The United States and Israel share a special relationship, but this has not always been the case. The cultivation of this alliance took many years and was done at the hands of various Presidents. While in most cases the Executive Office and State Department have shares a close relationship, in the case of Israel policy the two factions have butted heads considerably. This article argues that it has been Presidents alone who have created the policy towards Israel that set up for the special relationship the U.S. and Israel share today.

This thesis examines the reform ideas and efforts of Daud Shah, a Muslim socio-religious reformer in the Madras Presidency during the twentieth century. Shah published a journal, Dar ul-Islam (World of Islam), which he used as a medium to propagate his ideas and advocate reforms among Muslims. Socio-religious reform efforts among Muslims in the Madras Presidency have received very limited scholarly attention. But the purpose of this thesis goes beyond merely focusing on a neglected area of scholarship. Shah belonged to a small class of Western-educated Muslim professionals. This thesis will demonstrate how Shah’s reform efforts differed from those advocated by the aristocracy and the merchant elite. This thesis will analyze the relationship between Shah and the national-level reform movements among Muslims. Shah’s reform and fundraising efforts also reveal the close links between Muslims in Tamil Nadu and Southeast Asia. Finally, the thesis will show the influence of print technology on reform movements among Muslims. / text

In this dissertation, I develop and empirically test a comparison of the private versus public strategies presidents use to gain support and passage of their policy agendas. By focusing on presidential influence on policy outcomes in Congress, I can determine which form of presidential leadership - going public or using private bargaining or both - may prove most effective in shaping policies to suit the administration's political interests, given the context in Congress. This allows for an assessment of Neustadt's (1990) classic private bargaining presidency and Kernell's (1997) public presidency to show that both may be compatible and may even work in combination in order for presidents to pass their policy agendas under varying political circumstances in Congress.Original data is collected from Statements of Administration Policy to examine private presidential rhetoric, and additional data is collected from the yearly editions of Congressional Quarterly Almanac to assess the effects of public presidential rhetoric. I test my hypotheses with this new collection of data using logistic regressions, as well as complimentary case studies of No Child Left Behind, immigration reform, and the Andean Trade Preference Act. The broader implications of this study include: systematic assessments of presidential influence on Congress; indentifying a broader view of presidential leadership to better fit empirical observations; and incorporating inter-branch influences in Congressional behavior.

Thesis advisor: Seth Jacobs / Congress' 1964 passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution represented the pinnacle of the legislature's conscious repudiation of its role as superintendent of America's foreign policy to the executive branch. Conversely, for most diplomatic historians, the passage of the 1973 War Powers Act marked Congress' reawakening to its supervisory role and the collapse of what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. termed the "Imperial Presidency." In fact, it was the 1970 repeal of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, a resolution that embodied everything Congress had abdicated and all the dangers that abdication represented, that actually served to announce Congress' unwillingness to acquiesce to presidential foreign policy. The repeal of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution had long-term implications for the exercise of America's cold war foreign policy, effects that were most keenly felt by President Gerald Ford when Congress refused to allow U.S. intervention in Angola despite Ford's personal pleas to both legislative branches. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2007. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Thesis advisor: Seth Jacobs / The vice presidencies of Lyndon B. Johnson and Humphrey H. Humphrey were momentous stages in both of their political careers. After leaving the position of Senate majority leader to become John F. Kennedy’s vice president, Johnson underwent a swift, total decrease in political efficacy. Those dark years impacted how he tackled the presidency, particularly in the handling of his own vice president. As Johnson’s vice president, Humphrey also watched the political power he had accrued as Senate majority whip evaporate. In an attempt to impress Johnson, Humphrey overcompensated and became a disciple for the Johnson administration’s unpopular war in Vietnam, destroying any chance Humphrey had to further his political career past the vice presidency. I argue that while their terms as vice presidents—Johnson’s was less than three years long and Humphrey’s was four years—were short periods of time in the grand scheme of their long careers, they were highly consequential for both men and severely damaging for Humphrey. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: History.

Thesis advisor: Marc Landy / By examining the interactions between the presidency and the other branches of government, research illuminates the causes and mechanisms by which the presidency, and its power, ebbs and flows. Due to the nature of the powers directly granted to the president within the Constitution, much consideration has been given to presidential power through the prisms of national security, international affairs, and times of national emergency. Yet the presidency consists of more than the roles of commander- and diplomat-in-chief. By looking beyond the more obvious considerations of presidential power, the complexity of the institution’s development is not only revealed, but more fully explained. Consequently, this dissertation analyzes the development of presidential power by looking at the less obvious. It considers the use of formal executive tools to implement congressionally delegated and supported authority in an area of domestic policy: the creation of federally protected public lands. Instead of seeking to understand how the use of presidential power impacted an area of public policy, this research flips that perennial question on its head by asking: how has public land policy contributed to the development of presidential power? The research presented here shows, through the analysis of five public land categories, that the consistent application of executive power within this policy realm, combined with Congressional acceptance of this application, enhanced the overall power of the American presidency. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Political Science, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-51).

This project investigates how the emergent ideological, institutional, and political commitments of the national defense and security state shape the domestic programmatic agendas of modern presidents. Applying a historical and developmental analysis, I trace this dynamic from its origin in the twin crises of the Great Depression and World War II to examine how subsequent presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt have navigated the intersecting politics of this warfare -welfare nexus. I use original, archival research to examine communications between the president and his staff, cabinet members, administration officials, and Congressional leaders to better appreciate how the interaction of these dual political commitments are reflected in the formulation and promotion of the president’s budgetary requests and domestic policy initiatives. More directly, I focus on the relationship between the national security politics of the Cold War and the efforts of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower to support their objectives in either the expansion or retrenchment of the New Deal-liberal welfare state. My research suggests that Cold War concerns occasionally aided the growth of the welfare state in areas such as public health and federal aid to education, while at other times defense and security anxieties provided the backdrop for presidential efforts to diminish the political capacity of the welfare state. More specifically, I find that both Truman and Eisenhower constructed visions of national strength which framed their initiatives in national defense and social welfare as interrelated goals. In the end, I argue that the changing institutions, ideologies, and international commitments of the warfare state present both opportunities and challenges for presidents to articulate political visions in service of domestic policy advancement.

This study examines the first inauguration speech and the four Independence anniversary speeches delivered by the former second president of Namibia, Hifikepunye Pohamba. The five volumes of these speeches, which marked Pohamba’s first term of office, plus audio-recordings of the highlights of the speeches on the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation, were the primary data of the study. Pohamba’s modern presidency, executed the laws through speeches, communicated directly to the Namibian people about what his Government have done, what it is attempting to do, and what they plan to do. In order to investigate how Hifikepunye Pohamba’s rhetoric continued in shaping democracy in the post-apartheid Namibia, the argument of the analysis was based on the Aristotelian (2007) ‘three regimes’ of rhetoric as well as the three rhetorical proofs. On the historical background information, a context of the rhetorical situation was drawn from Bitzer (1968), and the rhetorical argument and application of Perelman (1984). Moreover, close contextual analysis was also employed as it seeks to analyse the relationship between the inner working of public discourse and its historical context in order to discover what makes a particular text function persuasively. Pohamba’s speeches were analysed closely and rhetorically interpreted within their Namibian historical and political context. Thus, the study reveals the monumental occasions in the history of Namibian politics, among others, the symbolic rhetoric of the peaceful transfer of power from the founding President Sam Nujoma to the second president, who was also democratically elected, Hifikepunye Pohamba. Pohamba’s rhetoric reflects his rhetorical performative. He demonstrated his democratic ethics to his audience in his rhetoric, and constantly referred to certain individuals who were respected by his audience. Thus, he continued shaping democracy in Namibia. Pohamba’s rhetoric contains values of praising and blaming; he established fact and judgement about the past, and also advised about the future. He emphasised on the policy of national reconciliation and confirmed that reconciliation had ushered in a new dispensation of political stability, peace, unity, ethnic cohesion and security in Namibia. Namibian people must therefore continue to shun the vices of tribalism, sexism and corruption, among other things. Pohamba effectively used his rhetoric to communicate to the audience which is an important aspect of a democratic regime. This was observed internationally, which enabled Pohamba to put Namibia on the world map as he won MO Ibrahim award for African leadership at the end of his second term. However, the current study has focused only on the rhetoric of his first term.

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