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Eisenhower is credited with steering a course between ideological extremes, his "presidency of consolidation" implying that his economic policy traced a smooth, unitary path. Instead, I argue that his is a twofold legacy. Eisenhower's most frequently cited actions, such as modifying Social Security and unemployment insurance, involved moderating the pace but maintaining the direction of past policy. But in relation to the New Deal labor policy regime, his actions carried a quite different developmental significance. When it came to the federal government's posture toward unions and labor organizing, Eisenhower reversed both the direction of policy and the future capacity of institutions to fulfill the New Deal's goals. As with any presidency, the first two years of Eisenhower's term were crucial in setting the agenda and determining priorities. Two initiatives, amending the Taft-Hartley Act and shaping the membership and decisions of the National Labor Relations Board, show how Eisenhower's ideas and policy tactics developed. The success of his administrative strategy had the effect of consolidating the potential inherent in the Taft-Hartley Act and—long before Reagan's "war on labor"—altering the developmental trajectory of the political economy of labor policy.

The active role of the Federal Reserve (Fed) in responding to the financial crisis has provoked questions not only about its policies' economic wisdom but also about the political significance of the Fed's exercise of expanded power. This article places the Fed's actions into perspective, framing three counterfactuals that yield different vantage points on the key question: Have the Fed's actions in the financial crisis and beyond amounted to a "power play" intended to marginalize elected authorities in the management of the national economy? I begin with an overview of the relationship over the postwar period between the Fed and the presidency, and then employ this historical baseline in analyzing three key episodes: the response to the crisis as it emerged during the final years of the Bush administration, the surprising decision by the Obama administration to continue the policy trajectory set by the actions of the Fed and his Republican predecessor, and the stabilization policies implemented by the Fed since the onset of the financial crisis. I find no strong evidence that the Fed's actions exceeded the rubric expected on the basis of its evolving responsibility to meet emergencies in a financial marketplace where the pace of innovation is high and in the context of political party polarization that has stalemated fiscal policy.

The financial crisis, the deep recession, and the Democrats' huge losses in the 2010 midterm election, have focused attention on President Barack Obama's economic policy leadership and the framing of the economy as a campaign issue. In this article, I evaluate three alternative explanations for the Democrats' showing on the economy: the severity of the financial meltdown and the resulting recession; the president's key economic initiatives, the stimulus and the banking reform; and the actions of the Republican opposition in Congress and the highly mobilized conservative populism at the grass roots. In a presidential system, the attention of the public and media naturally focuses on the chief executive, and the temptation is strong to blame the president if the voters reject his party in a referendum election. The detailed case histories of Obama's economic policies, however, reveal only a few missed opportunities, and overall the administration's program delivered consistently positive economic results in the face of the exceptionally severe challenges of financial crisis and potential Depression. That the policies did not make a clear impression on the public and command a correspondingly positive electoral response is attributable less to the mistakes of the administration than to the strategic success of its opponents at limiting the president's legislative accomplishments and framing the public's interpretation of his program.

Adapted from the source document.

Presidents are rightly held responsible for managing the national economy—they exercise substantial discretion over fiscal policy and have the potential for informally influencing monetary policy. At the same time, presidential accomplishments are circumscribed by market forces and institutions at home and overseas, and the complexities of fragmented authority and external constraints make judging performance difficult. I draw on the literature on economic policymaking and on the presidency to explicate a set of criteria for comparing presidential economic policy leadership, construct quantitative indicators of each dimension, and display the results of comparative analyses covering the second half of the twentieth century. The four criteria view presidents from three different vantage points: the separation of powers, focusing on presidents' success at gaining congressional approval for an economic agenda; the public, based on an original compilation of survey data tracking the electorate's evaluation; and the economy, tracing how presidents' policies affect overall prosperity and the distribution of income. Combining information about how crucial audiences have perceived and responded to presidential initiatives, with outcomes in the economy, this approach emphasizes comparison, and thus complements the qualitative depth of narrative approaches.

The concept of critical realignment has shaped much of the thinking of political scientists and historians about the processes and patterns of change in American politics. Research on re-alignment has, however, tended to focus on successful cases and to concentrate on the electoral breakpoints rather than the process of regime formation, with the result that little systematic thinking has been devoted to the question of why some electoral upheavals lead to party realignment while other large vote shifts do not. This article begins from the proposition that the election does not so much constitute the realignment as offer the opportunity and the momentum for the new party to build a lasting national coalition. Whether the party capitalizes on this potential depends on processes and events that follow the critical election, during what could be called the 'consolidation phase' of the realignment. The question is ultimately one about public opinion, but the concept of consolidation needs to take in the interaction between the public and political elites, since mass opinion is formed in the context of elite initiatives and interpretations. The model of consolidation depicts two interrelated processes. The first involves strategic competition among elites, including elected officials and organized societal interests, who frame the conflict, by prioritizing issues and cleavages, and by relating policy proposals to group identities and widely-shared values. The second focuses on the public. Their standing loyalties disrupted by the crisis and the incumbents' inability to deal with it successfully, citizens engage in a process of experiential search as they seek to re-establish the stable political orientation given by attachment to a political party. The article draws on qualitative and quantitative information from the New Deal to illustrate the model of consolidation.

... This article begins from the proposition that the election does not so much constitute the realignment as offer the opportunity and the momentum for the new party to build a lasting national coalition. Whether the party capitalizes on this potential depends on processes and events that follow the critical election, during what could be called the 'consolidation phase' of the realignment. The question is ultimately one about public opinion, but the concept of consolidation needs to take in the interaction between the public and political elites, since mass opinion is formed in the context of elite initiatives and interpretations. The model of consolidation depicts two interrelated processes. The first involves strategic competition among elites, including elected officials and organized societal interests, who frame the conflict, by prioritizing issues and cleavages, and by relating policy proposals to group identities and widely-shared values. The second focuses on the public. Their standing loyalties disrupted by the crisis and the incumbents' inability to deal with it successfully, citizens engage in a process of experiential search as they seek to re-establish the stable political orientation given by attachment to a political party. The article draws on qualitative and quantitative information from the New Deal to illustrate the model of consolidation. (British Journal of Political Science / FUB)

Explores whether, as some historians claim, President Eisenhower's political beliefs changed in the second half of his second term from an enlightened but restrained liberalism to the inflexible conservative views of the Republican Old Guard. Eisenhower's apparent change in economic policy in 1958 seemed to be accompanied with a shift in his orientation toward politics & policy. The study of Eisenhower's ideological consistency raises methodological issues about measuring change & continuity & possible biases & blind spots in writing political history. This study concludes that Eisenhower's political ideologies were more consistent than has been suggested. His views were neither as liberal at the beginning of his presidency, nor as conservative at the end, as has been suggested. With a larger number of liberals elected to Congress during his second term, Eisenhower's approach to Congress changed. The image of an ideological shift was created by his more vigorous disagreements with others' policy views & more resolute insistence on his own. 1 Figure. L. A. Hoffman

'Downsizing the U.S.A.' by Thomas H. Naylor and William H. Willimon is reviewed.

Political science can offer few theoretical generalizations about the exercise of presidential power. From one perspective, this is no disadvantage: there are few presidents, and presidential leadership so intrinsically involves the interplay of ideas and persuasive deliberation that success depends on personal traits and the fit of the president's ideas with the times. Striving for inductive generalizations in such a case would mistake rote scientific method for the pursuit of knowledge. Others argue, however, that the dearth of theoretical generalizations is a temporary weakness, remediable by shifting to a deductive approach. Deductive theorizing can claim insights in other areas once typified by historiographic methods, notably in studies of Congress, and formal models of legislation have been extended to generate hypotheses about transactions between president and Congress.I suggest that neither side of the dilemma offers a satisfactory and complete approach to the puzzle of presidential leadership; it then goes on to specify how the contributions from each side fit together. Rational choice models, based on bargaining as the mode of influence and the repeated game as the image of process, show how institutional structures can produce stable decisions where majority rule tends toward endless cycling. But the cost is that the resulting decisions are typically ad hoc and disjointed. Achieving consistent and coherent policy requires more subtle coordination of individual expectations than legislative organizations can manage, and it is this limitation of bargaining that establishes the potential for presidential leadership. Presidents can attempt to capitalize on this opportunity either by intervening as an additional (but situationally advantaged) bargainer, or by employing persuasion, the explicit appeal to collective goals rather than particularistic trades. I develop the distinction between bargaining and persuasion as alternative strategies of advocacy, and illustrate their use with examples from President Reagan's interactions with Congress over his key economic policy proposals.