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Elections Presidential elections may well be the most studied topic in American political science. Still, although journalists have chronicled presidential campaigns from the inside (Theodore White's The Making of the President series still stands out as the best of this genre), there have been few scholarly accounts of how presidential campaigns are conducted. Similarly, while much attention has been paid to the different roles that a president plays, there has been little scholarship on how incumbent presidents organize and manage their reelection campaigns. In this study, Kathryn Dunn Tenpas addresses this question.
More specifically, in studying "presidents as candidates, " Tenpas sets out to learn how incumbent presidents prepare for their reelection battles; how they manage their dual roles as candidate and president; and whether reelection campaigns distract presidents and the presidency from the business of governing. Tenpas focuses her attention on the eight most recent presidents to have run for reelection, characterizing their campaigns as either "victorious" (Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton); "defeated" (Carter and Bush); or "takeover" (Johnson and Ford). In the first chapter, she describes the evolution of presidential campaigns from party-centered operations to White House-centered operations. In the succeeding chapters, she describes the composition of reelection teams, the campaign strategies used by the various presidents, the organizational structures governing the different campaigns, the relationship between president and national party committee, and the changing workloads and methods of decision making that take place once the campaign has started.
Her principal conclusion is that partisan politics and the quest for reelection are taking up an increasing amount of a president's time and that "during an election year the business of governing is overshadowed by the business of campaigning" (p. 156). In the final chapter, she argues that this current state of affairs poses serious problems for effective governance and suggests that the country would be better served if presidents would rely more on party organization for electoral assistance. Changing gears a bit in an epilogue, Tenpas turns political consultant and provides some advice to the winner of the 2000 election on how he or she should run for reelection in 2004. The advice includes the following ten tips: (1) Don't delay planning; (2) raise as much money as possible as early as possible; (3) look like a president; (4) don't hesitate, retaliate; (5) set the agenda; (6) follow the rules; (7) don't be the campaign tactician; (8) take advantage of surrogate campaigners; (9) "the vision thing"; and (10) be lucky. Although not necessarily incorrect, these suggestions, like many of the findings in the book, are unexceptional and are not discussed in connection with any models or theories of presidential elections or presidential behavior.
In fact, the lack of any sort of framework makes it difficult for one to discern the main thrust of the project. As noted above, Tenpas describes a typology of three types of reelection campaigns: victorious, defeated, and takeover. This typology (introduced in the early pages and not mentioned again in the text) and the epilogue suggest that the book is about how reelection strategies influence electoral outcomes. If so, what do we learn by grouping cases by electoral outcome. Did victorious presidents do everything right and losers everything wrong? What was the relative effect of a president's performance as candidate?
Furthermore, if the book is about the effect of different techniques of organizing and running a campaign, there is scant discussion of the fundamental factors that influence both campaign strategies and election outcomes. The book also concerns itself with the mechanics and timing of running a campaign from the White House. Ultimately, the main empirical findings are that presidents and their staffs now devote more time and exert greater control over reelection activities, paying even more attention to the political consequences of their actions as Election Day nears. This basic point seems sensible enough.
Moreover, it is a legitimate exercise to document such a political phenomenon. What this study lacks, however, is an analytical model or theoretical framework to guide and structure the empirical research. Finally, if change is the central thesis, more effort should have been put into describing the causes of the change. One possibility would have been to discuss how the increasing attention to electoral goals and the increasing White House control of reelection campaigns fit with the theoretical arguments and empirical findings of Samuel Kernel's work (see Going Public, 1997). Are both phenomena being caused by the identical set of factors? Do reelection activities differ from the seemingly permanent campaign tactics that a president may use to rally support for his person and policies?
What effect do these changes have on the role of the president and broader theories of presidential behavior? Moreover, if one is concerned about the effect that reelection motives may have on policymaking and how that effect may increase over the course of a term, it would also have been useful to sketch out some sort of general model of presidential decision making. Although the author introduces data on legislative proposals and cabinet travel, no systematic or even anecdotal evidence is presented on how reelection imperatives may have changed the direction of public policy. Finally, the author provides no account of a systematic research design or even a description of how the data were gathered.
In fact, the only description of the research modalities comes in a sentence in the series editor's preface. For example, the Appendix contains an impressive list of presidential staffers and strategists who were interviewed, but no other information. Elite interviews can provide extraordinarily valuable data, to be sure; however, readers need to know how subjects were chosen; how the interviews were obtained; who refused to be interviewed; what the ground rules were; and what questions were asked. Words: 954 Bibliography: 1) Theodore White, The Making of the President, 1999; 2) Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, The Study of the Presidents Election, 2001; 3) Samuel Kernel, Going Public, 1997.
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Research essay sample on Presidential Elections Decision Making
