Dear student,
You have successfully enrolled in The Ordinary University. Congratulations! Few have dreamed of this day, but many have achieved it!
As noted yesterday by Chancellor R. Tod Kelly, the first course on your schedule will be “The Presidency: An American Tyranny Two Centuries in the Making?” (or “Thanks a lot, Obama!”), offered through OU’s School of Asocial and Misbehavioral Sciences.
Following is the syllabus. The first lecture will be posted tomorrow, and I will try to post a new one each Monday, my real-life schedule permitting. The readings I use here are the same as I use in my for-real/for-credit Presidency course. When they are available on-line I will link to them. If you’re interested in the actual books, I have linked to a source for (relatively)inexpensive used copies. But I will do my best to explain them well enough that you can profit from this course without buying them.
The Ordinary University—Syllabus for U.S. Presidency
The two main books are:
- Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced, by Matthew Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg. (buy cheap)
- The Presidency and the Political System, Michael Nelson, ed. (buy, but not exactly cheap)
Schedule (subject to change without notice):
A. Historical Background
1. The Presidential Debate of 1787.
– Federalist Papers 69 and 70.
– Anti-Federalists 67, 70 & 74.
2. The 19th Century Presidency (“We Are the Mediocre Presidents”).
– Chapter 2, “Choosing Presidents,” of Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced, by Crenson and Ginsberg.
3. Re-envisioning the Presidency as the Tribune of the People
– “Woodrow Wilson and the Defense of Popular Leadership,” Chapter 9 in The American presidency: Origins and Development, 1776-2007, by Sidney M. Milkis, Michael Nelson. (buy cheap)
– “The Two Constitutional Presidencies,” Jeffrey Tulis, in The Presidency and the Political System
4. Institutional Change and the Modern Presidency–From Conventions to Primaries.
— “The Presidency and the Nominating Process,” by Lara Brown, in The Presidency and the Political System (ed. Nelson).
— Portions of chapters 3, 4 and 5 and 7 in Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced.
5. Institutional Change and the Modern Presidency–Growth in Executive Powers.
– Crenson & Ginsberg pp. 15-28 of chapter 1, and chapter 5.
6. The Institutional Presidency
– “The Institutional Presidency,” John Burke, in The Presidency and the Political System.
– “The Presidency and the Bureaucracy: The Levers of Presidential Control” David Lewis and Terry Moe, in The Presidency and the Political System.
7. The Impossible Demands of the Office
– “The Powers of the Presidency,” in The American Presidency, Clinton Rossiter. (buy cheap)
– “The Presidency and Its Paradoxes,” Thomas Cronin (Full article a href=“http://polis.wikispaces.com/file/view/Paradoxes+of+the+American+Presidency.pdf” target=“_blank”>here, list of paradoxes without explanation here.)
B. The Presidency in the Political System
8. Presidents and their Parties
– “The Presidency and Political Parties,” Sydney Milkis, in The Presidency and the Political System.
9. Congress and the Presidency
– “The President and Congress,” Matthew Dickinson, in The Presidency and the Political System.
10. The Presidency, the Press, and Spectacle
– “The Presidency and the Press: The Paradox of the White House Communications War” Lawrence Jacobs, in The Presidency and the Political System.
– “The Presidential Spectacle,” Bruce Miroff
C. The Imperial Presidency: Unchecked and Unbalanced
11. Presidential Selection
– “Making the President Imperial,” (Crenson & Ginsberg) Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced
– “The Presidency and the Nominating Process,” Richard Pious, in The Presidency and the Political System.
12. The Imperial Presidency
– “The Runaway Presidency,” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
– “The Presidency and Unilateral Power, Andrew Rudalevige, in The Presidency and the Political System.
13. The Presidency and War
– “The Presidency at War,” Andrew Polsky, in The Presidency and the Political System.
– “The Clinton Theory of the War Power,” (David Gray Adler)
14. Concluding Thoughts
______________________________________________
[Logo by Johanna.
Mascot information is here.]
First, awesome that this is up! I am really excited.
Second, I just want to remind everyone who recommended the tarsier!
Third, there appears to be a problem with the links in the post.Report
Oh, and fourth, the logo is great. Nicely done, Johanna.Report
Thanks, I’ll fix those links.Report
Is our mascot an owl or a teddy bear?Report
Uh, oh, our first student who can’t read–I guess we know about those New York Public Schools now. 😉Report
I see we are a hipster university for going for an obscure animalReport
The tarsier is not an obscure animal. It is an awesome animal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jz0JcQYtqo&noredirect=1Report
That is not entirely safe for work.Report
Alternately, followers of the first several Ubuntu Linux releases, or the O’Reilly technical books. Lord only knows how many of those O’Reilly animal covers you would find if you went through my house from top to bottom. (For Schilling: I’m such an old geek that I’ve got a copy of Aho and Ullman’s compiler book from before it was “the dragon book” on the shelf here someplace.)Report
I’m such an old geek that “tarsier” makes me think of the kings of Numenor. (Tar-see-er would make him Tar-Palantir, right?)Report
Thanks so much for tempting me into spending the last 45 minutes looking at “True Facts About…” videos.Report
You’re quite welcome. I consider that 45 minutes well spent.Report
We also graduated from Whatsamatta U.Report
Also looks rather awesome.Report
I forgot that we had chosen the Tarsier as our mascot. In my mind, I had lodged the memory of being the Fighting Betta Fish. But then, I voted and didn’t have a chance to follow up or lobby, so I suppose that’s what I get out of the political process for my apathy.
…Huh? Whazzat? The President? Yeah, thanks a lot, Obama!Report
I love the mascot and team name!Report
Johanna also gets credit for the adjective.Report
That Johanna, she’s the best. 🙂 Thank you!Report
How are older editions of The Presidency and the Political System? abe.com has dozens of used copies of those for less than five bucks.
(Disclaimer: I am not associated with abe.com other than spending enough money there to singlehandedly keep them afloat.)Report
The older the edition, the more chapters will be different, since it is an edited volume that evolves slowly across editions. Most should be the same, though.Report
Also, I am guessing we are Division III based on choice of mascot.Report
Well, Tod did inform me that we don’t have the budget for athletic scholarships, so…
But with luck we will be adding varsity bass fishing as our first sport.Report
So we decided that our mascot would be a brown lemur? Its very cute.Report
Silly Lee, tarsiers aren’t lemurs, they’re haplorhines like us! Tarsiers are people, tiny creepy-eyed people.Report
It really looks more like a limur to me. Limurs are really cute so I’d prefer if our mascot was a lemur.Report
Creepy eyes so big that they can’t move in their sockets, so tarsiers have to move their heads to look in different directions. Another piece of useless information, stuck in my head forever, taking up space that might be used for something like the Imperial Presidency…Report
Can I walk onto the football, basketball, and baseball teams? Dibs on free safety, power forward, and shortstop!Report
Dude, you can be the founder of those teams!Report
I love this initiative, and may have something of my own to contribute at some point. Though I still find the whole university mascot thing utterly bizarre.Report
It probably comes as no surprise that I had already thought of you as someone who could make a great contribution.Report
Arguably you were teaching courses at this school before it became established as a university.Report
Do we have a paper to write? If so, do you want us to use quotes?Report
Yes, and you must use Chicago style or you get an F. And there’s no appeals process.Report
As long as I can do footnotes and not endnotes. And I want the right muse and meander all I want in the footnotes, with no regard for the reader.Report
I recommend another lecture:
“Does the presidency exist? (Re)discovering the discursive presidency in the social imaginary”Report
You want to be expelled, don’t you?Report
the “presidency” is the constitutive apex of constructed american political identity, neither separate nor superceding, but immanent in the electoral discourse and the day-to-day contingent decisions of s/his tenure in office, a concept that is itself a valuational construct, subject to the variegated structural requirements to be found in the ever evolving interstices of class and time (who is to say a “president’s” tenure ever ends? who is to say that the power is never (re)constituted along not superceding, but immanent lines?)Report
In more seriousness, I’ve already requested some of the books on interlibrary loan, and have downloaded the relevant essays from the federalist and and anti-federalists. I look forward to reading your posts.Report
That logo feels like it’s staring out of my screen and into my soul*. Quite striking (creepy).
*Agnostic caveat: I’m not convinced I have a soul.Report
You had one when you were young. Then you grew up and got interested in political issues.Report
Will this symposium cover the big shift in power that occurred ~1890 when the Supreme Court decided that Congress could delegate a lot of the details of legislating to the executive branch?Report
Good question. I do touch on that, but with a focus more on Congress’s interest in that shifting of legislative authority than on the Court’s interpretation allowing it, although of course that aspect is a necessary part of the story.Report
Excellent. Thank you.Report
Will you be talking about the shift from the Prime Minister being an equal among cabinet ministers to now dominating cabinet? Also, will you be looking at the appropriate role of the Governor General in requests for prorogue and the dissolution of Parliament?
[Realizes he is in the wrong class. Awkwardly slinks out.]Report
Robinarch!Report
I would love to take a class on Canadian government. Hint, hint.Report
So would I. Having written a dissertation partially about Canadian politics, it would be nice for me to learn all the ways I went wrong in my understanding.Report