White House ceremonies honoring sports champions -"presidential sports encomia" - have become common events in presidential communication since the Carter Administration. In the last quarter-century, more than one hundred presidential sports encomia have taken place, with US presidents honoring both professional and intercollegiate athletes. Presidential sports encomia not only afford Chief Executives an opportunity to stand alongside champions, creating a "winner-by-association" effect, but also allow them to articulate the importance of sports in American society. Whether addressing civic responsibility, patriotism, or race relations, presidential sports encomia ultimately connect athletic achievement to American ideals. In this way, the symbolic power of sports is employed in the development and maintenance of American civil religion. Analysis of these ceremonies reveals how US presidents use the rhetorical resources of sports encomia for both their own political agendas and the larger institution of the presidency.

During campaigns, voters often learn that their party's candidate advocates policy positions that conflict with their own attitudes. These cross-pressured voters can either adjust their policy positions to be consonant with their party's candidate or voting for others. I use monthly NES Panel Data from 2008-2009 to examine how voters' beliefs change about a specific policy: the redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation during a presidential campaign. I test this by creating a Random Effects Ordered Probit Panel regression model of ten monthly waves of survey data before the 2008 presidential election. The study shows that over the campaign, voters' policy positions evolve on redistributive taxation policy; voters adjust their prior policy cognitive dissonance to be in agreement with their candidate. The results indicate that in the 2008 Presidential election, the electorate more often moved their policy beliefs to be in agreement with their candidate, rather than switch votes.

From Jimmy Carter’s self-identification as a “born again Christian” in the 1976 presidential campaign to George W. Bush’s declaration of “Christ” as his favorite political philosopher “because he changed my heart” in a Republican primary debate of the 2000 campaign, presidential speeches and campaigns are often laced with religious language. Such an observation is nothing new. However, many scholars and political observers do not know what to make of such religious references. Such language is often dismissed as either shameless pandering to religious constituencies or something hopelessly out of place in American politics. This dissertation attempts a deeper analysis of this controversial subject by identifying how presidents use the rhetorical resources of religion by employing religious argument patterns stemming from the Jewish and Christian religious traditions in presidential speeches. Specifically, this dissertation explores how the last five presidents (Jimmy Carter through George W. Bush) have used such religious rhetorical forms in attempts to strike a symbolic chord within the larger American public. The religious rhetorical forms explored herein, if employed judiciously, can serve as political shibboleths—or passwords—which indicate a basic level of identification with the public thanks to the basic elements, such as transformation, atonement, and renewal, which comprise the mythical core of these forms.

The study examined urban university faculty members’ perceptions of their presidents’ leadership role in urban school reform. The population for this study consisted of faculty members from five urban research universities. All of the universities are members of the Great Cities’ Universities (GCU) coalition, an alliance of 19 public urban research universities that are collaborating to address educational challenges in their communities. The study entailed a purposive sample with universities chosen on the basis of their membership in the GCU. The subjects were 245 faculty members from colleges of education and colleges of arts and sciences at the five urban research universities. All participants completed the Urban Faculty Questionnaire (UFQ), a confidential, web-based questionnaire designed by the researcher. The questionnaire consisted of five statements about general perceptions of urban school reform, 30 statements about perceptions of the university presidents’ leadership roles in the specific institutions’ urban school reform initiatives, eight statements regarding personal characteristics and a section for optional additional comments. The statements corresponded to seven internal scales of analysis. The seven scales were (a) Perceptions of Urban School Reform, (b) University Structure and Culture, (c) Presidential Awareness, (d) Internal Relationships, (e) External Relationships, (f) Resources and Support and (g) Accountability and Recognition. The data show faculty believe urban schools need reform. Faculty also believe universities located in urban communities should be involved actively in urban school reform. Faculty generally do not take personal responsibility, however, for urban school reform initiatives at their universities. Faculty seem more aware of their presidents’ external relationships than their internal relationships in urban school reform. Faculty tend to agree that their presidents build strong relationships with the local business community and with the local political community; however, they tend only somewhat to agree that their presidents build strong relationships with local public school representatives and local families and citizens. The study also reveals that no statistically significant difference exists in faculty perceptions of their presidents’ leadership in urban school reform by the faculty members’ academic college, academic rank, years of service at their current institutions, highest academic degree earned, gender and ethnicity.

This project examines how Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton discussed issues of poverty and welfare from Johnson’s declaration of War on Poverty in 1964 to Clinton’s signing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996. I argue that there are four critical tensions relevant to the debate concerning contemporary poverty in the United States—politics vs. policy, deserving vs. undeserving, help vs. hinder, and equality vs. freedom—and the key to improving the manner in which the nation confronts the problem of poverty requires understanding and negotiating these tensions. The analysis reveals that the five presidents had a mixed but overall rather poor record in confronting the four paradoxes. In general they tended either to avoid the tensions altogether, or fall to one or the other extreme. That being said, the analysis also reveals that there is considerable common ground concerning some critical issues between all the presidents, whether they were Democrats or Republicans, ideologically moderate or more partisan. Foremost among these are the beliefs that equal opportunity should be the overarching ideal, work should be rewarded well, and those that cannot help themselves should be supported as generously as possible by the government. I conclude that the 1996 law, while based in part on questionable assumptions concerning the condition of the poor, could lead to a significant re-framing of the debate away from the generally unpopular focus on welfare and welfare recipients and toward the working poor and the conditions and difficulties under which they labor, which could potentially lead to other positive transformations beneficial to the American poor.

This dissertation explores the role of public opinion in U.S. presidential decisions to employ various alternatives in response to an international crisis. Presidents may choose from a range of force alternatives, including non-force alternatives, troop mobilizations, air strikes or ground assaults. Using the Poliheuristic Theory, I argue that public attitudes toward the use of force in a given crisis play a key role in the decision making process leading to such choices. The direction and intensity of public opinion is driven by a relative value assessment by which the public determines whether the benefits of a use of force are worth the costs. Presidents are aware of this relative value assessment and rule out crisis responses that are likely to violate the public's preferences in the first stage of the decision making process. In the second stage, presidents choose among the remaining alternatives by weighing the relative merits of each with respect to military and international-strategic implications. To test hypotheses following from this theoretical argument, I employ two methodological approaches. The first is statistical analysis. I develop a new data set of presidential crisis response choices and expand an existing data set on U.S. public attitudes toward the use of force, from 1949 to 2001. Using two extant data collections identifying international crises, I conduct Ordered Logit analyses, which produce results that are largely supportive of the hypotheses. The second methodological approach is the case study method. I conduct two detailed case studies of decisions to use force in Bosnia (1995) and Afghanistan (2001). These analyses are also supportive of the theoretical argument. I conclude that presidents are largely responsive to public opinion in the selection of crisis responses.

Presidential speech has defined some of the greatest moments in American history. However, over the last thirty years the public has grown frustrated with presidential oratory. This project identifies the strategies Reagan, Bush, and Clinton employed to tackle the public’s increasing disenchantment with presidential rhetoric. Using rhetorical analyses of speech drafts, content analyses of weekly radio addresses, and interviews with former presidential speechwriters, this project identified the proactive and reactive ways in which presidents and their speechwriters craft speeches to appeal to a disillusioned public. Results indicate that presidents can employ “executive rhetoric” to appeal to the presidential office and obscure the office-holder. By doing so, presidents can simultaneously preserve the value of speech, and restore—if not expand—presidential power. / text

Little is known about why elected officials choose to get involved in presidential nomination struggles. Recent research argues that elected officials have a collective incentive to nominate an electorally viable and ideologically unifying candidate. Yet, elected officials must balance these collective incentives with their own personal considerations (e.g., reelection motives, policy interests, ambition, ideology) that may either foster or inhibit their ability to act on their collective desire to nominate viable, ideologically unifying candidates. Further, this research then determines the extent to which elected officials are rewarded-or punished- for getting involved during the presidential nomination process. In particular, interparty differences between the Republican and Democratic coalitions predict that Republicans, but not Democrats, will be rewarded for attempting to lead intraparty nomination struggles. Finally, this research links the aggregate-level findings that endorsements from elected officials are important determinants of nomination outcomes to the individual level by arguing that elected officials' endorsements mobilize their constituents to get involved in politics. In particular, as the mobilization process targets those who are already likely to participate in the first place, endorsements during presidential primaries leads to differential participation in politics. In sum, this research provides individual level foundations for the causes and consequences of congressional endorsements in presidential nomination contests.

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This thesis presents an analysis of the extent of democratic consolidation in Ghana by examining the role of state institutions, the institutionalization of the political parties and the de facto two-party system, as well as civil society and interest groups. It addresses the following specific questions. What has been the role of state institutions in the democratic consolidation process? To what extent have the political parties and the de facto two-party system been institutionalized and what has been their contribution in the democratic consolidation process? How vibrant are civil society and interest groups and what has been their contribution in the democratic consolidation process? What are the challenges and constraints faced by state institutions, the institutionalized political parties and party system, as well as civil society and interest groups in contributing to the democratic consolidation process? What measures should be adopted to deal with these challenges and constraints? Focusing on the July 2012 presidential succession and the December 2012 general elections as case studies, the analysis in this thesis demonstrates that state institutions such as the Executive, Parliament, the Judiciary, the Electoral Commission and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, as well as an institutionalized political parties and party system and civil society and interest groups have made some contribution in the democratic consolidation process. However, the analysis also demonstrates that there are a few challenges and constraints that need to be addressed before Ghana can be considered a consolidated democracy