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 thesis – Shooting the President: Screen Depictions of the American Presidency from John F. Kennedy to Josiah Bartlet – examines the depiction of the presidency in American film and television from 1960 until the present day. In this study I explore the relationships between the presidency and Hollywood, particularly in the context of genre structures. I examine the constructions of specific presidential mythologies based on the real presidencies of Kennedy, Nixon and Clinton and the construction of fictional presidencies in the television series The West Wing. In four sets of case studies, I will chart the changing significance of each president through different genres, looking particularly at how each presidential mythology is affected by the anxieties and fashions of the contemporary political and social world. I also examine the ways in which the appearance of presidentiality is created within each text by various means including set design, the choice of actor, the use of dialogue and the framing of particular characters. The aims of my thesis are to demonstrate how a telegenic style of politics formed during and after the Kennedy presidency can be seen to be both represented and enhanced in genre films and television series. I chart the relationship of this new mediated style of presidency through my case studies as it faces challenges such as Watergate, Clinton’s sex scandals and the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001. Finally, I aim to demonstrate through a close reading of the latter seasons of The West Wing how the American public can be seen to be prepared by its popular media for the success of the first black president, Barack Obama.

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Cette thèse s’intéresse à l’utilisation par le 43ème président des États-Unis, George W. Bush, des déclarations de promulgation, ces documents écrits qui permettent au président américain de donner son opinion sur une loi qu’il vient de promulguer et dans lesquels il peut faire part de sa réticence à faire appliquer certaines des dispositions de la loi en question car il les juge potentiellement inconstitutionnelles, et ce quand bien même il a accepté de promulguer la loi en question. Une telle pratique peut sembler contraire à l’esprit même de la Constitution américaine, qui contraint le président à « veiller à la fidèle exécution des lois » qu’il promulgue sans lui laisser la possibilité de sélectionner au sein desdites lois les disposions qu’il souhaite ou ne souhaite pas voir appliquées.A travers un travail de comparaison des déclarations de promulgation de George W. Bush à celles de ses prédécesseurs à la Maison-Blanche et une analyse de la capacité théorique et pratique de cet outil présidentiel à influer sur le processus d’exécution des lois, on se proposera de démontrer que les déclarations de promulgation sont davantage l’outil rhétorique d’une affirmation des pouvoirs de la présidence visant à renforcer cette dernière sur le long terme qu’un levier d’action immédiate permettant à la présidence de mettre la main sur l’exécution des lois. / This thesis focuses on the use of presidential signing statements by the Bush 43 Administration. Presidential signing statements are written documents that allow the President to give his opinion of a bill he signed into law and to say that even though he willingly signed the law, he does not necessarily plan on executing all of its provisions as he believes some of them to be potentially unconstitutional. Such a behavior may seem problematic constitutionally speaking as the American Constitution forces the President to « faithfully execute the laws » without affording him the opportunity to pick and choose the provisions he wants to execute.Through a comparison with the signing statements of previous presidents as well as an analysis of both the theoretical and practical capacity of presidential signing statements to allow the President to control the execution of the laws, this thesis will describe signing statements as tools of the rhetorical presidency that allow the executive to assert and defend its constitutional prerogatives in order to strengthen them in the long run, rather than weapons of the administrative presidency with an immediate effect on the execution of the laws.