This is a study of the losers in three major episodes in American political history and shows how their ideas ended up, at least partially, winning, in the long run. The authors consider the campaign of the anti-Federalists against the adoption of the Constitution; the failed presidency of Andrew Johnson; and the defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964, as political losses that later heavily influenced American politics later. Sometimes the losers, because they articulate a vision of American government that resonates with some part of America, later contribute to a new political order. This is not an effort to explain winning or losing in American politics. Rather, it is intended to offer a new understanding of American political development as the product of a kind of dialectic between different political visions that have opposing ideas, particularly about the size and role of the federal government and about whether America is exclusively a liberal regime or one in which illiberal ideas on topics such as race, play an important role.

The United States had never lost a war—that is, until 1975, when it was forced to flee Saigon in humiliation after losing to what Lyndon Johnson called a "raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country." The legacy of this first defeat has haunted every president since, especially on the decision of whether to put "boots on the ground" and commit troops to war. In Haunting Legacy, the father-daughter journalist team of Marvin Kalb and Deborah Kalb presents a compelling, accessible, and hugely important history of presidential decisionmaking on one crucial issue: in light of the Vietnam debacle, under what circumstances should the United States go to war? The sobering lesson of Vietnam is that the United States is not invincible—it can lose a war—and thus it must be more discriminating about the use of American power. Every president has faced the ghosts of Vietnam in his own way, though each has been wary of being sucked into another unpopular war. Ford (during the Mayaguez crisis) and both Bushes (Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan) deployed massive force, as if to say, "Vietnam, be damned." On the other hand, Carter, Clinton, and Reagan (to the surprise of many) acted with extreme caution, mindful of the Vietnam experience. Obama has also wrestled with the Vietnam legacy, using doses of American firepower in Libya while still engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. The authors spent five years interviewing hundreds of officials from every post war administration and conducting extensive research in presidential libraries and archives, and they've produced insight and information never before published. Equal parts taut history, revealing biography, and cautionary tale, Haunting Legacy is must reading for anyone trying to understand the power of the past to influence war-and-peace decisions of the present, and of the future.

With over 10,000 entries, this bibliography is the most comprehensive guide to published writing in the tradition of Leo Strauss, who lived from 1899 to 1973 and was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. John A. Murley provides Strauss's own complete bibliography and identifies the work of hundreds of Strauss's students, and their students' students. Leo Strauss and His Legacy charts the path of influence of a beloved teacher and mentor, a deep and lasting heritage that permeates the classrooms of the twenty-first century. Each new generation of students of political philosophy will find this bibliography an indispensable resource.

Vietnam precipitated a crisis in national self-confidence and a breakdown in political consensus out of which new ideological perspectives emerged. This book offers fresh perspectives on a defining event in 'the American Century', examining its historical and political significance and also its continuing cultural relevance.

Where did the Era of Divided Government come from? What sustains split partisan control of the institutions of American national government year after year? Why can it shift so easily from Democratic or Republican presidencies, coupled with Republican or Democratic Congresses? How can the vast array of issues and personalities that have surfaced in American politics over the last forty years fit so neatly within-indeed, reinforce-the sustaining political pattern of our time? These big questions constitute the puzzle of modern American politics. The old answer—a majority and a minority party, plus dominant and recessive public issues—will not work in the Era of Divided Government. Byron Shafer, a political scientist who is regarded as one of the most comprehensive and original thinkers on American politics, provides a convincing new answer that has three major elements. These elements in combination, not "divided government" as a catch phrase, are the real story of politics in our time. The first element is comprised of two great sets of public preferences that manifest themselves at the ballot box as two majorities. The old cluster of economic and welfare issues has not so much been displaced as simply joined by a second cluster of cultural and national concerns. The second element can be seen in the behavior of political parties and party activists, whose own preferences don't match those of the general public. That public remains reliably left of the active Republican Party on economic and welfare issues and reliably right of the active Democratic Party on cultural and national concerns. The third crucial element is found in an institutional arrangement—the distinctively American matrix of governmental institutions, which converts those first two elements into a framework for policymaking, year in and year out. In the first half of the book, Shafer examines how dominant features of the Reagan, first Bush, Clinton, and second Bush administrations reflect the interplay of these three elements. Recent policy conflicts and institutional combatants, in Shafer's analysis, illuminate this new pattern of American politics. In the second half, he ranges across time and nations to put these modern elements and their composite pattern into a much larger historical and institutional framework. In this light, modern American politics appears not so much as new and different, but as a distinctive recombination of familiar elements of a political style, a political process, and a political conflict that has been running for a much, much longer time.

Explores how amid America's racial, religious, and civic struggles, voucher-supporting policymakers strategically attenuate policy design and communications to circumvent legal challenge.

This volume of over thirty essays is organised around five primary dimensions of Hillary Clinton's influence: policy, activism, campaigns, women's ambition and impact on parents and their children. Combining personal narrative with scholarly expertise in political science, this volume looks at American politics through the career of Hillary Clinton in order to illuminate overarching trends related to elections, gender and public policy. Featuring an extraordinarily varied list of contributors working within the field of political science, and a fresh interdisciplinary approach, this book will appeal to broad range of politically engaged audiences, practitioners and scholars.

The Presidency and the Political System showcases the best of presidential studies and research with top-notch presidency scholars writing specifically for an undergraduate audience. Michael Nelson rigorously edits each contribution to present a set of analytical yet accessible chapters and offers contextual headnotes introducing each essay. Chapters represent the full range of topics, institutions, and issues relevant to understanding the American presidency: covering approaches to studying the presidency, elements of presidential power, presidential selection, presidents and politics, and presidents and government. This Twelfth Edition fully incorporates coverage of the Trump administration.

The first comprehensive examination of Black Americans? attitudes toward the Supreme Court.

"This is a book about Trump's presidency that makes a brief for the subfield of American political development (in the field of political science). Four factors are considered in this book: (1) the American political party system and partisanship; (2) the saliency of race; (3) the role of the state in American politics; and (4) the fate of democracy"--