The American Presidency Seminar

3 units

This seminar examines the intellectual origins, historical development, powers and operations, and current debates surrounding the American President. Throughout the semester, we will pay attention to the distinction between the office's formal constitutional powers and changing norms of presidential leadership and politics, and consider how the latter impact the former. The first two weeks of the course track the historical development of the American presidency from the patrician presidency envisioned by the Framers to the nineteenth-century party man of Jacksonian America, and forward to more modern forms of leadership minted in the twentieth-century and today: agenda-setting, bureaucratic management, and control of public opinion and image. In each of the remaining weeks, we take up a discrete topic of modern presidential power, including foreign affairs, the war power, policy agenda-setting, relations with Congress, bureaucratic management, image leadership and the media, executive privilege, and impeachment. Finally, we assess the health of the American constitutional system in light of the Presidency's evolution. Are we, as some allege, facing a constitutional crisis? If so, can it be attributed to system-deep, historical, or cultural factors? [BCCCR requirement: this course contains 2 hours of BCCCR instruction.]