Domestic and Economic Policy

Executive orders and executive actions:  the president's executive order actually is not an executive order but an executive action.

The president's address on immigration: "Are we a nation that kicks out a striving, hopeful immigrant like Astrid, or are we a nation that finds a way to welcome her in? Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger; we were strangers once too."  The line is Deuteronomy 10:19.

Here is what he said in 2006:

Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

 Stages of the Policy Process

1. Initiation/Streams: Problems, Solutions, Politics
2. Estimation
3. Selection
4. Implementation and immigration
5. Evaluation
6. Termination

The centrality of economic policy in public opinion

(The tax system is more progressive than you may think.)

I'm Just ...an Executive Order

Presidents and Civil Rights

FDR and civil rights and the Fair Employment Practices Commission

Truman desegregates the armed forces



Little Rock documents

Little Rock executive order



JFK on civil rights

CBS retrospective on Mississippi 1964

 LBJ  and Mississippi Burning

Nixon and civil rights:  it's complicated

White House Staff Culture Shock

What happens when Silicon Valley meets D.C.? A very interesting clash of staff cultures.

Mikey Dickerson PO '01 became Administrator of the White House's newly created U.S. Digital Service. And he's brought Silicon Valley's work culture (including the no-suit policy) with him. (Watch the video. DO IT.)

He was part of the group that worked on revamping healthcare.gov. As he says, "there was a sufficient number of programmers, designers, everything you needed was already there, had been hired onto the project somewhere. They just needed to be coordinated and managed better." Mikey's one of the people that coordinated and managed them better. "So," the White House asked Mikey, "why don't we try to do that for all of the agencies in all of the federal government?" And that's where Mikey's U.S. Digital Service comes in.

The new government service, new batch of minds, and new work culture seem to diverge radically from what the White House (and D.C. in general) is used to. And hopefully that's a good thing.

Reading comes to life

House Republicans hired Professor Jonathan Turley "to oversee a lawsuit against President Barack Obama for alleged executive overreach." This comes just as many expect Obama to pursue executive action on immigration which, as WH correspondent to NYT Michael Shear (a CMC alum) reports, would be quite a "turnabout." As Obama himself said, "If we start... that, then essentially I’ll be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally."

The Turley-Schroeder readings showcased the difficulty in determining when executive authority/discretion crosses the line into executive overreach. As Professor Pitney mentioned in class, this might just be a shirts-skins issue. But if Obama really intends to commit such an apparent turnabout, he might just consider consulting Schroeder. 

Air Midterm

Relax. This “air midterm” does not count toward your grade; do not even turn it in. Instead, use it to appraise your own progress in the course. Try out this test, either in your head or on paper. If you flounder, then you should take more care with class sessions and assigned readings.

I. Identifications: Identify the meaning and significance of the following items. On the real final exam, I shall ask you to write a short paragraph on each item that you choose. What is fair game for an identification?

1. Items that we have discussed in class or on the blog;
2. Items that appear in bold or italics in the readings;
3. Items that cover several pages in the readings.

• Hayes-Tilden race (1876)
• Faithless electors
• Martin Van Buren
• Front-loading
• The nuclear freeze
• The Hepburn Act
• Helvidius
• Line Item Veto
• The Roosevelt Corollary
• The Fair Deal
• Benghazi
• Youngstown v. Sawyer
• The “Revolution” of 1800
• The Palmer Raids

II. Short essays:   In a couple of paragraphs each, answer the following.

• Who made the following statement and why? "The bank is professedly established as an agent of the executive branch of the Government, andits constitutionality is maintained on that ground. Neither upon the propriety of present action nor upon the provisions of this act was the Executive consulted. It has had no opportunity to say that it neither needs nor wants an agent clothed with such powers and favored by such exemptions. There is nothing in its legitimate functions which makes it necessary or proper."
• Who made the following statement and why? "I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government -- that nation -- of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb."
• What was the pattern of "discovery, scrutiny, and decline" in the 2012 GOP primaries?

III. General essays (2-3 bluebooks pages each)

• Resolved: President Obama won the 2012 election primarily because of underlying features of American electoral politics, and his campaign made relatively little difference.Do you agree or disagree? Explain, with reference to the Side-Vavreck book, along with other class material.
• Is it possible to devise an objective measure of presidential greatness? Explain.

Bonus Questions

• Estes Kefauver
• Herb Klein
• Alan Keyes
• Nicholas Katzenbach
• Michelle Kahn

Presidents and Judicial Politics

How do presidents try to influence the courts? Once way is through legal arguments. Note the role of the Solicitor General.

Lower court nominations and The Reid Rule

Obama Administration Selection of Lower Court Nominees: Chronology of Usual Steps

If neither Senator in a state is of the President’s party, each usually, by custom, plays a secondary role in recommending district court candidates for the President’s consideration, with the primary  role assumed by other officials from the state who are of the President’s party.)

• White House Counsel’s Office receives nominee recommendations from home state Senators; for each district court vacancy, the office asks Senators to send three recommendations.
• Senators send one or more recommendations to the Counsel’s Office.
• Counsel’s Office does preliminary check of the recommended candidates, then selects one to be thoroughly vetted by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy (OLP).
• OLP does detailed vetting of the candidate, including exhaustive reading of candidate’s past writings, speeches,interviews, etc., and making “about 25 to 50 phone calls.”
• Counsel’s Office and OLP jointly interview the candidate.
• Counsel’s Office and OLP jointly review OLP’s detailed vetting and interview record and decide whether to send candidate’s name for ABA and FBI investigations.
• FBI and ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary conduct separate evaluations of the candidate and then report their findings to the Administration.
• OLP and Counsel’s Office sign off informally on the candidate.
•  President selects the candidate for nomination.

Supreme Court nominations can be crucial.

Who votes with whom.

• See the story behind Justice Fortas.
• See the story behind Justice O'Connor.