.

North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Wisconsin have open primaries, so delegates must observe these preferences.

A television message is spread out to a mass audience without regard to election districts.

The candidate must make a charge or assert new facts, visit a nursing home or an unemployment line, or sniff the water of a polluted lake if he or she wants to win the election.

Reagan held his own against Mondale in the fi rst debate, but most people thought he lost.

They have many of the advantages of direct mail, but social networking and the internet are cheaper and faster.

This means that voters who use the internet can be urged to attend particular meetings or contribute money very quickly, right in step with changes in political news.

According to Phillip N. Howard, they have amassed an enormous amount of information about Americans and can use it to "narrowcast" messages to people carefully selected for their personal characteristics.

One company has basic information on 150 million registered voters and more detailed records on four out of ten adults in the country.

Users tell the company their personal characteristics and respond to a survey that tests for TV ads.

To get letters written to four members of Congress whose votes you want to change, the company will run 3 million ads on the Web.

It's difficult to know if campaigns make a difference or which aspects affect voters.

In a general election, two-thirds of the voters vote based on their traditional party loyalties.

Many campaign managers believe that negative ads are an effective way to get people to vote.

In most races since 1952, Republicans have won more votes from independents, who tend to be young whites.

The concern of the growing number of professional polling organizations hired by candidates is just who these people are and what they want.

Any serious politician running for major offi ce would dream of not having a series of polls.

General guidance about what campaign themes or tactics should be used or avoided is what they will give.

Reagan's private polls in 1980 told him to be reassuring, emphasizing themes of competence, experience, leadership, and moderation--advice he followed skillfully, drawing votes from middle-of-the-roaders and former Carter supporters.

People trying to lose congressional seats in off-year elections are helped by the political party of almost every president.

The combined effect of a bad econ and unpopular policies nationalized the sixteen elections and Senate seats in thirteen.

Control of the president who was very popular when the House shifted from Democrats to Republicans, lost support in the polls.

Voters don't have a central leadership or policy for this group, but the party in offi ce is responsible for high levels because of unemployment and bad economic news.

The repeal of party would have been able to survive the health care bill, lower taxes, and a balanced bad news.

In the primary elections, President Obama and the Democrats were able to win Republican Senate nominations for Sharon, as well as Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and Joe Miller in a new health care plan.

The health care plan was supported by the Tea Party and it was unpopular with voters, but 41 percent of them said they were threatened by it.

While gasoline and fuel oil prices were high, Johnson, Paul, and Rubio won the election.

The more confusing a voter's choices are, the more helpful campaign literature, door-to-door canvass, coffee parties, and speeches may be.

According to some observers, with the decline in the power of political parties, there has been a rise in single-issue, ideological groups that urge their followers to vote for or against a candidate solely on the basis of some cause.

In the 19th century, the Anti Slavery Society and the National Woman Suffrage Association demanded that politicians support the rights of blacks and women.

Candidates who tried to dodge the question of prohibition were made miserable by the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

The National Conservative Political Action Committee spent more than $7 million in the 1980 election to defeat liberal Democratic senators.

There is no evidence to support the idea that the recent rise in the importance of primaries will lead to more unity among single-issue or ideological groups.

There are several things that happen during that time, around the beginning of September to the fi rst week in November.

The election will be decided by 20 percent of the voters who can't vote for either party.

The well-off voter may think that if the country is doing poorly, he or she will soon feel that pinch by losing a job or customers; as a result, that voter will vote for the challenger to help protect his or her own future.

It seems that acting presidential means being an effective speaker, showing dignity and compassion, and sounding like one will take charge and get things done.

There are some things that may or may not make a difference, but we don't know because the trait hasn't been tested in a presidential race.

Key, Jr., looked at voters who had switched parties and found that they usually changed in a way that was in line with their political preferences.

Most Americans thought it should be eliminated, but not many voted because they didn't know which party had the better idea.

Civil rights, crime, and the war in Vietnam were hot topics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and so in the campaigns that occurred, these issues made a difference.

If they are shown to have a bad character, incumbents will be hurt from a good national economy.

The New Deal coalition was formed in the year of the Depression by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrats became the dominant party.

A series of depressions hurt midwestern and southern farmers and so they were prepared to turn against urban economic interests.

The Democratic Party adopted a platform responding to both the economic and cultural grievances of farmers after William Bryan captured the nomination.

Although most voters approved of some of Reagan's stands against big government and high taxes, poll data shows that voters still support federal spending on most domestic programs, such as health, education, the environment, and social security.

The elder Bush won the 1988 election because the economy was good in most parts of the country and his opponent, Dukakis, seemed too liberal on many social issues.

Farmers are highly sensitive to farm prices and are quick to change parties.

Only blacks, business people, and Jews give two-thirds or more of their votes to one party or the other; other groups display tendencies, but none that cannot be changed.

Blacks make up a small portion of the electorate and have accounted for less than 1% of the total Democratic vote in recent years.

When representatives of various segments of society make demands on party leaders, they usually stress their Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning.

When these dramatic hearings were televised to millions of people, Kefauver became a household name and emerged as a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for president.

He was a strong vote getter in the primaries but lost to Adlai Stevenson at the convention.

Developing a recognized name and a national constituency through the media was important to many candidates.

The shorter spots have a lot of information that is seen, remembered, and evaluated by a public that is capable of distinguishing between fact and humbug.

The newspaper endorsements might seem worthless since the Democrats won eight of the twelve presidential elections.

A careful study of the 1964 campaign found that a newspaper endorsement may have added a few percentage points to what the Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, would have gotten.

A candidate can address specifi c appeals to particular voters and solicit people for campaign contributions from this.

Politics rookies have to slowly develop their own lists or beg sympathetic incumbents for a peek at theirs.

The citizens are not idiots, they know that the stakes are low and that they can change brands if they want to.

They can tell a Democrat that government is more serious than smelling nice, and that they will be stuck with an elected offi cial for a long time.

The media has more to do with how politics is conducted, how candidates are selected, and how policies are formulated than it does with how people vote in an election.

The media can put issues on the national agenda if they involve matters that people are not familiar with.

Everyone who is unemployed, the victim of crime, or worried about high food prices will identify these matters as issues whether or not the media emphasize them.

"Money is the mother's milk of politics," a powerful California politician once said, and few candidates who have struggled to raise a campaign chest would disagree.

As party organizations have declined, raising money has become even more important to the candidate.

If no machine can supply battalions of precinct workers paid for with patronage jobs, then they must either be hired on a temporary basis or recruited from the sometimes undependable ranks of volunteers.

Increased reliance on television and radio advertising and on direct-mail campaigning has dramatically raised the cost of running for offi ce.

Expenditures on the broadcast media make up half of a presidential candidate's campaign budget.

If you add in the unregulated issue ads run by party supporters, one candidate may still outspend the other.

Gary C. Jacobson used complex statistical techniques to determine if spending more money makes a difference in votes.

It is in the interest of incumbents to find a way to restrict the ability of candidates to raise money by passing campaign-finance laws.

Many people think fat cats give most of the money for political campaigns in order to get something for themselves out of government.

In 1972, President Nixon's reelection campaign raised nearly $20 million mostly from wealthy contributors who preferred to remain anonymous.

Some of these people just liked Nixon, but some of them wanted favors, from special treatment in policy making to an appointment as ambassador to a pleasant country.

Nixon's money was used to pay the men who were hired to break into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel.

A political action committee had to have members and give money to federal candidates.

There were over four thousand political action committees that gave over $260 million to congressional candidates by 2000.

The Commission on Federal Election Reform is chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker.

No national party or committee can accept soft money after the federal election in 2002.

The law limits the amount of money that can be donated by individuals and political action committees.

All contributions over $100 must be dis per candidate per election or $15,000 to a closed, with name, address, and occupation national political party.

Unless they cal party after November 2002, there is no ceiling on how much candidates can spend from their own money.

A candidate must raise $5,000 in order to be eligible, and an individual cannot give more than $2,000 in each of twenty states.

Second, independent expenditures by corporations, labor unions, trade asso ciations, and some nonprofi t groups are sharply restricted.

The organizations can't use their money to run advertisements that refer to a federal candidate during the sixty days preceding a general election and thirty days preceding a primary contest.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that the ban on free speech violated the rights of corporations, labor unions and non-profits.

One way to evaluate the law is to observe that it shifts away from businesses and unions and towards the media.

The law makes it harder for political parties to raise and spend money.

Their ability to run ads, register voters, and mount get-out-the-vote drives has been reduced.

Liberal and conservative groups will spend money on radio and television ads to support their causes.

The Supreme Court upheld almost all parts of the BCRA in December of 2003 and found that prohibiting soft money would reduce corruption.

Considering that the Supreme Court has in the past forbidden congressional restrictions on virtual pornography, tobacco advertising, and sexually explicit cable programming, it is remarkable that it looked with favor on restrictions on political advertising.

The BCRA and related restrictions on political advertising have been undermined by several decisions by the Supreme Court.

If it is not their pri(4) of the tax code, most can engage in organizations formed under sections 501(c)(3) and 501(c) political advocacy.

The amendment raised contribution limits for candidates facing opponents who were self-funding their campaigns.

The ban on corporate and union spending on advertisements for and against political candidates was struck down by the Court in 2010.

A list of tens of thousands of donors who give less than $100 a person can be built using the internet.

Big changes are produced by American politics despite the weakness of parties and interest groups.

After the nation ended slavery in 1860, the New Deal produced Social Security, and after 1964, we acquired Medicare, federal aid to education, and new civil rights and environmental laws.

It is hard to argue that the pace of change is always slow and that elections never make a difference.

Between periods of rapid change, public opinion and the political parties enter a phase of consolidation and continuity.

Party leaders adjust to the new popular consensus that may or may not evolve around the merits of the changes during this phase.

A national primary would favor candidates with high name recognition and funding in other advanced industrialized democracies.

The technique of learning how voters respond to different messages was developed in the 1980s by campaign managers.

People who run successful campaigns in this way may not be able to govern effectively once they are elected.

We have seen a decline in voter participation in elections as the franchise has been extended to include all people eighteen years of age and over.

As a result of the decay of parties, the rise of the direct primary and the electronic media, and the institution of campaign finance laws, political campaigns have become personalized with little or no connection to formal party organizations.

Candidates face the problem of creating a temporary organization that can raise money from large numbers of small donors, mobilize enthusiastic supporters, and win a primary nomination in a way that will not harm their ability to appeal to a more diverse constituency in the general election.

Many people who are older than eighteen can't vote because they are not citizens, prisoners, or released felons.

The easiest way to ensure victory is for the party in power to have a strong economy.

The 2002 BCRA called into question our commitment to a free press and weakened political parties.

An analysis of how polling is done, what Americans think about political issues, and how elections affect policies.

Close attention is paid to the role of money when people are elected to Congress.

In this country, the lawmaking body has great powers that it can use independently of the executive branch.

The Framers decided to place legislative powers in the hands of a congress rather than a parliament for practical reasons.

A congress is usually made up of people who think of themselves as independent representatives of their districts or states and who, while willing to support their party on many matters, expect to vote as their interests require.

The government consists of the prime minister and various cabinet offi cers selected from the party that won the most seats in the last election, and members of the parliament can only make one important decision.

The head of the executive branch of government is chosen by voters in the United States.

Congress is constitutionally independent of the president and members are free to express their views, vote as they please, and to become involved in the minute details of creating laws, establishing budgets, and supervising agencies.

Members of a parliament receive poor pay, few perquisites, little or no space, and virtually no staff, because they have little independent power.

The Framers expected Congress to be the dominant institution in the national government despite the checks and balances designed to prevent it.

For at least a century and a half, it was, except for a few brief periods when activist presidents were able to challenge congressional supremacy.

The House has always believed that the power of individual members should be protected at the expense of opportunities for leadership.

The members revolted and weakened central party control, allowing strong committee chairmen to take over.

Gingrich resigned as Speaker and as a Representative when the Republicans lost seats in the 1998 election.

The Clinton budget plan was voted against by every single Republican in the House and Senate.

The practical effect of the Seventeenth Amendment was small because it revulsion against the appearance that the Senate had become a "millionaires' club".

The size of the House is determined by law by apportioning it among the states according to their population.

Two senators from a given state serve staggered terms so that they don't stand for reelection in the same year.

Table 9.1 shows the growth in the number of blacks, Hispanics, and women in Congress.

The British stitution would allow for as many as 10,000 members of the U.S. House if the population was 300 million bers.

In the past, some of the most powerful senators pressed for spending programs aimed at helping the poor.

Seniority, partisanship, ideol ogy, and constituency preferences are more important than age, sex, and race in explaining how members of Congress vote.

People began to complain about Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning as the public noticed that the proportion of fi rst-termers in the House had fallen.

The Supreme Court struck down term limits on members of Congress from Arkansas.

In ordinary times, no one should expect dramatic changes in the composition of Congress because of the tendency of voters to return incumbents to office.

The Democrats dominated Congress for half a century because of the advantages of incumbency that began to take effect after they were in control.

You don't need to win a lot of votes to get elected to the House or Senate in most states.

Most representatives and senators get a majority of the votes cast because most races involve no more than two candidates.

If you want to win the general election, you must have "Democrat" or "Republican" written in your name on the ballot.

Unlike the British Parliament, the political parties are the only important kind of organization.

The doctrine of "privileged * must be twenty-fi ve years of age (when speech has been interpreted by the Supreme seated, not when elected).

Members of Congress can be sued or prosecuted if they are not a citizen of the United States for seven years.

When Senator William Proxmire issued for nine years, he must have been a citizen of the United States.

Since the election was improper, the House has had 435 members and began with 65 mem person from taking a seat.

In the Senate, members of Congress have certain privileges, the most important of which is Equal sufficing for states.

Being so large, the House must restrict debate and schedule its business with great care; thus leaders who manage scheduling and determine how the rules will be applied usually have a lot.

He or she appoints the members of the special and select committees when bills are brought up for a vote.

The majority-party members of the Rules Committee play an important role in the consideration of bills.

The Speaker controls patronage jobs in the Capitol building and the assignment of extra offi ce space.

The scheduling of legislation is discussed in a Steering and Policy Committee chaired by the Speaker.

The long-term advantage of Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning can be achieved by supporting the party position.

The mood of the House is often testy and strident because it embodies strong ideological preferences.

The delegations from certain large states who meet on matters of common interest are included in the other caucuses.

It tries to negotiate with other blocs so that votes can be traded in a way that is mutually beneficial.

On occasion, it presses to put a member on a regular congressional committee that has no blacks.

Efforts have been made to cut the number of committees in order to give each a broader jurisdiction.

Speaker Newt Gingrich picked members who he felt would do a better job when Republicans took control of the House in 1995.

Chairmen were not allowed to cast an absent committee member's vote by proxy.

The House Republican rules gave back some power to chairmen, but also reduced it in other ways, such as imposing term limits and banning proxy voting.

The District of Columbia, Post Offi ce and Civil Judiciary Service, and Merchant Marine and Fisheries were abolished by the House Republican majority in 1995.

The main function of a legislator's staff is to help members of Congress get reelected.

Over the last two decades, a growing number of congressional staffs have worked in the state or district of the legislator rather than in Washington.

With each senator serving on an average of more than two committees and seven subcommittees, it is virtually impossible for members of Congress to become familiar with the details of all the proposals that come before them or to write all the bills that they feel ought to be introduced.

Depending on who hired them, others see themselves as partisan advocates, interested in promoting Democratic or Republican causes.

Lobbyists and reporters spend a lot of time cultivating congressional staffers.

Congress has been given specialized knowledge equivalent to what the president has by virtue of his position as chief of the executive branch.

The Ways and Means Committee is powerful because of the House's special position on revenue legislation.

Many of the bills drafted in the executive branch are assigned to a subcommittee for a hearing where witnesses appear, evidence is taken, and questions are asked.

These hearings are used to inform members of Congress, to allow interest groups to speak out, and to build public support for a measure favored by the majority on the committee.

The process of considering bills dealing with complex matters is fragmented by committee hearings.

It is diffi cult to take a comprehensive view of matters cutting across committee boundaries because both power and information are dispersed in Congress.

After a year and a half, President Carter's energy proposals were considered by the various committees that had jurisdiction.

The slow energy package or the budget cut may be the wave of the future.

A member can vote "Yea," "Nay," or "Present" if he or she puts a plastic card in a box fastened to the chairs.

In the inevitable give-and-take, even the things already approved by the House and Senate may be changed.

Because Congress has gone to great lengths to protect the independence and power of the individual member, it is not clear what factors will lead a representative or senator.

Political scientists have studied, tested, and argued about voting in Congress for decades, but never has a consensus emerged.

When a legislator's vote on an issue is likely to attract the attention of voters, the representational view has some merit.

There was no correlation between congressional votes and hometown opinion on foreign policy measures.

The problem with the representational explanation is that public opinion is not very clear on most measures that Congress must vote on.

Members of Congress respond to cues from their colleagues when voting on matters that are not important to them.

The party a member of Congress belongs to explains more of his or her voting record than any other factor.

For the scores of votes that do not involve the big questions, a representative or senator is more likely to be reprimanded by the members of his or her party on the sponsoring committee.

If you are a democrat from Michigan, you will be summoned to the House to vote on a bill.

The bill was handled by several Democrats on the House Arms Services Committee.

Many tend to be liberal or conservative on domestic and foreign policy issues.

Many states, such as California, Delaware, and New York, have been represented by senators with different views.

The same pattern of Democrats and Republicans at loggerheads can be seen in votes on less emotional matters.

Abuse of his authority and congressional Congress discipline its members in two basic ways.

According to some scholars, in the last thirty years or so, voters have become more partisan, meaning that they see important differences between the two parties, they identify themselves as either conservatives or liberals, and they favor parties that share their ideological preferences.

The chairmen's views on how bills are written will be important because of their dedication to Democratic or Republican causes.

The system of checks and balances was designed to minimize the chance that a corrupt person could impose his or her will on the other parts of the government.

It is possible that the separation of powers made corruption more likely than it would be in a centralized nation.

When power is allocated among many hands, there are many opportunities to exercise, and many offi cials have something to sell at a price many favor seekers can afford.

Citizens are better educated and have higher standards of conduct, party bosses have lost power, and the mass media have a strong incentive to expose corruption.

During the 96th Congress, six representatives and one senator were indicted and eventually convicted for accepting large bribes from undercover FBI agents posing as Arabs for political favors.

In 2005, the FBI videotaped Congressman William Jefferson, a Democrat from Louisiana, apparently receiving cash bribes from an FBI informant; the following year, the Bureau raided Jefferson's home and found a large amount of cash in his freezer.

He was sentenced to thirteen years in prison after being indicted by a federal grand jury.

Jack Abramoff, a Republican lobbyist, pled guilty in 2006 to charges of fraud.

It is difficult to maintain one's innocence when one is shown on videotape taking envelopes with money.

It is hard to judge cases in which members of Congress take advantage of their position in ways that are not clearly illegal.

The House and Senate have tightened their ethics rules to the point that members can't accept anything from anyone other than regulated campaign contributions.

Representative or senator can't accept gifts worth more than $50 from anyone except a relative or close friend, and can't accept gifts worth more than $250 from personal friends.

In 1989 the House Committee on Standards of Offi cial Conduct charged former Speaker Jim Wright with violating the ethics code by accepting funds from people interested in legislation.

The goal of the Framers was to create a powerful Congress that would be closely watched by the voters, and that would offer opportunities for competing interests and opinions to check.

The president came to dominate the making of foreign policy, sent troops into combat without congressional approval, initiated most proposals for new domestic policies, refused to spend money Congress had appropriated, and sometimes denied to Congress in the name of executive privilege, information and documents it sought.

Recent presidents have complained of their inability to get Congress to act on, much less to approve, many of their key proposals and have resented what they regard as congressional interference in the management of executivebranch agencies and the conduct of foreign affairs.

The increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam, which Congress supported with growing reluctance and despair, and the Watergate scandals, which revealed a White House interference in the electoral process, are certain events.

Not all of these steps withstood the tests of time or Supreme Court review, but together they symbolized the resurgence of congressional authority and helped set the stage for sharper confl icts between Congress and the presidency.

Even with the presidency and Congress in different partisan hands, legislation is adopted because both parties know that the voters want it.

Congress passed a law in 1976 that prevented President Ford from giving aid to a pro-Western group.

Congress allowed that law to lapse a decade later, and President Reagan moved quickly to supply aid, even though the civil war was still going on.

One of the reasons Congress is willing to follow the lead of a president it disagrees with is that members of Congress are aware that no large legislative body can exercise leadership except in a few unusual cases.

Congress made it their order of business offi ce of compliance and an employee grievance to change this.

Congress cannot ignore major presidential initiatives if the president is determined and persistent.

The next chapter will focus on how the president manages his resources to deal with an independent Congress.

When senators and representatives must get themselves nominated by running in primaries and then get themselves elected without much help from the parties, they are going to spend a lot of time providing services.

They did this when they deregulated the airlines in 1978, reformed the tax code in 1986, refused to support congressional term limits or a balanced budget amendment in 1995, voted to impeach President Clinton in 1998, and considered President Obama's health care plan in 2010.

The conference committee convened to reconcile any differences may number more than a hundred people if it passes the House and Senate.

Being individualists, members will look for issues that they can claim as their own and bills that they can introduce for which they can take credit.

In the midst of the deep recession of 2009, when most voters were worried about unemployment and business failures and when you would think Congress would single-mindedly be pursuingStimulus programs, Congress enacted a bill but then went on to consider new programs, such as a bold health care policy.

Many members of Congress believed that doing this was worth the electoral losses they were likely to suffer in the 2010 elections.

A powerful citiz of the House may be a way of avoiding term ens'.

Interest groups do a better job of representing manage, and it would take even longer to public opinion than a House with more pass legislation.

The majority of representatives are secure in their seats because they serve local constituency interests and develop a personal following.

In Congress, votes are less likely to follow strict party lines than in most European parliaments.

The procedure of the House is tightly structured to allow for orderly debate and action.

Though most of their time is spent on serving the interests of members of Congress, the multiple committee assignments and heavy workload of senators and representatives mean that staffers often acquire substantial inflexibility.

When Republicans took control of the House in 1995, they set about restoring some of the lost power of the Speaker and party leaders in order to create greater unity among their members and facilitate the passage of their conservative agenda.

The Speaker and committee chairmen were given terms in power, which was different from past eras of strong party leaders.

Argues that a member of Congress's desire to win reelection affects their legislative behavior.

Presidents Kennedy and Johnson sent American troops to Vietnam, Reagan sent them to Lebanon, Bush sent them to the Persian Gulf, and Clinton sent them to Haiti without war being declared by Congress.

Most of the federal judges now on the bench were selected by Presidents Carter and Reagan and their political philosophy was imposed on the courts.

A few doors down the hall, Professor Smith speaks to her class, "The presi dent, compared to the prime ministers of other democratic nations, is one of the AP Photo/J."

The Senate wouldn't approve an arms limitation treaty signed by President Carter.

President Reagan's budget was rejected by Congress before the ink was dry, and he was not allowed to test antisatellite weapons.

The American presidency has elements of both strength and weakness built into it by its constitutional origins.

Of the roughly dozen countries in which there is some degree of party competition, only sixteen have a directly elected president, and thirteen of these are nations of North and South America.

The chief executive should be the prime minister, chosen by and responsible to the parliament.

Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush had to deal with an opposition party that controlled both houses of Congress.

An American presiden tial candidate is nominated through primaries and conventions, whereas potential prime ministers are generally chosen by a caucus of veteran political leaders with an eye to who can best hold the party together in parliament.

Potential prime ministers have always served in parliament, despite the fact that presidential candidates have no experience in Congress.

The president of the United States selects his cabinet offi cers and advisers not to control Congress but to reward personal followers, recognize important constituencies, and mobilize nongovernmental expertise, and he never has to answer hostile questions before Congress.

The president's powers are set in the Constitution in the form of a commission offi cers of the armed forces.

Wilson did not pay enough attention to the potential for presidential power found in the more ambiguous clauses of the Constitution as well as in the political realities of American life.

The secret codes and orders that allow the president to authorize the launching of American nuclear weapons are in the briefcase.

Since the 1930s, Congress has passed laws giving the executive branch grants of authority to achieve some general goals, leaving it up to the president and his deputy to implement the regulations and programs that will actually be put into effect.

The American people look to the president in times of crisis, but increasingly as an everyday matter, and hold him responsible for a large and growing portion of our national affairs.

The problem of defi ning the powers of the chief executive inspired a lot of debate and concern among the Framers of the Constitution.

Fearing anarchy and monarchy in equal measure, the delegates considered a number of proposals for an executive authority before deciding on a single president.

The electoral college and the provision for the House of Representatives to settle inconclusive elections were designed to minimize the possibility of future presidents trying to hold on to power through bribes, intrigue, or force.

The real sources of the president's power were his role in foreign affairs, his ability to shape and lead public opinion, and his position at the head of the executive branch.

Although we take this for granted, in a lot of the world today peaceful transfers of power are rare.

The District of Kerry worked hard in California, New York, and Columbia to get three senators and representatives in 2004.

To win, a candidate must receive hard in Florida, Illinois, and Ohio, but not so much as at least half, or 270.

The "winner-take-all" system in effect in forty makes it possible for a candidate to win the electoral college vote.

If we relied on one of the two major parties to win the popular vote, there would have to be a runoff election between the two leading return for its support.

When they thought a proposed law was unconstitutional, presidents rarely cast vetoes.

Changes began to occur in American politics at a time when Andrew Jackson was president.

The nature of presidential leadership and the relationship between the president and Congress were altered by these changes.

For almost a century after Jackson's second term, Congress and the Senate quickly reasserted themselves, and the presidency became a part of the national government.

In response to the Civil War, he made unprecedented use of the vague gift of powers found in the Constitution, especially those he felt were implied or inherent in the phrase Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning.

Lincoln made it clear that a national emergency could equip the president with great powers, and Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson showed that a popular and strong- willed president could expand his powers even without an emergency.

A lot of information, but at the price of confusion, is what circles and clusters provide to presidents who want to get personally involved in the details of policy.

Pyramids are favored by presidents who like order and clear lines of authority.

Henry Kissinger, Nixon's assistant for national security affairs, will be brought in after the campaign.

The amount of jockeying among the top staff for access to the president may seem perverse to an outsider.

The OMB, the Council of Economic Advisers, the Council on Environmental Quality, and the Offi ce of Science and Technology are some of the agencies that make up the executive offi ce of the president.

The agencies that perform staff services for the president are not located in the White House.

Unlike White House staff positions, the Senate must confi rm most of these organizations.

The president submits a national budget to Congress, but it also studies the operations of the executive branch, develops reorganization plans, and reviews the cabinet department's budgetary proposals.

The heads of the federal departments used to meet regularly to discuss matters with the president, and some people would like to see this kind of cabinet decision making reestablished.

Presidents from George Washington have found that it does not work as a presidential committee because it is not mentioned in the Constitution.

Eisenhower was the only modern president who was able to get more power over the government because he was able to make the cabinet a deliberative body.

A resident of the United States for at least fourteen years is eligible for a pension on retirement.

The cabinet's weakness is due to the fact that its members are heads of vast organizations that they seek to defend, explain, and enlarge, often in competition with one another.

The president can't get effective collective advice from the cabinet offi cers.

It's best known for issuing security alert with an associated color based on whether terrorist threats to the country are low, guarded, blue, or high.

The threat advisories are meant to tell other agencies what security measures should be put in place.

It is concerned with protecting airlines and ports, sharing intelligence, developing antiterrorist technologies, and controlling the borders.

Many of the agencies and commissions that the president appoints are not considered part of the cabinet and often have a Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning.

The Environmental Protection Agency is headed by people who can be removed by the president at any time.

Because so many departments employ permanent civil-service personnel, a president can make relatively few appointments, and he rarely knows more than a few of the people he does.

If most cabinet offi cers agree with him on major policy questions, he is fortunate.

The cabinet used to include people with strong political followings of their own, such as former senators and governors.

Presidents have tended to place their cabinet members known for their expertise or their administrative experience rather than for their political following.

Because political considerations must be taken into account in making cabi net and agency appointments, and because any head of a large organization will tend to adopt the perspective of that organization, an inevitable tension develops between the White House staff and the department heads.

Most members of Congress are safe in their seats, and the president can't usually give them electoral rewards.

Not even Franklin Roosevelt could get rid of members of Congress who opposed his program.

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research gave permission to reproduce it.

Careful studies of voter attitudes and how presidential and congressional candidates fare in the same districts show that their effect is small today.

Congressional elections have tended to be insulated from presidential ones due to weakened party loyalty and increased ability of members of Congress to build relationships with their voters.

When voters support members of Congress from the same party as an incoming president, they probably do so out of a desire for a general change and as an adverse judgement about the outgoing party's performance as a whole, and not because they want to support the new president with legislators favorable to him Because a president's popularity tends to be highest right after an election, political commentators like to speak of a "honeymoon," in which the president's love affair with the people and possibly with Congress can be solidified.

After taking office in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed a honeymoon in which he obtained from Congress a vast array of new laws that created new agencies and authorized new policies.

The Great Depression had millions out of work, banks closed, farmers impoverished, and the stock market ruined.

It would have been political suicide for Congress to block or delay the measures that appeared to be designed to help the nation out of the crisis.

In his year in office, Reagan persuaded Congress toEnact major cuts in taxes and spending on domestic programs.

The Republicans gained seats in the House and Senate in 2002 due to President Bush's popularity and the public's worries about terrorism.

The way the White House is organized and run affects the personality of the president.

He tended to shield himself behind an elaborate staff system and disliked personal confrontations.

Like Ford, he began with a circular structure and asked detailed questions.

He gave wide latitude to subordinates and to cabinet offi cers, within the framework of an emphasis on lower taxes, less domestic spending, and a tough line with the Soviet Union.

In the Iran-Contra crisis, some of his subordinates let him down by doing a poor job of thinking through the secret exchange of arms for American hostages in the Middle East and by concealing from him the diversion of the profi ts from the arms sale to aid the civil war being Reagan's management style was found to be too remote by a presidential commission.

He was a member of Congress, ambassador to China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and vice president of the United States.

He used his contacts and experiences to mobilize a coalition of nations to participate in the military operation that ousted Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

He was unable to convince Americans that he had a plan to get the nation moving again despite his skill at one-on-one foreign diplomacy.

Clinton went back to being a centrist after the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994.

He won reelection easily in 1996, but then his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky came to light.

He began the effort to install democratic governments in both Iraq and Afghanistan after ousting the Taliban.

He was the fi rst African American to win a major party's presidential nomination and only the third person elected to the presidency while a sitting U.S.

According to the doctrine of the separation of powers, one branch of government does not have the right to inquire into the internal operations of another, and that the president should be able to get candid information from subordinates.

Congress was never happy with the claim of presidential confi dentiality for almost two hundred years.

The question was if President Nixon could invoke executive privilege to deny a special prosecutor access to tape recordings of presidential conversations.

There is no "absolute unqualifi ed Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances" according to the Court.

The function of the federal courts to decide criminal cases would be blocked.

Soon you must make the State of the Union address and send an enormous budget to Congress, as foreign governments and the stock market hang on your every word.

Like President Reagan, he can concentrate on a few major initiatives and leave everything else to subordinates.

He must judge public and congressional reactions to the program by leaking part of it to the press.

All modern presidents have had to respond to major domestic or foreign crises when they least expect them.

The president has no control over the vast majority of federal expenditures, which must be spent whether he likes it or not.

Many federal programs have strong congressional or public support that must be left intact.

The fact that most federal employees can count on being secure in their jobs, regardless of a president's views on the size of the bureaucracy, is a testament to this.

If he wants to get the most return on his limited stock of prestige, he must invest it in companies that promise substantial gains in public and political support.

Beneath the rhetoric of a "New Frontier," a "Great Society," or a "New Covenant" he must identify a few proposals on which he wishes to bet his resources, remembering to keep a substantial stock in reserve to handle the inevitable crises.

In recent decades, the state of the economy and foreign affairs have required every president to devote a significant amount of time and resources to them.

The latter measure is misleading because it ignores bills the president favors that do not come up for a vote and because it counts those that he may reluctantly support after originally proposing them.

The presidents who served two or more terms fell into certain periods, such as the founding, Monroe, and even the war in the early 20th century.

In the Clinton and Bush administrations, Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney were involved in directing the government.

Wilson was an invalid for the rest of his term after collapsing from a stroke and being a virtual recluse for seven months.

The case against Johnson was political, and the Republicans wanted to punish the South after the Civil War, and they found a legal excuse to justify impeachment.

Clinton was charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and abuse of power by the House Judiciary Committee, which relied on the report of independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

The majority of the Senate voted to convict Clinton, but they fell short of the two-thirds needed.

Despite bitter and sometimes violent partisan and sectional warfare, presidential succession has always occurred peacefully, without a military coup or a political plot.

In the past as well as in the present time of dictators and juntas, peaceful succession has been a rare phenomenon among the nations of the world.

In 1787, many critics of the Constitution believed that peaceful succession would not happen in the United States and that the president would choose his successor.

Even when the same political party controls both offi ces, the president and Congress are rivals.

At the beginning of this chapter, most of the examples of the exercise of great presidential power came from foreign affairs.

The president tends to be stronger in foreign policy because he is commander in chief of the armed forces and because Congress recognizes that it cannot negotiate with other nations.

The president has become more involved in managing our foreign relations as America became a permanent world power.

The power and stature of the secretary of state waned during the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.

Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon brought in a national security adviser to the White House to make sure they had control over foreign policy.

When Nixon was about to reopen diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, he gave the job to his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, who did not tell the secretary of state.

In order to make certain that no new White House staffer would challenge his power, Kissinger replaced Rogers as secretary of state while still retaining his White House job as national security adviser.

It is located in an area of the capital known as "Foggy Bottom" and is staffed with career foreign-service offi cers.

The DOD is located in the Pentagon building across the river from downtown Washington and has a small state department in its organization.

The CIA is based in Langley, Virginia, and has intel operatives serving in scores of countries.

The director of the CIA is responsible for keeping the president informed on the actions of foreign powers.

The CIA often carries out operations abroad that are referred to as "covert", such as providing aid to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and against the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

The US Army patrols the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to disrupt Taliban safe havens.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence are regular advisers to the NSC.

The staff people in the foreign policy system decide what the president will read and write about.

Because the American people look to the president for leadership in foreign affairs, they may think he is more powerful than he really is.

Congress plays an important role in setting the limits of presidential action because he is checked by disagreements among his principal advisers.

Unless Congress is prevented from meeting as a result of an armed attack, the president must withdraw the troops.

The president must comply if Congress passes a concurrent resolution that directs the removal of U.S. troops.

President Reagan sent marines into Lebanon and the army into Grenada, but did not report it to Congress, as required by the War Powers Act.

Almost every use of force by an American president has acquired popular support in the short run, even when the effort fails.

The law requires the president to keep each committee fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities.

When the president takes a bold foreign-policy step, the American people tend to cheer.

Even though the rescue mission was unsuccessful, President Carter's standing in the public eye went up.

George H. W. Bush's popularity soared when he sent troops to oust the Iraqi army from Kuwait.

There was a lot of public support for President George W. Bush when he sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Barack Obama promised during the election that he would close the prison camp at Gitmo, change the law that gives federal agencies new authority to investigate terrorists, and start bringing American troops home.

Foreign and military policies have a compelling quality that makes quick changes diffi cult.

Voters will take the president's word for it when he describes U.S. interests abroad.

Voters with knowledge of unemployment, farm prices, and foreign competition for jobs will hold the president accountable for the condition of the economy.

The director of the OMB tells the president how much the government is spending and how much it is taking in from taxes.

Agencies, interest groups, and congressional subcommittees defend every item in this part of the budget.

The secretary of the treasury gives advice that usually reflects the concerns of bankers here and abroad who worry about interest rates and the value of the dollar relative to other currencies.

The secretary of the treasury has some important powers, such as the ability to buy and sell foreign currency, that are different from those of the director of OMB or the chairman of the CEA.

The Federal Reserve Board is the most important agency that affects economic policy, but it is not under the control of the president.

"The Fed" is made up of seven people who are appointed by the president and serve fourteen-year terms in the Senate.

When the Fed buys securities, it writes a check to the Treasury Department and uses the money to pay bills.

The amount of money that member banks of the Federal Reserve System must keep on hand is regulated by the Fed.

The government sells Treasury bonds that pay interest to cover its debt.

There was a debate in Congress over whether tax rates should be reduced or kept at their current levels after President George W. Bush took office.

Bush argued that because the budget had a surplus, giving unneeded money back to the people was the right thing to do, while Democrats argued that the extra money would be needed in the years ahead to prevent a new defi cit from occurring.

President Obama promised to end them for people making over $250,000 a year, but no law had been passed as of mid-2010.

The deep recession that began at the end of President Bush's term and continued into President Obama's term put the entire federal system for making economic policy to the test.

TheTARP was created in October of 2008 to invest government money in troubled fi nancial institutions and two auto makers.

The Federal Reserve Board was able to add money to the economy by cutting interest rates.

Even though a president is chosen by the people, he or she has less power than a British prime minister who depends on the support of his or her party in Parliament.

The separation of powers in the American system means that a president must deal with a political competitor in setting policy and managing the executive branch.

The War Powers Act was passed by Congress and brought the CIA under congressional scrutiny.

The president rarely has the knowledge, advice, or power to shape the economy to his liking.

Congress was expected to be a branch of government because of its ability to approve expenditures, confi rm high appointments, and pass laws over the president's veto.

How popular the president is with the public and the size of his party's majority in Congress is equally important.

Presidential character doesn't make a difference when it comes to Congress and the White House.

The kind of weak coalition politics one sees in Italy and Israel would be possible with direct elections.

A man who has been both a scholar and an Insider shows how presidents try to acquire and hold political power in the competitive world of Washington.