Term Paper Assignment for PS408

The American Presidency

Fall, 2007

General Description

             The purpose of this paper is to allow you to demonstrate your newly acquired knowledge about the presidency. In this paper you will analyze one presidential candidate and predict their performance as president in their first term. You must assume that your candidate is going to win, however, you do not have to pick a “first-tier” candidates who has a realistic chances of winning. That is, this part of the paper does not have to be realistic – if you want to write about President Gravel or President Paul, that is fine. In analyzing the likely performance of your president you will use the different theoretical perspectives (and any other readings) from this class. What does Barber's theory about presidential personality, Maraniss’s work on Clinton, Neustadt's theory about presidential power, the rational choice approach, Skowronek's "political time," or the constitutional approach tell us about how your candidate will perform in office? Some of the approaches, such as the historical and constitutional approaches, will not vary much with the candidate you choose (however, there could be some differences between Democrats and Republicans for Skorownek’s “political time” theory). In the paper your analysis should be based on at least two different approaches. Alternatively, you could examine two candidates and one approach.

Organization of the Paper

             This paper should accomplish several things. First, you should briefly describe the theories or approaches you have chosen (or the single theory, if you choose that option). What do these approaches say, and how do they help explain presidential behavior more generally? This part of the paper may be limited to the readings that we covered in the course, but you should feel free to consult the broader literature on the topic if you think you require more background. The second part of the paper, which will comprise the body of the paper, will be your analysis of your future president. It will be very important to provide specific evidence for your analysis that is drawn from the public record and from the media's coverage of the candidate(s) you choose to examine (more on that below). You will need to gather evidence that supports your predictions about how your candidate will behave in office.

             The first part of the paper should be about two to three pages long and the second part about seven or eight pages. Overall I expect the papers to be about ten pages long (double-spaced, typed).

Honors Papers

             To receive honors credit for the course you will do a similar paper, but analyze two presidential candidates with at least two theoretical approaches. The honors papers will be about 20 pages.

Resources

     There are a variety of resources available in the University Libraries, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Internet that will prove useful in completing your paper. The following sources are suggested:

A) Periodicals provide good in-depth and sophisticated coverage of the presidential campaign. The library has hard copies of the following (in addition to hundreds of others) and many of them are available on ProQuest, an online database that is available through the library’s web site:

  Atlantic Monthly      Nation             Harper's                         National Journal

  Commentary      Congressional Digest    The Public Interest        Congressional Quarterly

  Public Opinion       New Republic       National Review                         Weekly Reports

B) Newspapers – The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, LA Times are good sources for basic information on the campaign. These papers may all be found on the Internet or you may do subject searches through Nexis/Lexis on the library’s web site. Some of the newspapers’ web sites charge you for access to archived articles, so Nexis/Lexis is the best bet if you run into that problem.

C) The internet. There are literally hundreds of web sites that may be useful to you. A good place to start would be each of the candidate’s web site (here is a web site that has links to all of the candidates: http://www.4president.org/ocmi2008.htm, the Washington Post also has a good web site on the candidates:http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/). The Center for Responsive Politics has data on campaign finance for each of the candidates (http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.asp), there are various “ad watch” groups that monitor candidates’ ads (such as http://campaignadwatch.com/), plus YouTube has most of the ads). Project Vote Smart is a great resource with a variety of information about the campaign (http://www.vote-smart.org/election_president.php) All of the polls may be found at:

 http://www.pollingreport.com/2008.htm. This is just a selection of some of the good sites. I am sure that you will find many others.

Ground Rules

A) The paper should be about 10 pages in length (double-spaced pages with a 12 font and one-inch margins).

B) Papers are due on December 6^th in class. Late papers will be penalized five points a day. On a 100-point scale this is about a half a letter grade per day, so you can see it is to your advantage to get them done on time.

C) Grades for the paper will be based on the clarity of your presentation, the consistency of your analysis, and persuasiveness of your evidence and conclusion, and the range of sources consulted.

D) Documentation is required. All sources you use in writing the paper should be listed in a bibliography and all references and quotes cited in the text of the paper. You may use any standard form of citation: footnotes, endnotes, or in-text citations; if you are not sure about how this works see the UW Writing Center’s web page, “FAQs About Documenting Sources,” http://www.wisc.edu/writing/FAQ/documentation.html). You should have at least ten sources.

E) Needless to say, this is to be your own work, which means that plagiarism of published work (both hard copy and electronic) or of your peers' work is obviously not allowed. If you have any questions about what constitutes plagiarism see the UW Academic Misconduct Guide http://www.wisc.edu/students/amsum.htm, the Writing Center ( http://www.wisc.edu/writing), or ask me or Adam for help. Plagiarism is a very serious offense and may be grounds for failing the class or other disciplinary action, including expulsion from the University.