Sprinting Though Presidential History: From Lincoln to the 20th Century

PRESENTATION ON THE DC PROGRAM

QUESTIONS ON THE ASSIGNMENT?

FOR YOUR WRITEUP, DISCUSS ONE THING THAT SURPRISED YOU ABOUT ONE PRESIDENT WHO SERVED BETWEEN THE FOUNDING AND 1920

FOR MONDAY, READ 

• William Leuchtenberg, In the Shadow of FDR, 4th ed. (Cornell University Press, 2009), excerpts.  TWO CHAPTERS ON CANVAS.
• Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address
  
• Gregory Frame, "The Myth of John F. Kennedy in Film and Television," Film & History (Winter 2016).  ON CANVAS.

.The Very Long Shadow of the Civil War

Between 1876 and 1892, no president won a majority of the popular vote:

1876 Hayes.......... 48.0*
1880 Garfield.......48.3
1884 Cleveland.....48.5
1888 Harrison.......47.8*
1892 Cleveland......46.1

McKinley

• Imperialism and the Spanish-American War: Puerto Rico, Guam, Philippines -- and a few years later, Gitmo
• Hawaii
• Pioneered modern presidential communication and campaign finance, 
• Assassination led to permanent Secret Service protection.

TR, Wilson, and Taft:  Three Theories  of the Presidency

Roosevelt: "My view was that every executive officer, and above all every executive officer in high position, was a steward of the people bound actively and affirmatively to do all he could for the people, and not to content himself with the negative merit of keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin."

• "Bully Pulpit" and the rhetorical presidency
• Executive orders to create 150 national forests, federal bird reservations, and game preserves, protecting roughly 200 million acres
• Trust-Busting 
• Legislative advocacy and the Hepburn Act
• Foreign Policy: the "Big Stick"Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
• Outside the box: involvement in labor disputes and even in football!  Precedent for reaching far beyond fedeal policy.

Taft: Constitution and the presidency: "The true view of the Executive functions is, as I conceive it, that the President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power or justly implied and included within such express grant as proper and necessary to its exercise."

Wilson: "The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit; and if Congress be overborne by him, it will be no fault of the makers of the Constitution, — it will be from no lack of constitutional powers on its part, but only because the President has the nation behind him, and Congress has not. He has no means of compelling Congress except through public opinion."

• Rhetorical presidency and SOTU
• "New Freedom" Agenda
• Economic regulation:  Federal Reserve and FTC
• Racism: WW grew up in Virginia during and after the Civil War
• Segregated the civil service
• Promoted The Birth of Nation, which quoted one of his books:


• WWI and Versailles
• WWI and War Power
• Propaganda: The Committee on Public Information (CPI), or Creel Committee, drummed up support for World War I. with posters, films, and 75,000 "Four-Minute Men" speakers, to "sell" the war to Americans.  CPI strategist Edward Bernays wrote: “Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.”
• Repression: arrest and imprisonment of opponents. About  2,000 prosecutions under the Sedition Act, and 6,000 arrests in the 1919-1920 Palmer Raids -- the first "Red Scare."  A rising star was young J. Edgar Hoover