POS3413: The American Presidency

Course Description

POS3413 The American Presidency examines the constitutional office, the institution that has grown up around it, and the individuals who have occupied it — and the relationship among those three things is the course's central problem. The Constitution's description of executive power is remarkably brief; what the presidency has become was built afterwards, by statute, by practice, by crisis, and by the ambitions of particular people.

The course is offered at approximately seven Florida institutions, including the University of West Florida, the University of Central Florida, the University of North Florida, Florida International University and Florida A&M University.

At the University of West Florida the course is titled The Presidency and offered by the Department of Government. UWF's description sets out the structure directly and unusually conversationally: the course begins with a critical overview of the constitutional parameters of the executive office — what the founders expected from an executive — then examines how the presidential institution has evolved since the founding, noting that the presidency occupies a somewhat different place now in our separated system of branches sharing power than it once did, and gives particular attention to how individual presidents have impacted the scope and direction of the office.

That phrase — "separated system of branches sharing power" — is the analytical frame the course is built on, and it is worth understanding before the first class. The familiar description of American government as "separation of powers" is misleading. The Constitution does not assign each branch a distinct sphere; it gives each branch a share of the others' functions. The president can veto legislation; the Senate confirms appointments and ratifies treaties; Congress controls appropriations; courts review executive action. What the system actually separates is institutions, and what it shares is power — which means presidential power is fundamentally about persuading, bargaining and manoeuvring rather than commanding.

The scholarly literature on the presidency turns on that point. The classic account holds that presidential power is the power to persuade — that a president's formal authority is thin, and their effectiveness depends on professional reputation and public prestige. Later work emphasises the substantial unilateral capacity presidents have developed through executive orders, memoranda, signing statements, administrative rulemaking and control of the executive branch. Both are true, and the tension between them organises the modern field. A student who finishes this course should be able to say when each account applies.

The course also has an unavoidable contemporary edge. Questions about the scope of executive authority, the boundaries of presidential immunity, the use of emergency powers, the politics of impeachment, and the durability of institutional norms are not settled historical matters — they are live constitutional controversies. A good version of this course treats them analytically rather than as partisan positions, and students of every political disposition should expect to have their assumptions examined rather than confirmed.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Explain the constitutional design of the executive office, the debates at the Constitutional Convention that produced it, and the arguments advanced for it in the ratification debates.
• Analyse the powers granted to the president by Article II, and distinguish enumerated, implied and claimed inherent powers.
• Trace the historical development of the presidency, and explain the conditions under which the office expanded.
• Explain the concept of a separated system of branches sharing power, and analyse presidential-congressional relations within it.
• Analyse the sources and limits of presidential power, including the distinction between the power to persuade and unilateral action.
• Explain the structure of the modern presidential establishment — the Executive Office of the President, the White House staff, the cabinet, and the relationship between the president and the bureaucracy.
• Analyse the presidential selection process: nomination, primaries and caucuses, the general election, the Electoral College, and the consequences of each stage's design.
• Analyse the relationship between the president and public opinion, including approval dynamics, the rally effect, and the limits of "going public" as a strategy.
• Analyse presidential relations with the media and the evolution of presidential communication.
• Explain the president's role in the legislative process, including agenda setting, the veto and veto threats, and bargaining with Congress.
• Analyse unilateral presidential action — executive orders, proclamations, memoranda, signing statements, administrative direction — and the constraints on it.
• Explain presidential power in foreign affairs and as commander in chief, and analyse the war powers question.
• Analyse judicial checks on the presidency, including the major separation-of-powers cases.
• Explain accountability mechanisms — oversight, investigation, impeachment, elections — and assess their effectiveness.
• Evaluate competing scholarly theories of presidential power and apply them to specific administrations.
• Construct an evidence-based argument about presidential power or performance in writing.

Optional Outcomes

• Conduct a comparative analysis of two or more presidencies.
• Apply political time and regime theory to place a presidency in historical context.
• Analyse the vice presidency and its transformation.
• Analyse the first spouse's institutional role.
• Analyse presidential rhetoric as a distinct object of study.
• Analyse presidential transitions and the problems of the early months.
• Compare the American presidency with executives in other democratic systems.
• Conduct original research using presidential archives or quantitative datasets.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Constitutional foundations. The Convention's debates over a single versus plural executive, selection method and term; the deliberate vagueness of Article II; the executive power clause and the arguments over its meaning; Federalist 70 and the case for energy in the executive; the anti-federalist fear of monarchy.
• Historical development. Washington's precedents; the Jacksonian expansion of the popular mandate; Lincoln and emergency power; the late nineteenth-century congressional ascendancy; the creation of the modern presidency under the two Roosevelts and the New Deal; the growth of the national security state after 1945; the "imperial presidency" critique and the post-Watergate reaction; the administrative presidency and the continuing expansion of unilateral capacity.
• Theories of presidential power. The power to persuade, professional reputation and public prestige; the unilateral politics literature; the two-presidencies thesis on foreign versus domestic power; political time and the recurring pattern of reconstructive, articulative and disjunctive presidencies; the personal presidency and its expectations gap.
• The institutional presidency. The Executive Office of the President and its growth; the White House staff and its organisation; the National Security Council; the Office of Management and Budget as an instrument of presidential control; the cabinet and its limited utility; centralisation and politicisation as strategies of control.
• Selection. The nomination process and the shift to primaries; money, media and momentum; the party's diminished gatekeeping role; the general election campaign; the Electoral College — its design, its consequences, the reform arguments; the transition period.
• Public opinion and communication. Presidential approval and its determinants — economy, war, scandal, honeymoon; the rally-round-the-flag effect and its decay; going public as a strategy and the evidence on whether it works; the rise of partisan polarisation and its effect on approval, which has compressed the range within which presidential popularity moves; press relations from the press conference to social media.
• The president and Congress. Agenda setting and the honeymoon; legislative skills and their limits; the veto, veto threats and override politics; divided government and its consequences; the role of party polarisation; the budget process and appropriations as the central congressional check.
• Unilateral action. Executive orders and their legal basis; proclamations and memoranda; signing statements; administrative rulemaking and regulatory review; personnel and appointment strategies; recess appointments; the durability problem — what one president does by order the next can undo.
• Foreign policy and war powers. The commander-in-chief clause; the treaty power and executive agreements; recognition and diplomacy; the War Powers Resolution and the debate over its effectiveness; congressional authorisation for the use of force; covert action and intelligence oversight.
• The president and the courts. Judicial appointments as a presidential legacy; the major separation-of-powers decisions, including the steel seizure case and its still-controlling framework, the Nixon tapes case, and more recent decisions on executive privilege and immunity; the executive's role in litigation through the Solicitor General.
• Accountability. Congressional oversight and investigation; executive privilege and its limits; the inspector general system; impeachment — the constitutional standard, the process, and the historical record; the electoral check and its limits in a second term.
• Evaluating presidents. Greatness rankings and their methodological problems; the difficulty of separating skill from circumstance; the counterfactual problem in assessing presidential decisions.

Optional Topics

• The vice presidency and its modern transformation into a substantive office.
• The first spouse and the institutional East Wing.
• Presidential rhetoric and the rhetorical presidency thesis.
• Presidential character and psychology, and the difficulties of that literature.
• Presidential libraries, records law and the historical record.
• Comparative executives: parliamentary prime ministers, semi-presidential systems.
• Crisis decision making and case studies.
• The presidency and race, gender and representation.

Resources & Tools

• The American Presidency: Origins and Development by Milkis and Nelson — the standard developmental history and the most widely assigned single text for this course.
• The Politics of the Presidency by Pika, Maltese and Rudalevige (CQ Press) — comprehensive and current, organised institutionally.
• Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents by Richard Neustadt — the foundational work; his argument that presidential power is the power to persuade defined the field, and it is still assigned in excerpt everywhere.
• The Politics Presidents Make by Stephen Skowronek — the political time framework; demanding and influential.
• With the Stroke of a Pen by Kenneth Mayer and By Order of the President by Phillip Cooper — the unilateral action literature; Going Public by Samuel Kernell on the communication strategy.
• The Imperial Presidency by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. — the classic critique, historically important and worth reading as a document of its moment as well as an argument.
• Primary sources — all free and all worth using directly:
  • The American Presidency Project (UC Santa Barbara) — an exceptional free archive of public papers, executive orders, proclamations, press conferences, statements and approval data going back to Washington. This is the single most useful research resource for this course and it is unusual in being both comprehensive and genuinely open.
  • The Federalist Papers, particularly 67–77 on the executive.
  • Federal Register for executive orders and rulemaking; Congress.gov for legislation and vetoes.
  • Presidential libraries (National Archives) — digitised documents and oral histories.
  • Supreme Court opinions in the separation-of-powers cases, which are readable and are better read than summarised.
• Data: Gallup and other approval series; the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, which publishes presidential oral histories, essays and recordings; Pew and ANES survey data; the Comparative Agendas Project.
• Journals: Presidential Studies Quarterly, American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Congress & the Presidency.

Career Pathways

Political science courses connect to careers through the analytical and writing skills they build and through the substantive knowledge required in government and politics work.

• Law — the most common destination for political science majors; constitutional and administrative law connect directly to this course's material, and the separation-of-powers cases studied here are law school reading.
• Political Scientists (SOC 19-3094) — requires a doctorate for academic positions; also employed in research organisations and government.
• Legislative and executive staff — congressional and state legislative offices, committee staff, agency public affairs and policy roles; these hire at the bachelor's level and are the standard entry into government careers.
• Federal government careers — the Presidential Management Fellows programme is the flagship entry route for graduate degree holders, and the competitive service hires bachelor's graduates across agencies.
• Campaign and political consulting — a real industry with an unusual hiring pattern: campaigns hire quickly, at low pay, and on demonstrated willingness to work; a student who volunteers on a Florida campaign has a credible route in.
• Public Relations Specialists (SOC 27-3031) and government affairs; lobbying and advocacy, including at the state level in Tallahassee.
• Journalists (SOC 27-3023) covering politics and government.
• Intelligence and foreign affairs — the Foreign Service, intelligence agencies, and the defence policy community; note that Florida's concentration of military commands makes the state a substantial employer in this space.
• Non-profit and advocacy organisations; Secondary social studies teachers (SOC 25-2031) with Florida certification.

Florida's political employment is larger than students assume. Tallahassee is a full state capital with a legislature, executive agencies, a substantial lobbying corps, trade associations and political consultancies — and it is one of the more accessible capitals in the country for student internships. Florida's status as the largest swing state for much of the past quarter-century means presidential campaigns, party organisations and consulting firms maintain year-round Florida operations, which is genuinely unusual and creates opportunities that students in most states do not have. Add congressional district offices across the state, county and municipal government, the state's universities and think tanks, and a large advocacy sector.

Practical advice: intern. The Florida Legislature runs an internship programme during session, congressional offices take interns year-round in Washington and in district offices, and campaigns take volunteers constantly. In this field the internship is not a supplement to the degree; it is how people get hired, and Florida offers more of these opportunities per student than almost any other state.

Special Information

Course title variation

The statewide title is The American Presidency; the University of West Florida titles POS 3413 simply The Presidency. This is trivial drift — the subject is identical, and no version of this course covers non-American executives except in a comparative unit. Search by number.

Related numbers worth distinguishing: POS 3424 and similar numbers for the legislative branch, POS 3283 or equivalents for the judiciary and constitutional law, and POS 2041 (American National Government), the introductory survey that most institutions require before this course. The presidency, Congress and the courts are usually three separate upper-division courses, and a student who wants a full picture of the separated system should plan for more than one.

Prerequisites and position in the curriculum

UWF lists no prerequisite for POS 3413. Practice statewide commonly requires POS 2041 (American National Government) or equivalent, and sometimes junior standing. The introductory survey is genuinely useful preparation — this course assumes familiarity with the constitutional structure, the legislative process and the party system, and develops none of them from scratch.

The course is an upper-division elective in political science, normally taken in the junior or senior year, and is a common elective for students in history, communication, criminal justice, public administration and pre-law. It pairs naturally with courses on Congress, constitutional law, public policy and campaigns and elections.

Articulation and transfer

POS3413 carries the same SCNS number across Florida public institutions and SCNS equivalency governs transfer of the credit. As an upper-division course it does not appear in A.A. programmes and is taken after transfer. It transfers straightforwardly; the receiving department determines whether it satisfies a subfield requirement, which for an American politics elective is rarely contentious.

Course format and workload

Three credit hours, approximately 45 contact hours, taught as lecture and discussion; online sections are common. Assessment normally combines examinations with essay components, analytical papers, and often a research paper on a specific president, power or controversy. Expect six to nine hours a week outside class, weighted toward reading.

A research suggestion worth taking: the American Presidency Project makes it genuinely easy for an undergraduate to do original work — counting and coding executive orders, tracing the language of signing statements across administrations, or tracking how a particular claim of authority developed over time. That is real research using primary documents, it is more interesting than summarising the literature, and instructors generally welcome it.

⚠ Teaching a politically charged subject

This course covers material about which students hold strong prior commitments, and it examines recent and ongoing controversies over executive authority. Two things are worth saying plainly.

First, the analytical questions are genuinely separable from the partisan ones, and the course's value depends on making that separation. Whether a particular use of emergency powers was constitutionally sound is a question about text, precedent and institutional practice — and answering it consistently means reaching the same conclusion regardless of which party's president acted. A recurring finding in the scholarly literature is that assessments of presidential power correlate strongly with whether one's own party holds the office, among the public and, less excusably, among commentators. The discipline's standard is consistency across administrations, and students should expect to be held to it.

Second, the historical perspective is genuinely clarifying. Claims that a particular development is unprecedented are usually wrong; the expansion of executive power has been a two-century process advanced by presidents of every party, and nearly every contemporary controversy has antecedents. That observation does not settle whether any particular action was justified — but it reframes the question from "is this outrageous" to "what changed, when, and under what conditions", which is a question that can actually be answered.

AI Integration

Two distinct connections belong in this course: what these systems mean for the presidency as an institution, and what they mean for studying it.

The institutional questions are live and are genuinely the course's subject matter. The executive branch is deploying AI across agencies, which raises questions about administrative capacity and about the president's control of the bureaucracy — a central theme of the modern presidency literature. Executive orders and agency guidance have become a primary instrument of national AI policy, which makes AI regulation a live example of unilateral action: policy made by order rather than statute, effective immediately and reversible by the next administration. That is a textbook illustration of both the power and the fragility of unilateral governance, and it is a better contemporary example than most textbooks contain.

The campaign and communication side is equally on-topic. Synthetic audio and video of candidates, automated persuasion at scale, and the erosion of the shared factual record all bear on the course's public opinion and communication units. A more subtle point worth raising in discussion: the credible existence of synthetic media damages accountability in both directions — fabricated evidence can be presented as real, and genuine evidence can be dismissed as fabricated. For an office whose accountability depends substantially on the public record, that is a structural problem rather than a technical one.

For studying the presidency, the tools help unevenly. They explain a concept, summarise a scholarly debate, and help structure an argument. They are useful for orienting yourself in an unfamiliar literature. They are unreliable on specifics in ways that matter here: they misattribute executive orders, invent quotations from presidents, misstate the holdings of separation-of-powers cases, and confuse the details of legislative and constitutional history. On recent events they are limited by their training horizon and will state things that have since changed.

The verification standard in this subject is unusually easy to meet, which removes any excuse. The American Presidency Project has the actual text of the executive order. Congress.gov has the actual bill. The Supreme Court publishes the actual opinion. Every claim in a submitted paper should rest on a primary document you have opened, and in this field they are all one search away and free.

One genuinely valuable research application deserves mention. Computational text analysis of the presidential record — the full corpus of public papers, executive orders, press conferences and speeches — is an established scholarly method, and the corpus is public. Measuring how presidential rhetoric has changed, tracking the frequency and scope of unilateral directives across administrations, or comparing the language of signing statements is real political science that an undergraduate can now attempt. The tools make the counting feasible; the research question and the interpretation remain yours, which is the right division of labour and a good thing for a student to experience directly.