MW 2:45-4:00 PM, Classroom Bauer Center 25
Office Hours: MW 11 AM - noon, 4:15-5:15 and by appointment
J.J. Pitney
Office: Center Court D-16 Telephone: 909/607-4224
E-mail:
jpitney@cmc.edu
or profpitney@yahoo.com
General
This course will survey the American presidency to ask these questions:Classes
Class sessions will include lecture and discussion. Finish readings before class because our discussions will involve those readings. We shall also talk about breaking news stories about the presidency, so you must read a good daily news source such as the RealClearPolitics or The Politico.
Grades
The following will make up your course grade:
Three 4-page essays:
20% each
Final exam: 30%
Class participation:
10%
The
papers will develop your research and writing skills.
In grading your papers, I will take account of the quality of your
writing, applying the principles of
Strunk
and White's
Elements of Style. If
you object to this approach, do not take this course, or anything else
that I teach.
The exam will test
your comprehension. Class
participation will hone your ability to think on your feet.
If you often miss class or fail to prepare, your grade will suffer. In addition to the required readings (below), I may also give you handouts
and web links covering current events and basic factual information.
The exam will cover this material.
As a courtesy to your fellow
students, please arrive on time, and refrain from eating in class.
I reserve the right to withhold class handouts from latecomers.
Check due dates for coursework and arrange your schedule accordingly.
Do not plan on seeking extensions.
Plagiarism
will mean referral to the Academic Standards Committee.
Blog
Our class blog is at http://gov102.blogspot.com. I shall post videos, graphs, news stories, and other material there. We shall use some of this material in class, and you may review the rest at your convenience. You will all receive invitations to post to the blog. (Please let me know if you do not get such an invitation.) I encourage you to use the blog in these ways:
To post questions or comments about the readings before we discuss them in class;
To follow up on class discussions with additional comments or questions.
To post relevant news items or videos.
Required Books
Also
see links on my Presidency page.
Schedule (subject to change, with notice)
Sept 7, 9:
The Presidency in the Founding Era
"How about John Adams with his Alien and Sedition Acts choke-hold on the First Amendment? ... Or John Quincy Adams, pulling the original Blagojevich, buying the presidency from Henry Clay? Or that backwoods Bolshevik Andrew Jackson? Or William Henry Harrison, too dumb to come in out of the rain? Not one of these scallywags was born in the United States of America--look it up." -- P.J. O'Rourke
Milkis and Nelson, ch. 1-3.
Nelson, ch. 1 (Constitution), ch. 2 (letters of Cato), ch. 3 (Federalist 69, 70, 71, 72, 73), ch. 4 (Washington inaugural), ch. 5 (Madison on removal), ch. 6 (Pacificus-Helvidius), ch. 7 (Washington Farewell)
Pika, ch. 1.
Sept 14, 16: The 19th Century Presidency
"You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong."
"God must have loved the common people; he made so many of them."
"You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people
all the time, but
you can not fool all the people all the time." --
Fake Lincoln quotations
FIRST
ESSAY ASSIGNED SEPT 14, DUE SEPT 28.
Read Strunk and White's Elements of Style
Sept 21, 23: From the Big Stick to the Military-Industrial Complex
"We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord." -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1912.
Sept 28, 30: The Contemporary Presidency
"We don't want our American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys."-- LBJ, September 25, 1964
Oct 5, 7: Presidential Selection I
"As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief [Clinton] strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and let Penn know it. `How can it possibly be,' Ickes asked, `that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?'" -- Time, 5/8/08
Oct 12, 14: Presidential Selection II
"On November 1, I received two communications, privately tendered, that I attached meaning to. The first originated with a professor of government in California who, it was bruited, had always succeeded in predicting the outcome of presidential-year elections. The news was given in telegraphic idiom, no curlicues, embellishments, appoggiaturas: President: Kerry wins the popular vote 50-49. Kerry wins electoral vote 291-247." -- William F. Buckley, Jr.
SECOND ESSAY ASSIGNED OCTOBER 14, DUE OCTOBER 28.
Oct 21: The Public Presidency
"We once wrote, `This nation will prepare. We will not live in fear. We choose to fight them there, so we don't have to fight them here,' only to read it aloud and realize it sounded less like Winston Churchill than Dr. Seuss." -- Matthew Scully, on writing for George W. Bush
Oct 26, 28: Rhetoric, Character and Performance
"ACTION IS CHARACTER." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Nov 2, 4: President and Congress
"I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it." -- George W. Bush, November 4, 2004.
"Bush traded his political capital for the magic beans of Social Security reform, but the ground was too frozen for the seeds to take hold." -- Jonah Goldberg, August 15, 2007.
THIRD ESSAY ASSIGNED NOVEMBER 4, DUE NOVEMBER 18
Nov 9, 11: Executive Branch
"I'm a myth. There's the Mark of Rove. I read about some of the things I'm supposed to have done, and I have to try not to laugh." -- Karl Rove, on his departure
Nov 16, 18: Judiciary, Civil Rights, and Domestic Policy
"You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid." -- Rahm Emanuel
Nov 23, 25: Economic Policy
"Politicians generally believe what they say. One of the main ways by which politicians learn what they think is through listening to what they say." -- Herbert Stein, Presidential Economics
Nov 30, Dec 2:
"On the brink of war, and in front of the whole world, the United States government asserted that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, had biological weapons and mobile biological weapon production facilities, and had stockpiled and was producing chemical weapons. All of this was based on the assessments of the U.S. Intelligence Community. And not one bit of it could be confirmed when the war was over." -- Report of the President's WMD Commission
Dec 7, 9: The Future of the Presidency
FINAL EXAM: MONDAY, DECEMBER 14 AT 2 PM