Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States

"I am nothing, but I may be everything," John Adams, the first vice president, wrote of his office. And for most of American history, the "nothing" part of Adams's formulation accurately captured the importance of the vice presidency, at least as long as the president had a heartbeat. But a job that once was "not worth a bucket of warm spit," according to John Nance Garner, became, in the hands of the most recent vice presidents, critical to the governing of the country on an ongoing basis. It is this dramatic development of the nation's second office that Joel K. Goldstein traces and explains in The White House Vice Presidency. The rise of the vice presidency took a sharp upward trajectory with the vice presidency of Walter Mondale. In Goldstein's work we see how Mondale and Jimmy Carter designed and implemented a new model of the office that allowed the vice president to become a close presidential adviser and representative on missions that mattered. Goldstein takes us through the vice presidents from Mondale to Joe Biden, presenting the arrangements each had with his respective president, showing elements of continuity but also variations in the office, and describing the challenges each faced and the work each did. The book also examines the vice-presidential selection process and campaigns since 1976, and shows how those activities affect and/or are affected by the newly developed White House vice presidency. The book presents a comprehensive account of the vice presidency as the office has developed from Mondale to Biden. But The White House Vice Presidency is more than that; it also shows how a constitutional office can evolve through the repetition of accumulated precedents and demonstrates the critical role of political leadership in institutional development. In doing so, the book offers lessons that go far beyond the nation's second office, important as it now has become.

Does the public alter American foreign policy choices, or does the government change public opinion to supports its policies? In this detailed study, Douglas Foyle demonstrates that the differing influence of public opinion is mediated in large part through each president's beliefs about the value and significance of public opinion.Using archival collections and public sources, Foyle examines the beliefs of all the post-World War II presidents in addition to the foreign policy decisions of Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton. He finds that some presidents are relatively open to public opinion while others hold beliefs that cause them to ignore the public's view. Several orientations toward public opinion are posited: the delegate (Clinton) favors public input and seeks its support; the executor (Carter) believes public input is desirable, but its support is not necessary; the pragmatist (Eisenhower, Bush) does not seek public input in crafting policy, but sees public support as necessary; and finally, the guardian (Reagan) neither seeks public input nor requires public support. The book examines the public's influence through case studies regarding decisions on: the Formosa Straits crisis; intervention at Dien Bien Phu; the Sputnik launch; the New Look defense strategy; the Panama Canal Treaties; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; the Strategic Defense Initiative; the Beirut Marine barracks bombing; German reunification; the Gulf War; intervention in Somalia; and intervention in Bosnia.

The massive inflation and oil crisis of the 1970s damaged Jimmy Carter's presidency. In Jimmy Carter's Economy, Carl Biven traces how the Carter administration developed and implemented economic policy amid multiple crises and explores how a combination of factors beyond the administration's control came to dictate a new paradigm of Democratic Party politics. Jimmy Carter inherited a deeply troubled economy. Inflation had been on the rise since the Johnson years, and the oil crisis Carter faced was the second oil price shock of the decade. In addition, a decline in worker productivity and a rise in competition from Germany and Japan compounded the nation's economic problems. The resulting anti-inflation policy that was forced on Carter included controlling public spending, limiting the expansion of the welfare state, and postponing popular tax cuts. Moreover, according to Biven, Carter argued that the ambitious policies of the Great Society were no longer possible in an age of limits and that the Democratic Party must by economic necessity become more centrist.

Democrat James B. Hunt had a long career in politics, serving as governor of North Carolina from 1977 through 1985 and then again from 1993 through 2001. He not only exemplified the progressive tradition of earlier North Carolina governors, but transformed the tradition to embrace a concern for minorities, women's rights and consumer issues. This biography of James B. Hunt begins with a discussion of the influence of his father, a hard-driving federal official who demanded much from his oldest son, his mother, a college-educated teacher who encouraged him to study and work hard, and his hometown of Rock Ridge, where he developed his strong community ethic but had to deal with the town's support for racial segregation and tobacco. It chronicles his years at North Carolina State College, where he was student president for two terms, his transformation from a campaign volunteer for Terry Sanford to a political insider at both the state and national levels, and his close relationships with Sanford and his key adviser Bert Bennett. The author then discusses how Hunt, still unknown to most of the public, defeated candidates with more campaign money to become lieutenant governor of the state in 1972, and describes his first two successful campaigns for the governorship, and the actions he took and programs he implemented in his first term as governor.

Middle East in Turmoil, Volume 1

Drawing on both unpublished presidential papers and other archival sources, Castile chronicles the efforts of three presidents to uphold Richard Nixon's commitment to policy change, weighing such issues as the impact of Reaganomics and the advent of Indian gaming. He examines the marginalizing of Indian policy in both the executive and legislative branches in the face of larger issues, as well as the recurring tendency of policy to be driven by a single determined individual, such as South Dakota senator James Abourezk.

This book examines how presidents from Nixon to Obama have faced the challenges of global leadership in a dramatically changing world—one with more limited resources and an increasing number of threatening challengers. The immediate post-World War II era was undeniably a period of American power and influence. Even during the Cold War, the United States was the leader of the West, exerting wide-ranging power internationally. But beginning with the Vietnam War, America began experiencing a series of setbacks and challenges to its power. The Post-Heroic Presidency: Leveraged Leadership in an Age of Limits examines how U.S. presidents have attempted to reverse or contend with this new era of limited power in which presidential leadership is hamstrung due to an increasingly globalized and interdependent world—one where power is more diffuse and the system of checks and balances bind a president in an age of hyper-partisanship. The book examines presidents of the 20th and 21st centuries, explaining how the first U.S. president to confront this new age was Richard Nixon, who—along with Henry Kissinger—developed a sophisticated approach to deal with the recalibration of American power. It documents how other recent presidents have either tried to make peace with limited power (Jimmy Carter), reverse the decline (Ronald Reagan), ignore the implications of limits (George W. Bush), or find ways to lead that were less ambitious, more prudent, and less unilateral (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama). In the cases of Clinton and Obama, this shift to using "soft power," persuasion, and multilateralism earned them criticism that they are "weak," thereby undermining their efforts to lead—both at home and abroad.