The presidency of Barack Obama presents us with a paradox, in that it was both a policy success and a political failure, two states that seemingly contradict with one another. His presidency is considered a policy success due to its ability to successfully pass many key pieces of legislation, despite several challenges. On the other hand, Obama's presidency is also considered a political failure primarily due to the election of Donald J. Trump, someone who is not an ally to the Obama administration and has worked to undo Obama's accomplishments as president in nearly every area. Today, Obama's legacy as president continues to play a large impact on American politics given the high stakes nature of the current 2020 presidential election and the strong connection that both candidates running has with President Obama. As a result, examining Obama's presidency and the impact it left behind is more important than ever. This research takes into consideration the large amount of literature on the paradox and evaluates several arguments by a variety of authors in four different areas of the Obama presidency to determine the strength of these arguments.

What explains Nikki Fried's victory in 2018 for Florida Commissioner of Agriculture? What explains the difference between votes received by Commissioner Fried and fellow Democrat candidates on the ballot in four other Fl. statewide races in 2018 at the county level? Florida's unique plural executive branch and diverse demographics have led to competitive elections resulting in narrow vote margins with the victory more often tipping in favor of Republican candidates across state politics in the last two decades. The 2018 Florida midterm election provides an opportunity to analyze the margin-of-victory for a Democrat candidate in comparison to the vote margins of four other Democrats defeated in statewide races that year. Fried attributed her victory in part to her support for medical marijuana and the female vote. Regression analysis is used to examine support for Fried in addition to the percentage difference of votes received by Fried and the other four democratic candidates in 2018 Fl. statewide races at the county level. The results indicate that there was greater support for Fried than the average of the four defeated Democrat candidates in counties with higher percentages of female population, in counties with higher percentages of population 25 and over with a bachelor's/graduate degree, and in counties with higher percentages of absentee ballots cast by Democrat registered voters. The impact of minor-party or no party affiliated candidates on the ballot in two races also increased the difference in vote margins between Fried and the two Black Democrat candidates with third-party candidate(s) listed on the ballot in their races.

The central purpose of this thesis is systematically to show why politicians use direct democracy in the US. By identifying multiple situations in which politicians make use of direct democracy, the argument that they use it for some gain is made irresistible and the reasons underlying this behaviour are brought out. Politicians are shown to use direct democracy in three arenas: before launching a candidacy for state-wide office, whilst running for state-wide office and whilst in government. Politicians are shown to do so to expand their public profile, to change campaign agendas, and at the level of the institutions of state government, to bypass another branch of government. These effects are shown using statistical tests of the occurrence of behaviour by state legislators and candidates in the first two instances. Multilevel models are used in the last two instances, to identify when state legislators and governors used direct democracy in battles over lawmaking between the branches of government. A test for the use of the legislative referral by state legislatures is particularly timely and has not been considered before. These uses together lay the groundwork for a new theory of the effects of direct democracy institutions on state government policy. The tests of policy responsiveness in later chapters reject existing theory that might provide an explanation of both why politicians use direct democracy and with what effects on state government and show on responsiveness increasing effect.

No description available.

Thesis (doctoral)--Columbia University. / Reproduction of original from Harvard Law School Library. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1971. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This historical account of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill of 1920 has been undertaken for two main purposes. The first may be termed the author's interest in lynching as an American institution. The second is a desire to portray clearly the facts concerning the first major legislative attempt to curb the practice by Federal legislation. The author has no private grudge to present and no special interests to serve on the subject. Consequently, this may be taken as an objective analysis of the arguments pro and con on a proposed legislative measure. Since the major argumentation occurred in the House, whereas the Senate merely filibuteded or repeated those same arguments, most of the contents of this work are presented from the House and one chapter is devoted to the manner in which the Senate disposed of the Bill. The author proposes to refer to the Bill always with a capital "B" that no confusion may arise as to what legislation is concerned in any given statement. A definite attempt has been made to provide local color and to give the reader a glimpse of the attitudes of the day. For this reason, quotations have been used freely from Congressional source. One thing was certainly impressed upon the writer's mind and that was the general culture and ability of the Congressmen. On the lynching issue arguments were often tinged with an overabundance of emotion. Nevertheless, the language, the adroitness, the beauty of speech proclaimed the fine forensic background of many of our representatives in Washington. The author wishes to make clear that he is attempting to present only the arguments of the Congressmen whether these arguments were good or bad, complete or incomplete in their analysis. This is the history of a legislative measure, not a dissertation upon the subject of lynching in general. In this literary effort the method of presentation has been to deemphasize chronological development and to present the major and minor issues of the Bill itself as argued by its proponents and opponents. This procedure has been followed in order to avoid a mere condensation of the Congressional Record. Instead, there is a desire to gather all the important arguments into a logical, orderly, and consolidated series; for as those familiar with the Record will testify, arguments rarely answer each other directly. Usually pages and pages of new arguments, different issues, and even new subjects intervene. This leads the author to the statement that because of the manner in which debates appear in the Record, he found it particularly gratifying to attempt a "round up", so to speak, of the myriad of speeches, committee reports, etc. that constituted the total forensic effort on this particular measure and to separate the total into its logical subject heads, to sift major and minor arguments into separate divisions and finally to derive one consolidated account.If he has succeeded in reaching this objective, he feels that his effort will not have been in vain

The intent of this thesis is to analyze the political development of the six counties comprising the I-4 Corridor from 1944 to 2016. The literature review will develop an understanding of realignment theory and its application to Southern and Florida politics. The data analysis will analyze Presidential, Gubernatorial and Senate Election Results from the six counties, compared with census data for each of the six counties to show voting trends at a county-level basis. U.S. Census Data from 1940 to 2010 will also be used to analyze population and population density of the region at-large, and at a countywide level, in our attempt to examine variance in countywide election results across decades.

This thesis explores the how the media filtered the rhetoric of candidate Donald Trump, specifically concerning how both right wing and left wing media reported his campaign announcement speech in June of 2015.

Using the academic and journalistic coverage of Richard Nixon’s religious life as a case study, this thesis argues that social scientists and commentators pay insufficient attention to religion, even when it is an important factor. In a sample of biographies of Nixon and specialist studies of Nixon’s life and career, nearly all the authors minimized the influence of Nixon’s religious upbringing on his political life, regardless of the author’s own views on Nixon. In stark contrast to this body of work, this paper finds that Nixon’s birth into the Religious Society of Friends (or “Quakers”) shaped his political career. Nixon’s evangelical brand of Quakerism allowed him to make contacts among powerful Quakers like Herbert Hoover and well-placed non-Quaker Protestants like Billy Graham. Quakerism also served Nixon as an emotional support in times of political crisis—a necessity for Nixon, who reacted poorly to stress—and when he suffered a crisis of faith in 1962, his political tactics became noticeably more amoral and vindictive. On a policy level, the Quaker tradition of altruism influenced Nixon’s racial policies for the better. Despite his own racist views and those of his political allies, Nixon was a relatively strong advocate of civil rights at home and abroad. Although this paper acknowledges alternative explanations for this discrepancy, such as political biases and the unavailability of primary sources, these explanations were found to be insufficient. This conclusion raises troubling questions about academic impartiality. Do academics intentionally avoid discussing religion? If so, is this due to anti-Christian or anti-religious feeling, as some studies suggest? And if not, what drives academic avoidance of religion?