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Chapter 13: The Presidency
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Practice Quiz
Critical Thinking and Learning Exercises
- 1. Go to the following website: http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/CFIDE/roper/presidential/webroot/presidential_rating.cfm. What are some of the factors that may have attributed to the president's high approval ratings and his high disapproval ratings over time?
- Go to the following website, http://m.gpo.gov/budget/#main, and examine the president's budget. Based on the various government agencies, prioritize funding by agency. Compare your results with the president's results. Once you have completed this assignment, using only your top 10 agencies, break out into groups of five and produce one budget based on the group's selection of funding for the top 10 government agencies.
- Using the following link, http://www.gazette.net/article/20121005/OPINION/710059740/1014/allan-j-lichtman-final-prediction-the-keys-to-white-house&template=gazette, to discuss the various predictors employed by Professor Allan Lichtman in his successful prediction of the winner of the presidency. What other variables might be included to predict the winner?
- Using the Lichtman model, predict the political party that will win the next election (2016). If the Lichtman model is insufficient, please provide a justification for your choice. Using the following link, http://www.270towin.com/, predict which party will win each state. Where your prediction differs from the current map, provide a justification for your choices.
Links to further Resources
The White House
The official website for the president and executive branch provides a variety of useful information and links on the history, function, and current activities of the president and executive branch institutions.
The American Presidency Project
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/index.php
The American Presidency Project of the University of California, Santa Barbara is an impressive internet archive containing over 100,000 documents relating to the study of the presidency.
The American Experience: The Presidents
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/collections/presidents/
This PBS documentary series profiles 15 of our presidents, offering biographical information as well as analyses of their accomplishments in office. All 15 episodes are available for viewing from this website.
The Miller Center for the American President
http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident
The Miller Center at the University of Virginia maintains this valuable storehouse of information on the U.S. presidency. In addition to biographical sketches of all of our presidents, the site also offers access to the public speeches of all of our presidents.
LBJ and the "Power to Persuade"
Richard Neustadt argued that presidential power is “the power to persuade.” In this phone conversation, President Lyndon Johnson uses nearly every conceivable technique of persuasion to convince Senator Richard Russell, a southern senator whose constituency does not like Earl Warren, to serve with Chief Justice Warren on the Warren Commission. How many different techniques of persuasion can you identify in the conversation?
Choosing a Cabinet: If You Were President . . .
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/11/us/politics/20081111_CABINET_PICKER.html
This interactive tool from 2008 allows you to revisit President Obama’s personnel decision making for his first term. What are the important considerations that you would take into account? How did the president’s actual decision making differ from what the online participants predicted?
Internet Links for the U.S. Presidency
http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/renka/PresidencyLinks.htm
A fairly comprehensive list of websites related to the study of the U.S. presidency.