The American Presidency

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

The course is organized into seven parts. We begin by looking at the creation and development of the presidency and the leadership dilemma contemporary presidents’ face. The second part of the course discusses theories of presidential power while part three examines the structure and operations of the presidency with a focus on the principal units in the Executive Office of the President (EXOP), especially the White House and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the vice presidency, and the president’s spouse. The fourth part of the course concerns the presidency’s interaction with major institutions of the American Government: the executive branch, Congress and the judiciary. The fifth section of the course concerns presidential policy making in the domestic, economic, and foreign policy and national security spheres. In this section, the course will focus on the processes that have been developed to help the executive meet policy making and implementation expectations and make sound policy judgments. The public dimensions of the office will be the topic for section six. In this part, we will examine the president’s relations with political parties, interest groups, the general public, and the news media. The last part of the course deals with the personalized aspects of the presidency: the person in the office. The subject here turns to the psychological components of presidential leadership: character, style, and world view.