| General Information Sources | Specific Topics (A to Z) | Modern Presidents from FDR to the Present |
Following are presidential websites with descriptions
of what you'll find there. Please feel free to make serious suggestions for additions,
deletions, or descriptive revisions in these sites by e-mailing me at
rdrenka@semo.edu. I welcome anything to improve the quality
and usefulness of this list.
A note on internal navigation: since this is a
single large text file, I recommend using a browser's "Find" operation with
pasted terms rather than using a system of internal bookmarks. There are
too many terms in here to warrant easy upkeep of a search function, and it's
unnecessary. You can navigate via Find in any widely used browser,
including Explorer, Opera, Netscape, or Firefox (my favorite). Where
several entries are closely related, I close the topic statement with citation
of the other topics for review.
Russell Renka
American Political History and Politics web resources (Richard Jensen):
Jensen's American
Political History On-Line by Richard Jensen at University
of Illinois at Chicago Circle is very comprehensive on historical periods
organized by presidential administrations. See also
Guide to Political Research Guide
On-Line
with section on the presidency at
21. Presidents.
But many of these links are now outdated (RDR - 2 August 2007).
The American
Presidency: A Glorious Burden:
The Smithsonian Institute has very
brief coverage of each president and his historical period, with some teaching
materials and aids added on.
The American Presidency
Project:
This estimable John Woolley and Gerhard Peters enterprise (at University
of California at Santa Barbara) features a Document Archive
with 17 categories of important materials, in this order:
American President An Online Reference Resource:
The Miller Center
of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia sponsors this site. It covers all 43 presidents by historical period
with biographical background, Cabinet information, and essays on major
aspects of that Administration and historical period. This was formerly
labeled AmericanPresident.org, but that site no longer exists.
Events in Presidential History
goes up to August now with a handful from each month (RDR - August 2007).
American President - The President at Work covers 7 pertinent categories of
modern presidential activity: domestic policy, economic policy,
legislative affairs, national security, presidential politics, administration of
the government, and administration of the White House.
The
Presidential Oral History Program has four "Presidential Projects" on
Carter,
Reagan,
George H.W. Bush, and
William J. Clinton. Also see the "News and Events" site.
The Oral History includes non-presidential material, including a project on Senator
Edward M. Kennedy.
The Presidential Recordings Project (PRP) has transcript and audio clips of nearly
5000 hours of presidential conversations from Roosevelt in 1940 through Nixon in
1973. Don't miss the selected Multimedia Clips or the Virtual Exhibits of major events.
In summer 2007 a new Transcript site is on hand, at
Home Page -
Presidential Recordings Program or (by their filename)
PRP
TRANSCRIPTS PORTAL. Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon are the feature sites,
as that's where the great bulk of recordings originate.
PBS sites:
The American Experience - The Presidents: PBS/WGBH has published 11
films in The American Experience series. All 43 presidents are referenced
here with brief summations.
THE AMERICAN
PRESIDENT
PBS/WNET series covers 10 presidents by topical groupings of four each,
in a sequence of 10 episodes.
POTUS - Presidents of the United States:
This Internet Public
Library site has chronological listing of each president. Also use
their indices for Names, Subjects and Topics. Note: recent
evidence from examining their Biographies list (in January 2005) demonstrates
that this site isn't being kept current.
Presidents of the United States
CB Presidential Research Services has 48 (that's right!) alphabetically organized topics,
followed at file's bottom by a tabular list of all individual presidents by
chronology from Washington through GWBush. Very comprehensive. But a
fairly high proportion of their links are broken, so take this site's dead-end
filenames as Google queries and you'll find some of them (but ignore the back
reference to this same file site).
Resource Lists:
The University of Michigan
Documents Center's
Federal
Government Resources on the Web/President has annotated links to numerous
presidential sources, including documents such as Executive Orders and
intelligence activities.
The President's Page by history teacher Terry Jordan maintains extensive
links, including some for kids; but there's a full bucket of obsolete and dead
links.
PresidentS:
The Presidency Research Group's jointly administered site (see
PRESIDENT
Information for full credits) has supplements from original archival
sources. See
The Presidential Sites -- Specific Presidents for all 42 presidents (nothing
so far on G.W. Bush) with biographies, links to libraries and/or National
Archives presidential papers projects, articles, photographs, and numerous audio
and video materials on recent presidents. But many links are now outdated
or no longer operative. Also see
The
Presidential Sites -- General Sites for other links such as Mount Rushmore
National Park, presidential inaugural addresses from Columbia University, the
Internet Public Library's POTUS site, and historical documents at the Carrie
Electronic Library of the University of Kansas.
Specific Topics (A to Z): Top
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M |
| N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Appointment and Confirmation of Presidential Personnel:
The web isn't rich on this subject compared to professional journals, but there are a few documents and resources worth investigating.
Start with The Plum Book listing of positions. The quadrennial
Plum Book 2008
Edition, Plum
Book 2004 Edition and
Plum Book 2000
Edition are available in pdf or text from these links.
Plum Book: About
lists "over 7,000 Federal civil service leadership and support positions in the
legislative and executive branches of the Federal Government that may be subject
to noncompetitive appointment, nationwide." In other words, these are the
plum politically appointed posts.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) document
Transition to a New
Presidential Administration: Individuals Appointed by the President has
brief coverage of major laws and court cases pertaining to presidential
appointments. See also
Transition to a New
Presidential Administration: Appointees in the Senior Executive Service.
The GAO has Presidential Appointments: Agencies' Compliance With
Provisions of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998.
Each Congress since 1969 has a Resume of Activity with "Disposition of Executive
Nominations." The Index of
Resumes catalogues these by Congress from the 91st (1969-70) through the
108th Congress (2003-2004).
John T. Isaacson's
Presidential-Appointments.org
has contemporary news on many Bush Administration appointment and confirmation
troubles, at
PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTEES IN TROUBLE. Caveat emptor.
This is not a new problem suddenly appearing full-blown in
2001. See Calvin MacKenzie's
Starting Over:
The Presidential Appointment Process in 1997 (full text), sponsored by The
Century Foundation.
These are related topics within this file:
Inaugurations, Interregnums, Office of Personnel Management, Recess
Appointments, Successions, Transitions.
Approval Ratings of Presidents:
This is a standard "job approval" poll rating of presidents,
often mixed with terms like "presidential performance" and "presidential
popularity." All three terms at Google will pull up these data sources.
Composite presidential approval polls (in listed or tabular
form) are at:
Graphics on Bush and earlier presidential approval are at:
Job Approval
Ratings is "a unique depository for job approval ratings
obtained at the state level for state Governors, U.S. Senators and U.S.
Presidents from the mid-1900s to today" (Niemi, Beyle and Sigelman).
This permits sophisticated comparing of presidential approval ratings to those
of other individual politicians.
When using Google or other searches for other sites, use "job approval" in
the search to separate references from election polls.
Pollster.com and
Pollster.com Blogs from Mark Blumenthal, Charles Franklin, and many informed guest bloggers
provide insights to interpreting polls.
See also in this file: Greatness of Presidents; Ratings and rankings of
presidents; Rally Effects.
Archives on Audio/Video:
Press
- Presidential Libraries of the National Archives Launch Podcast on 2 August
2007 announced that The
Presidential Timeline of the Twentieth Century will start podcasting a
series called “Presidential Archives Uncovered” via audio clips from the
Libraries’ collections.
Also see in this file: Presidential Libraries,
Timelines.
Arms Control:
The Federation of American Scientists site is
Official
Documents on Special Weapons and Ballistic Missile Defenses. This
includes the most extensive sites on the web for Strategic Defense Initiative (aka
"Star Wars") since the Reagan period. File is divided by document sets
dating back to the Truman Administration, but only those since 1982 with Reagan
are available on line. Arms Control
Agreements shows arms control treaties, executive agreements, and laws.
Artists' depictions of Presidents:
The Artful Presidency
from Smithsonian Archives of American Art has a
List of Presidents
(ending with Carter in 1977-1981) with samples from each. Reagan doodles
are elsewhere, at
ABC News - The History of White House Doodles.
Assassinations, Assassination Attempts, and Security measures:
This is a thriving cottage industry on and off the web. Here's some more
or less reputable sites. I've combed these to keep out the conspiracy
junk. On Kennedy 1963, Reagan 1981, or other specific events, use that
name plus the terms cited above on Google.
Astrology:
Formerly on the web were links to revelations that First
Lady Nancy Reagan had consulted an astrologer to decide scheduling for President
Reagan after his 30 March 1981 gunshot injury. Nowadays most web links are
from astrologers themselves. Many of them promise special insights on the
presidency. You're strictly on your own with those.
B Return to Specific Topics (A to Z)
Baseball and presidents:
Not for scholars,
perhaps, but presidents often appear at or comment on the national pastime.
See this at
Baseball Almanac - U.S. Presidents Menu.
Bibliography of the presidency:
See
US Presidents 1901 to Present from Miami University's Digital Library.
Biographies of presidents:
A very good series is the Miller Center's
American President An Online Reference Resource. Click on a president,
then scroll down to "Essays on ..." and do "A Life in Brief" plus "Life Before
the Presidency" and others (Death, Family Life, Impact and Legacy).
Elsewhere, Presidential Biography from CB Presidential Research
Services has references, but it's heavy on popular work and lighter on scholarly works.
Blair House:
Washington, D.C. --
Blair Lee House is the President's official guest house,
located at 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue across from the White House itself.
President Truman resided there for three years while the White House was
extensively renovated. Visiting heads of state and other dignitaries often
reside here on trips to see the President.
The Brownlow Commission, or President's Committee on Administrative Management (1937):
See
Franklin D. Roosevelt Summary of the Report of the Committee on Administrative
Management - January 12th, 1937 from The American Presidency Project.
Chairman Louis Brownlow's papers at the University of Chicago include a
biographical brief at
Guide to
the Louis Brownlow Diaries 1933-1936.
Budget information, federal government:
Government links include
the executive Office of Management and Budget (Welcome to the
OMB Home Page Executive Office of the President) and the congressional
Congressional Budget Office.
Contrast of the two since frequent periods of divided government have been very
interesting, and sometimes informative.
Federal Budget
Information from the Concord Coalition demonstrates
relationships between expenditures and revenues.
See below in this file: Debt,
Federal; and Deficits, Federal.
C Return to Specific Topics (A to Z)
Cabinets:
See
Presidents' Cabinet and
Staff from CB Presidential Research Services.
A brief explanation of the presidential Cabinet is at
Encyclopedia
Americana-Cabinet of the United States. The current Cabinet with links
to each Department is located at
President Bush's
Cabinet.
Camp David:
The Maryland mountain retreat has been important to modern presidents
since Franklin Roosevelt in the wartime 1940s, and especially so as renowned
site of the Carter Administration's Camp David Accords of 1979. Google has
trouble sorting these two out, as its history is both that of true retreat and
as locus of intensive personal diplomacy. That's shown in its mix of
Image Results of Camp David. Best search remedy is to include
"presidential retreat" in the query. This R and R side is exhibited by
usnews.com Photography - Gallery Presidential Retreats (5-9-05).
The site's history is shown in
Catoctin Mountain
Park - Presidential Retreat (U.S. National Park Service) and also
Retreat from
the National Park Service. See also
Journey Through Hallowed Ground - Camp David - A Presidential retreat in
Catoctin Mountain Park.
Camp David A History of the Presidential Retreat by David Johnson captures
some of its highlights. Brief coverage of the site is in Infoplease,
Camp David: A History
of the Presidential Retreat. Its background as a military retreat
(originally run by the U.S. Navy) is shown by Federation of Atomic Scientists'
Camp David,
and by GlobalSecurity.org's
Camp David,
Thurmont Pennsylvania- United States Nuclear Forces.
Camp David Accords:
Use this full term plus "Carter Center" at
Google.
Campaigns for the Presidency:
Historical
coverage of past campaigns is extensive. See
Presidential Campaigns,
Conventions, and Elections with many links to conventions, campaigns, and
primaries. America Votes:
Presidential Campaign Memorabilia from Duke Special Collections is an
interesting collection of historical photographs with text on presidential
campaigns. Links are plentiful.
For a current campaign,
Project Vote Smart
is excellent for congressional
election inquiries as well as presidential ones; it's
nonpartisan and insightful on issue surveying of candidates.
See elsewhere in this file: Campaign Commercials;
Debates; several
files under "Election" headings; National Nominating Conventions.
Campaign Commercials:
The Living Room Candidate
is the definitive site. It has commercials in each election from the dawn of
televised ads in 1952 through 2004. Each year is divided by party. Many famous
ads such as the 1964
"Daisy Girl" are featured.
A Historical Look
at Campaign Commercials has a sampling from 1952 onward, as part of their
"Road to the Presidency" course materials taught at the University of Delaware
by Joseph Pika and Ralph Begleiter.
AllPolitics -
Ad Archive has a delightful collection of 11 commercials dating from 1952
through 1988, covering Eisenhower, Stevenson, Kennedy, Nixon, Agnew, Humphrey,
Johnson, Reagan, Bush, Quayle and Dukakis.
PBS sites
The 30
Second Candidate: From Idea to Ad does exposition of an early classic
ad, the 1952 "Eisenhower Answers America" ad.
The 30 Second
Candidate: Historical Timeline 1948-2000 shows other ads and
highlights the progression of this technology.
Campaign Debates:
See "Debates" from this site (under letter D below).
Campaign Finance in Presidential Elections:
Cancellations, Presidential:
See Line Item Veto in this file
(under letter L).
Cartoons about presidents and presidential elections:
These are
everywhere on the web, but are rarely organized by subject. The
Busse Library Web (Webliography:
Political Cartoons) at Mount Mercy College is a good entree site.
For modern presidents, Herb Block was a leader.
OnPolitics (washingtonpost.com) has Herb Block's 50-year career divided by
decades from 1946 through 1995, with cartoons plus essays and a biography.
Also see Herblock's
Presidents (Herblock's History Political Cartoons from the Crash to the
Millennium, Library of Congress Exhibition).
Also,
HallToons has extensive
cartoons, a hefty proportion involving one or another president. The site
Click2History - Political Cartoons of American Presidents - Chapter 1 - Preface
from Carole D. Bos has nice links and interesting contextual material on several
modern presidents.
J.N."Ding"
Darling Foundation exhibits his work from T.R. through
Truman.
Harpers Weekly Elections Homepage has an election overview,
cartoons, biographies of candidates, and events for each presidential election
from 1860 to 1912.
Included are cartoons from Thomas Nast during the earlier elections. The 1876 edition has the infamous
Hayes vs. Tilden: The Electoral College Controversy of 1876-1877.
Case Law on the modern presidency:
The Legal Information
Institute site at Cornell has a list
here of major cases from 1829 through 1937. Look
here for cases starting at 1942 and concluding with 1998 and Clinton v. City
of New York (the item veto case). This site is framed, so I separated the
two lists for convenience. Each case is linked to a site with title, case
information, and syllabus. Many of the famous cases are included--Prize
Cases, Milligan, Myers, Humphrey's Executor, Curtiss-Wright, and so forth to
more recent ones. Not all presidential cases are here, but all here are
certainly presidential.
Center for the Study of the Presidency:
The Center is an important scholarly organization that publishes
Presidential
Studies Quarterly (see also Blackwell's
Presidential Studies Quarterly - Journal Information), the Center sponsors
Agenda 2008:
A National at Risk.
Character, personality and temperament of Presidents:
Robert A.
Wilson's Character Above All:
An Exploration of Presidential Leadership has
Essays for 10 modern
presidents from FDR through George Bush. Each has occasional links to
pertinent websites. See also
Character Above All
Overview by Robert Wilson.
The US Presidents - The
History Project - Character in Time plans to have 40 plays, each to
highlight the persona of one president. They've approached 10 completed
works in summer 2007.
The James David Barber typology of presidential character is
applied by John Dean to George W. Bush at
FindLaw's Writ - Dean
Predicting Presidential Performance.
Chief of Staff (White House Chief of Staff):
The White House Chief of Staff is the top official in the
Executive Office of the President.
White House Chief of Staff - Wikipedia covers many details well.
White House Staff in the Obama Administration covers this office.
Audio/video interviews conducted on June 15, 2000 with ten
former White House Chiefs of Staff are at Rice
University TV Archive - White House Chiefs of Staff - June 15 2000.
The G2 multistream formatted video clips cover approximately 10 hours from this
daylong event.
Inventory of postwar Chiefs of Staff is
White House Chief of Staff from NNDB.
See also in this file:
Executive Office of the President;
White House; White House Office.
CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates:
CIA Briefings of
Presidential Candidates covers 1952-1992 in 7 chapters on 9 presidential
transitions of these years. The 1996 author is John L. Helgerson with the Center for the Study
of Intelligence. Coverage starts with Truman, with whom the CIA was
founded in 1947. Some are exceptionally detailed, including a section on
the Kennedy 1960 and 1961 briefings that brought controversy with the Bay of
Pigs; see
Chapter 3
-- Into Politics With Kennedy and Johnson.
CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates from The National Security Archives
(George Washington University) is a duplicate site.
See also in this file: Transitions.
Coins, stamps and medals bearing a presidential likeness:
The U.S. Mint in 2007 launched the
Presidential $1 Coins
series. Our first four come up that year, so devotees of the modern
presidency have awhile to wait. Past minting of presidential likenesses on
coins is cited at The United
States Mint Historian's Corner.
Greater detail on the 2007-launched program is
The New Presidential Dollar Coin Program Begins in 2007 from US-Coin-Values-Advisor.com.
The
Political Graveyard - Politicians Portrayed on Money has an alphabetically
ordered list with numerous presidents.
Also see:
Coins Currency and
Stamps featuring the US Presidents from CB Presidential
Research Services.
For stamp folks, a nice exhibit of each stamp with
presidential image is
Stamps with Presidents - US Presidents on Stamps from Sammler.com.
Also see United States Presidents on Stamps
(with annoying music) and
U.S. Presidents on Stamps (chronological list by president, with no music).
On medals: the U.S. Post Office and U.S. Mint jointly
sponsor Presidential Medals struck in bronze. A commercial site has these
at American Presidents
Collection.
Cold War:
The modern
presidency requires a good understanding of the tense bilateral relations of the
postwar superpower pair of U.S. and U.S.S.R. See History Server's
Cold War
Policies 1945-1991. Its nine sections contain
Outline Notes for tracking the major Cold War events and policies of this
period. Good images accompany each section of Outline Notes.
Maps of the Cold
War includes Europe in 1949, Vietnam in 1967 and 1968, and Central America
and Iran in 1987 (associated with the Iran-Contra Affair). Excellent portraits
of major presidential decisions and speeches are blended with a chronicle of
major domestic and world events under each president's
name and years. These are:
Cold War Documents:
The
Cold War International History Project by
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars is a searchable database of
primary documents with seven sections. Also see H-Net's Diplomatic History,
Documents Related to
the Cold War; and Cold War
International History Project's Cold War Files.
Cold War International History Project @ the Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars has extensive declassified documents.
Cold War - other source materials:
WWW-VL History
-United States -US Cold War History - Index is a source and documentary
clearinghouse.
The Cold War Museum
(a Smithsonian Affiliate Museum as of 2001) has timeline
organization by decade from the 1940s to 1990s with dozens of short-text files that maintain the link to other decades to ease
navigation among varied sites across subtopic and time gaps. But a
warning: much information is secondary,
and it's acutely embarrassing to find George Bush's photograph next to a Grolier
biographical brief of Ronald Reagan (at
The Cold War
Museum - Ronald Reagan).
CNN's CNN -
Cold War offers a variety of documents, maps, and documentary materials.
Some of these are useful. Another media site of value is
BBC - History - Cold
War.
A harder-edged site is
The National Archives -
Learning Curve - Cold War with entries such as
The nuclear
game - how close was it?.
Confirmations:
See above in this file, under Appointments and Confirmations.
The Congressional Record:
Congressional Record Main
Page has this sole official record from Congress of what was
said, by whom, when, and in what context (with some "editing" after the fact).
Parent page is GPO Access Home Page.
Thomas has Search
Full Text of the Congressional Record - 108th Congress
(2003-04) back to the same service for 101st Congress
(1989-90).
Constitution of the U.S. and Constitutional Provisions
on the presidency:
See
U.S. Constitution - Table of Articles from Cornell University School of Law.
Article II has useful internal links showing changes such as Amendments XII, XXII,
and XXV.
That's also evident in Constitutional Law -
MegaLaw.com - Article II.
Emory University School of Law has Constitution of the
United States with comparably useful changes in Article I.
Recent court interpretation of clauses to 2004 are in
Constitution of the
United States - Browse
by the Congressional Research Service.
A comprehensive background site is The U.S. Constitution Online -
USConstitution.net. They have
The Presidents,
Results of Presidential
Elections, Presidential
Campaigns, and Results of Electoral
College Votes in well-done formats.
Constitutional Debate in 1787:
The Avalon
Project: Notes on the Debates in the Federal Convention - Madison's Notes
is what it advertises. See their outstanding compilation of predecessor documents at
The American
Constitution - A Documentary Record. Also see Roger A. Bruns,
A More Perfect Union: The Creation of the U.S. Constitution for a more
general overview of Philadelphia deliberations.
Constitutions and presidents: "Presidential Conversations
on the Constitution":
Presidential
Conversations on the Constitution from radio/TV station WHYY has three recent in-depth
hour-length oral conversations on the Constitution with former Presidents
Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush. It
includes About The Program,
audio links to each conversation from
Radio Series,
links to a brief bio of each president,
Article II of
the Constitution, and
Inside The Presidency
with six constitutional subtopics, and
Educational
Resources. Press release at
Presidential Conversations includes
presidential photos.
NPR
Presidential Conversations on the Constitution has audio
links with each president. NPR Senior News Analyst Cokie Roberts conducted
each of these interviews.
Her 15 October 2004 Morning Edition report on the Ford conversation is at
NPR
Presidents and the Constitution Gerald Ford.
Constitutional Law:
There's little point in listing
every provision pertinent to the presidency here. Just use good
mega-sites such as Constitutional Law -
MegaLaw.com.
Constitutional Signing Statements:
Much in the news since the January 2006 Senate
confirmation hearings on Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr., these are written
statements on a measure's constitutional status made by presidents upon signing congressional bills into law.
Some are direct statements against the measure's constitutionality; and some
include threats to directly veto similar legislation in the future. Most
in controversy, some imply that the President will not obey or heed the law
despite the signature (see "Unitary Executive--theory of" below).
Details of the controversy are cited in this file under
Presidential Signing Statements.
See also in this file: Legislative Intent;
Presidential Signing Statements; Unitary Executive (theory of)
Consumer Price Index:
The official U.S. measure of inflation is
so important to presidents that a suitable index should be understood and
retrofitted to past presidential administrations. Professor Robert Sahr's
Inflation
conversion factors for dollars of 1800 to est. 2010 to dollars of CPI 1995 to
2001 has an Acrobat file at
www.orst.edu
"using the CPI-U-X1 series, which applies the CPI used starting 1983 to
1950-1982." That's important for interpreting debates over inflation
and productivity in the 1970s U.S. economy; late 1970s inflation is now
recognized as high under the revised CPI, but several points lower than the
pre-1983 CPI figures would indicate.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics site persists (unfortunately)
in using the older CPI to calculate yearly cost of living changes.
Bureau of Labor
Statistics Data from U of Michigan Documents Center provides convenient data
and source references for historical use with the 1982-84 CPI.
Counsel to the President (White House Counsel):
This is the post known best as "the president's lawyer."
American President - White House Counsel's Office from Bradley Patterson
describes the history and functions of the post.
White House Counsel -
Wikipedia lists those holding this post since its 1943 origin.
Course Syllabi on the Presidency:
Presidency Course Syllabi is a Presidency Research Group site with
hundreds of university course
syllabi on the American presidency and some closely related subtopics. It's for general use by scholars and students seeking academic information on
the presidency. If yours isn't there, send to
rdrenka@semo.edu for placement.
D Return to Specific Topics (A to Z)
Data Sources:
The Presidency Research Group has
PRG's presidential data site
with the Database of Historical
Congressional Statistics. Visit the Example Query,
then the instructions,
for guidance in accessing these files.
Dave Leip's
Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections has extensive
presidential election data with extremely detailed maps, including
county-by-county returns from 1960 onward.
U.S. Presidency and Supreme Court Data from Richard
Timpone, Jeffrey Segal and Robert Howard has rank-ordered ratings of social
liberalism, economic liberalism, social salience, and economic salience of the
modern presidents.
Debates in presidential and vice-presidential campaigns:
These began with the mythic 1960 Great Debate between Nixon and Kennedy
on nationwide television in the prime time evening hours of 26 September 1960.
Richard Nixon in 1962 forecast that debates between presidential
candidates would become standard, but this did not happen until 1976.
The Great Debate & Beyond: The History of Televised Presidential Debates
covers that 1960 event in detail and extends through 2000 via
Televised Debate
History: 1960-2000. Numerous other links underline the centrality of
television to American politics and specifically to campaigns since the debates
commenced.
Another site attesting to this is the Museum of Broadcast
Communications'
Kennedy-Nixon Presidential Debates, 1960. The
U.S Presidency and Television site covers key presidential television events
since then, some in context other than debates.
The major-party presidential candidates and their seconds for
VP since 1976 were interviewed by Jim Lehrer of PBS via
Debating Our
Destiny.
Site Map
diagrams the 1976-through-1996 debates and the following four subtopics.
Debates & Campaigns addresses debate effects on campaigns.
The
Interviews has interviews with 11 of the principles.
Behind the Podium covers preparation for these important campaign events.
Teacher Guide raises issues for discussion.
Commission on Presidential
Debates is home to the 1987-created CPD that has conducted all the recent (1988,
1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004) presidential debates.
CPD Our Mission has links
to each of those years, plus accounts of symposia held afterwards.
CPD Debate History has
unofficial Debate
Transcripts of 1960 and 1976-2004 (including
Vice-presidential) plus 1858 Lincoln-Douglas (with C-SPAN transcript) and a
couple of pre-1960 presidential primary debates.
The League of Women Voters conducted the 1980 and 1984
debates. RealMedia formatted files are located at
LWV Presidential Debates Archive.
Poynter Online - Presidential Debates has links to all the debates and to
many other sites.
Presidential Candidates Debates from The American Presidency Project has
years, dates, participants, and audio/video links plus text dating from 1960.
See also in this file: Debate Analyses; DebateWatch; Television and the Presidency.
Debate Analyses:
Presidential debates to date have fallen far short of the ideals
for true debate and for campaign discourse.
See The Future of
Presidential Debates by Stephen Bates.
A major reason for shortcomings is political stipulation by
campaign managements, per Debates
from Democracy in Action (Eric Appleman).
Events in 2000 included an embarrassing flap over
acceptance of the Commission-sponsored debate format; CPD's defense of their
action is at Commission on
Presidential Debates Media and News Information.
Another dispute covers restrictions to the two major-party
candidates. Only Ross Perot in 1992 has broken the strict duopoly. The
Candidate Selection Process
outlines a 15 percent threshhold in polls required of all third-party
candidates for inclusion in the 2000 and 2004 (and 2008) debates.
Open Debates is an advocacy site
devoted to getting CPD to drop its threshold for excluding third parties
(currently 15 percent of the national popular vote in the previous election).
In 2004 both campaigns concurred on strict limits in personal
contact of the two candidates on camera, but these were blithely ignored by the
principals. Fact checking against distortion also made appearance this year, via
Annenberg Center's FactCheck.org Distortions and
Misstatements At First Presidential Debate.
DebateWatch:
CPD since 1996 has polled
participants in DebateWatch settings profiled at
CPD DebateWatch Overview.
Survey results for the three Bush v. Kerry debates in 2004 are shown at
CPD Final DebateWatch
2004 Results.
Debt, Federal:
The
Concord Coalition - national debt
from this debt-conscious group highlights the basic numbers for this
period. The
Debt To the Penny and Who Holds It from the Bureau of the Public Debt (in Treasury)
shows yearly debt accumulations. Treasury's historical
pages (Government Section
of TreasuryDirect) apply some context such as interest rate
information, debt rollover (payment rates on obligations), and similar evidence.
See also from this file: Budget information, federal
government; Economic Policy
Deficits, Federal:
See Federal Budget
Information from the Concord Coalition; and (relocate, with graphics).
Disaster Declarations (Presidential Disaster Declarations):
Procedurally these are done via request for federal assistance from the
governors of one or more affected states. These are now done through FEMA
at the federal level. Per Hurricane Katrina in 2005, affected parties and
their state/local elected sponsors must normally apply before a declaration is
made.
The complicated process is shown at
FEMA The
Declaration Process,
FEMA
Presidential Disaster Declaration, and
FEMA Before You
Apply.
FEMA keeps some data on Declarations by state (plus D.C. and
territories) and per year, at
FEMA Annual Major
Disaster Declarations Totals. Major ones get their own file, such as
FEMA New York Terrorist
Attack.
Numerous other federal agencies address disaster responses.
HHS - Disasters & Emergencies
from Health and Human Services has 10 categories of these events. See
their Disasters and Emergencies on
response protocols. Other agencies publish disaster guidance for their clienteles,
per Small Business Administration's
HOW DISASTER
DECLARATIONS ARE MADE and
USDA Rural Development-- Nationwide Disaster Declarations.
The Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI) has
PERI Presidential Disaster
Declaration Site with
Major Disaster Declarations by President by Type of Primary Incident 1953-2003.
They also have Useful
Links.
Another academic center is
Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado.
March
2001 Observer - Part A of Natural Hazards Observer has Politics
and Disaster Declarations (V. XXV, No. 4, March 2001) by Mary W. Downton and Roger A. Pielke,
Jr. It shows the average number of declarations for each president over
1965 through 2000.
FEMA - Baker MCC
shows that the 1000-plus presidential disaster declarations for
calendar years 1965 through 2000 are concentrated on heavily populated areas.
A more recent analysis with data from 1981 through 2004 is Andrew Reeves,
Political Disaster?
Presidential Disaster Declarations and Electoral Politics (unpub, dated
August 29, 2005, in PDF). Most of these disasters were weather-related,
but very few if any approach the national impact of Hurricane Katrina.
Their incidence is frequent enough that an electoral factor (location in a large
competitive state) is a contributor to incidence of declarations; but Texas was
excluded from the data due to an apparently special concentration of
declarations there.
E Return to Specific Topics (A to Z)
Economic Policy:
Pertinent national economic data is posted by
the White House at The
Economic Statistics Briefing Room. The
ESBR Income site is
useful for basic indicators of economic well-being, including Disposable
Personal Income and Per Capita Income. Those who use economic forecasting
models for elections (see below under Elections) will find this useful.
But data is restricted to simple profiles dating from January 1998. The
site is part of Fedstats - One Stop Shopping
for Federal Statistics, a consortium of more than 70 federal agencies that
produce data for public use.
A good starting point for serious users of U.S.
macroeconomic policy data is from AEA's Resources for Economists on the
Internet, at RFE Table of Contents.
Note RFE U.S. Macro and
Regional Data for major governmental and academic data sites. Go from
there to Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS Data
Home Page, for descriptions of widely used data such as the inflation (CPI)
and unemployment figures.
The
JEC Index from
the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress has an extensive library of
economic policy studies, many of them reflecting the White House policy
position. Despite that, the JEC has earned an excellent reputation for
even-handed and credible analysis. Studies are monthly, and are organized
by categories such as Taxation -- Joint
Economic Committee.
Economic
Report of the President:
Produced yearly by the Council of Economic Advisors for this February report to
Congress, it has a searchable database back to 1996 and Acrobat files dating
from 1995.
Election Archives:
Americans tend to think their way of conducting
democratic elections is the primary or only way, but it's not. The
American way of choosing presidents is quite distinctive among the large family
of contemporary democracies. See
Psephos - Adam Carr's Election Archive
from 174 countries. Election
Resources on the Internet has other links.
Within the U.S. experience, go straight to
Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential
Elections; and
Presidential Elections from The American Presidency Project.
Election disputes:
A correct conclusion on Bush v. Gore in 2000 is Eric
Appleman's 2000 Presidential
Election Overview headline: "It Basically Ended in a Tie." Before 2000 there was
the 1876-77 tangle that ultimately gave Rutherford Hayes 185 votes to Samuel
Tilden's 184.
And there is the "corrupt bargain"
Election of 1824 for summation and links.
A "close presidential elections" search gives you
The Closest
Presidential Races from infoplease (but put your ad blocker on beforehand).
Election Forecasting:
Political Forecasting is from "The Political Forecasting Special Interest
Group" at the Wharton School. Numerous links are on hand.
Political Forecasting - Bibliography covers nearly everything to 2006 in
this voluminous lit.
One
forecast model by Cuzan, Heggen and Bundrick is at
Faculty Forums Government - The University of West Florida.
Professor Ray Fair's well-known models are profiled at
Presidential Vote
Equation 2004 and
Presidential Vote
Equation---2004 Update with 2008 forecasts. Mother site is
Ray C. Fair.
PS: Political Science and
Politics (V. 35, No. 1 - March 2001) has
Election 2000
devoted to "Al Gore and George W. Bush's Not-So-Excellent Adventure" with
11 excellent and highly accessible articles. Five of these cover the 2000 forecasts. Some embarrassment over model
performance is noted by several authors whose models did not handle 2000 well.
But far more importantly, authors correct for the impressions held by many on how favorable the pre-election 2000 period really was for
former Vice-President Al Gore. See Larry M. Bartels and
John Zaller,
Presidential Vote Models: A Recount
(also
PresidentialVoteModels-Bartels).
The PS homesite is
PS: Political Science &
Politics. Archived issues are at
Online Journal Archives and
Access.
Election Law (or Presidential Election Law):
On the 2000 Florida recount, see Jurist's
Presidential Election Law
under "THE FLORIDA RECOUNT" with 8 categories of inquiry.
Presidential
Election Law - 2000 Florida recount timeline will help.
Election 2000
Materials from Stanford Law School covers voting irregularities, the Voting
Technology Project Report (from Cal Tech and MIT), and
Building
Consensus on Election Reform: A Report of the Constitution Project's Forum on
Election Reform.
Voting Methods
Vary Widely by county, as we learned the hard way in 2000. (Map is from the
"Road to the Presidency" by Joseph Pika and
Joseph Begleiter). On the likelihood of hand recounts altering election outcomes, see
Odds of
recounts altering outcome by mathematician Dave Rusin.
Other general election law sources:
Guide to Law Online - Election Law
is from the Law Library of Congress. Lawyers will like
Election Law - MegaLaw.
Election Losers (of presidential elections):
For fun: historian Robert Cook has
Rate the Losers: A Game to Teach
Students Important Lessons of History with a list of them from the November
general election. Not included: numerous losers in party primaries,
mainly since 1972.
For primary losers, see this file under Primaries.
Among specific general election concession speeches, see American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank's
John Kerry - 2004 Presidential Election Concession Speech;
Al Gore - 2000 Presidential Concession Speech; PictureHistory's
Jimmy Carter
Makes His Concession Speech on 4 November 1980; and
YouTube - 1960 election -
Richard Nixon talks to his supporters in concession.
Presidential primaries are replete with concessions (and
withdrawals).
Candidates' victory, concession speeches - February 1, 2000 from CNN covers
the four principles of the New Hampshire primary.
In this era these can become ring tones, per
Rick Santorum
Concession Speech - Now A Top Selling Ring Tone.
Election of 2008:
Look below at 2004 and update for this year. The
same sites will be in play.
Election of 2004:
Some 2004 sites are still up and active. Many will
be useful for comparing to 2008. (RDR August 07)
The
Cook Political Report's Outlook on the Presidential Race used 2000 as a
baseline. Its a 2000 Bush/Gore election map had revisions for post-Census state electoral college apportionments:
2000_red_blue.
Also see
2004_ec_by_percentage with rank-ordered College units from Utah (72% Bush)
to D.C. (90% Gore). Additional context is Electoral
College: Last Five Presidential Elections by Times Carried. And of
course there s horse race information:
2004 Electoral College scoreboard and The
Cook Political Report National Overview.
George Washington University's Democracy in
Action's P2004 The 2004 Presidential Campaign has daily
news updates, and numerous links to media, party, and candidate sites.
Keep an eye on their Calendar-February
2004. Its
Clickable Map of the
United States provides details for both congressional and presidential
primaries in every state, plus a display of Electoral College
changes since 2000.
Another good site with innumerable links is
The Green Papers United States General
Election 2004.
All the major media followed it. Start at
The New York Times
Campaign 2004.
Individual websites are also common. One with good
links out is Better World Links site
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2004
and US PRESIDENTIAL
ELECTION 2004 !.
Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections - 2004 has primary results,
an Electoral College Calculator, and
Election 2004 Predictions showing the 2000 College result fitted to the new
2004 numbers per state.
Election of 2000:
GWU
Democracy in Action--P2000
has a 12-part sequence taking readers from preliminary context to inauguration
on 20 January 2001; excellent for understanding the complicated American primary
and campaign finance arrangements. Links are abundant. The innumerable pre-primary and primary season
polls are compiled by PollingReport.com at
White House 2000.
Election Ballot Design - The Butterfly Ballot of Palm Beach
County, Florida in 2000:
General election ballot design site is
Presidential
Election Ballot - Topics in Usability: tons of links, by category.
By now many do not work, but enough do to make it worthwhile.
Law and Data: The
Butterfly Ballot Episode. The six co-authors were in that County as
expert witnesses. They provide indisputable 'smoking gun' evidence that
this ballot caused thousands of would-be Gore voters in Palm Beach County voting
precincts to mistakenly vote for Buchanan or to mistakenly commit an "overvote"
error by marking more than one presidential candidate. (But it does not
prove that a statewide revote would have ensured a Gore victory.)
The Butterfly Ballot itself is a picture story. Use
Butterfly Ballot - Google Image Search. I also recommend "Butterfly
Ballot cartoons" for entries like this strongly Republican site:
Humorous
Perspective on Florida Presidential Ballot Counting.
Election Results and Maps--Presidential:
Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential
Elections has all presidential elections through 2004.
You get county results from 1960 onward, and congressional districts. For
earlier postwar elections like 1948, the map shows counties with some but not
all states filled in.
Presidential Elections from The American Presidency Project covers all
elections since 1828 with maps and tabular data per state on popular and College
votes. President Elect also
has the statewide results from every election.
Map cartograms: go to
Maps
and cartograms of the 2004 US presidential election results from Michael
Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman at the University of Michigan; and
election
2000 maps from sara irina fabrikant at
UC Santa Barbara.
The
Caliper Corporation Maps
Presidential Results by County for Election 2000 lets one select any county
and obtain election results, per
Map - Find
Areas on a Map.
Printable Maps for
Presidential Elections 1789-2000 by The National Atlas (Department of the
Interior) has state-by-state summary maps with previews plus both PDF and EPS
downloads. Only the 2000 map goes down to county results; its pastel blue
and red profile is easier to read than Dave Leip's. The 2000 map downloads are
also worthwhile.
Election Statistics - Office of the Clerk
has the officially certified presidential and congressional election
returns since 1920.
The
Presidential Elections 2000 and Maps at Hunter College has an animation
showing the 26 presidential elections of 1900 through 2000 via map sequence.
POLIDATA is a
commercial site with highly detailed recent election analyses for sale.
Scan the course syllabi at the Presidency
Research Group's
Presidency Syllabi - 2004 and earlier presidential elections for detailed
coverage.
Election Studies:
The National Election
Studies (NES) Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior has a wealth of data from 1952 through 2004. Of particular interest for
presidency students are item 7,
Evaluation of the
Presidential Candidates; and item 9,
Vote Choice
including Split Ticket
Voting, Presidential/Congressional, 1952-2004.
See also
FEC - About Elections and Voting
with "Voter Registration and Turnout Statistics" for extensive
material on those topics dating from the 1960 presidential election.
Included for useful comparison are congressional midterm turnout and also
FEC - International Voter
Turnout.
Electoral College:
NARA's
U.S. Electoral College covers this uniquely American institution well.
See:
President Elect: The Unofficial
Homepage of the Electoral College (James R. Whitson) has a variety of features, including a blog site,
a set of election results, and ongoing 2004 commentary on our peculiar institution.
Calculations: See
Electoral
College Calculator and Map Generator - Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential
Elections on dominance of statewide winner-take-all of the current and
recent College. Also:
Electoral College Vote Calculator;
Cool electoral college
calculators - CyberJournalist.net - Online News Association - CyberPolitics Blog.
Banzhaf
Power Index from Mark Livingston adds a much higher level of sophistication
to this practice.
Electoral College Reform:
The 2000 election prompted another round of calls for
demise of this enduring institution. Start with
Presidential Selection: A Guide to Reform - Electoral College from The
University of Virginia Center for
Governmental Studies.
Defenses of the College: 09-04-97 Committee on the
Judiciary - Berns Statement by longtime supporter Walter Berns set forth two propositions:
1) the College produces clear winners, and 2) it strictly observes the one-person, one-vote
democratic principle. The House Judiciary Committee's hearings of 4
September 1997 are at Testimony Presented to
Subcommittee on the Constitution with link to
Proposals for Electoral College Reform.
Opposition to the College by good-government groups includes
run from minor tweaks to outright abolition. Sample these:
See below in this file: Faithless Electors.
Electronic Briefing Books:
The National Security Archives Electronic Briefing
Books
Index has 9 categories of coverage and "more than 20
books written by Archive staff and fellows" along with many other sources,
numbering hundreds in all. It's an excellent primary source starting point
for presidential foreign policy, including Cold War, War on
Terrorism, nuclear, and humanitarian policy documents; and for presidential
secrecy (see in this file below: Executive Privilege).
E-Mail from the White House:
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform United States House of
Representatives in 2008 held
Hearing on Electronic
Records Preservation
Encyclopedia source materials on the presidency:
Executive Office of the President
(EOP):
Created in 1939 for Franklin Roosevelt per Brownlow
Commission recommendations in the Reorganization Act of 1939, this entity helps
define the modern presidency. Its own website is
Executive Office of the
President in The White House. The list of offices includes the White
House Office, which in turn is divided into many entities listed at this site.
Harold C. Relyea's
98-606: The Executive Office of the President:
An Historical Overview from Congressional Research Service was updated on 26 November 2008.
It shows all offices in the EOP with year of origin and termination, if that
applies.
See also in this file: Chief of
Staff (White House Chief of Staff); White House Office.
Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations:
The Federal Register's
Executive Orders defines these as "official documents, numbered
consecutively, through which the President of the United States manages the
operations of the Federal Government." The American Presidency Project
catalogues them at
Presidential Executive Orders. They separately catalogue
Presidential
Proclamations with an introduction from Brandon Rottinghaus that
distinguishes them from Executive Orders this way: "executive orders are aimed
at those inside government while proclamations are aimed at those outside
government."
For more detailed navigation first see Albany Law School,
How to find Presidential
Proclamations and Executive Orders.
Executive Orders Disposition Tables Index lists the status of Executive
Orders from
Roosevelt in January 1937 to the current Administration time. National
Archives
Codification of Presidential Proclamations and Executive Orders - Forward
has additional details.
The Federation of American Scientists Intelligence Resource
Program has
Selected Executive Orders
on National Security
dating back to EO 8381 in 1940, with a great many during the Bush Administration
of 2001 to 2009.
See also in this file:
Presidential Decisions and
Directives; Presidential Proclamations; Public Papers of the Presidents.
Executive Privilege:
Congressional Documents on Secrecy from FAS (Federation of American
Scientists) covers 1997 through 2007, a very busy period for this topic.
The mother site is FAS
Project on Government Secrecy. It includes
Bush Administration Documents
on Secrecy Policy from an Administration that so far is proving a
standard-bearer for secrecy claims by any American executive. (See below:
Government Secrecy).
On specific constitutional doctrine, see
Law and Related
Resources: Federal at Michigan State University.
United
States v. Nixon (1974) [73-1766] is the most prominent
Supreme Court case.
Background Summary
and Questions, United States v. Nixon (1974), Landmark Supreme Court Cases
has precedents for the case.
What Secrets are
Protected under Executive Privilege, United States v. Nixon (1974), Landmark
Supreme Court Cases has some questions and a discussion board on the
applications of privilege.
Mark J. Rozell of Catholic University
(Rozell
Home Page) is a leading scholar whose
Statement
of Mark J. Rozell on the Presidential Records Act in 2001 includes a bibliography.
See also:
Hearing on
Presidential Records Act Amendment of 2002: Opening Statement of Mark J. Rozell.
(See below: Presidential Records Act).
The 2002 Bush Administration controversy over Vice-President
Cheney on energy policy is at
FindLaw's Writ - Michael Dorf, A Brief History Of Executive Privilege, From
George Washington Through Dick Cheney (date: 2/6/02).
Executive
Privilege and Executive Power from The Freedom of Information Center at the University of
Missouri has news articles.
The
Online NewsHour - The Executive Privilege Debate -- March 24 1998 reflects
the controversy over the Clinton Administration's numerous claims that there is
a presidential right to conceal some information from public, judicial or
congressional review.
See also under this file: Government
Secrecy; Presidential Records Act.
"Executive Privilege":
Martin
Sheen~Executive Privilege is a television show,
not reality. But it's good television.
Exit Polls:
The National Election Pool (Election
2006 Exit Polls Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International - National
Election Pool) was the source for all media calls during Election Night 2004. Both
NEP and its predecessor Voter News Service (2000 Election Night) invited major criticisms, and not simply from
partisan or spin sources.
2004 United States presidential election controversy and irregularities -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia includes the exit poll dispute over
predicting Kerry over Bush. I haven't checked for full accuracy.
One systematic critic is ElectionArchive.org.
Exit_Polls_2004_Edison-Mitofsky analyzes the sources of the large 2004
discrepancy (predicting Kerry to win 6.5 percentage points more popular vote
than he actually did).
National Election Archive Project - Home
has exit poll
Web Links.
MethodsStatementNationalFinal in pdf covers the methodology of the 2004
National and regional exit polls.
Democracy
Now! National Election Pool: How the Networks Are Calling the 2004 Election
covers the 2000 election in highly derogatory terms. Also see
Voter
News Service: What Went Wrong? (re 2000 election) from Larry Barrett.
After its replacement by National Election Pool for 2004,
technical problems with statistical weighting led two networks to issue a wrong
early-night forecast that Kerry would win (National
Election Pool - Wikipedia).
Exit Poll
Results - Election 2000 is from "Road to the Presidency" by Joseph Pika and
Ralph Begleiter at University of Delaware.
Ex-presidents:
These are the living former presidents, always few in number.
Since 1997 they've been constrained to 10 years worth of Secret Service
protection: United
States Secret Service - Protective Mission, and
How Protection
Works.
F Return to Specific Topics (A to Z)
Faithless Electors:
These are the 158 state or D.C. electors who
voted against that state or district's plurality popular vote winner.
NARA's
State Laws and Requirements shows the "List of Electors Bound by State Law
and Pledges, as of November 2000" with 24 states having no law binding the
electors to cast their votes for a specific candidate.
Project Vote-Smart outlines this in
Project Vote Smart - What is the Electoral College.
The faithless are reviled by EC reform organizations
like FairVote:
The Electoral College - Faithless Electors.
National Popular Vote -- Electoral
college reform by direct election of the President obviously seeks to
eliminate the problem by abolishing the College itself. JURIST has
Presidential
Election Law - Faithless Electors: The Wild Card from William G. Ross.
James Whitson's
President Elect -
Articles - Faithless lists the faithless through election 2000.
Farewell Addresses (by presidents):
Famous ones were done by George Washington in print, and by
Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan on television. A
resignation speech tantamount to a national farewell was given to assembled
staff with TV on hand by Richard Nixon as well. No single site exists with
all or more of these, so use the above term to find the specific ones.
Federal Register:
Federal Register Main Page
from Thomas has Federal Register Advanced
Search dating back to 1995.
First Gov:
FirstGov -- Your First Click to the US
Government is the "official government gateway" sponsored by the Office of
Citizen Services and Communications of the U.S. General Services Administration.
As of 1 May 2001 it replaced the now-defunct GOVBOT Search Engine (a site
that one often sees on other sets of links) as a comprehensive website source
for all official federal government sites.
First Ladies:
The National First Ladies' Library has all presidential spouses with
picture, biography, and links to specific materials. The
First
Ladies PresidentS site also lists all First Ladies with portraits. Also included
are links for Hillary Clinton, Barbara Bush, Rosalynn Carter, Lady Bird Johnson
(indirectly) and Mamie Eisenhower (also indirectly). A short informative
file profiles their influences on the
State of the Union
Address.
The White House has The First
Ladies of the United States of America. All or nearly all presidential
libraries contain additional information on the First Lady.
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA):
Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act from the Federation of American Scientists has
extensive documents, including all the FISA Annual Reports to Congress from 1979
to the present.
Cornell Law has the 1978 statute
US CODE Title 50,CHAPTER 36—FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE. FindLaw
has each section in Title 50 per Laws: Cases and
Codes : U.S. Code
:
TITLE 50. WAR AND NATIONAL DEFENSE.
On 2007 legislative revisions:
Center for National Security Studies provides
critical views on expanded warrantless searches per this parent site, and also
FISA.
EPIC -
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from the Electronic Privacy
Information Center also reviews surveillance practices under this law.
EFF FAQ The
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (Sep. 27, 2001) is a post-9/11
Q and A from the Electronic Frontier Foundation's counsel.
Friendships and Collaborations (among presidents and ex-presidents):
Ex-presidents often hold bitter
feelings toward those who defeated or replaced them, and some transitions such
as Hoover-Roosevelt or Carter-Reagan are noted for frosty climates. But
ex-presidents also form the world's most exclusive fraternity. See
A meeting of
America's most exclusive trade union, and
Four
Presidents (Reagan Library), showing the personal bonding of ex-presidents
Nixon, Ford and Carter in 1981 en route to and from the funeral of Egypt's
leader Anwar al-Sadat.
Is there
life after the presidency? from Kathy McCabe of USA Today shows a similar
exclusive gathering of Bush 41 (George H.W. Bush), Bill Clinton, and Jimmy
Carter. Any search via "Clinton and Bush" shows their close collaborations
in the wake of the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean disaster. For examples:
An unexpected
friendship in the ex-presidents' club csmonitor.com, 15 March 2005; and
Orlando Sentinel - Photos The Ex Presidents in Orlando by Joe Burbank, 29
March 2007.
Presidents do form collaborations and personal friendships
with predecessors, often across party lines. Any "Nixon and Clinton"
search shows their frequent meetings in 1993 on Russia preceding Nixon's death
in 1994. Earlier,
Hoover and Truman: A Presidential Friendship was fruitful in tapping Hoover's
expertise on executive branch reorganization.
Funerals of Presidents:
These are major state events, complete with flag at
half-staff for 30 days, for sitting or former Presidents. A good brief
statement on the Pennsylvania Avenue processional is National Park Service,
State
Funeral Processions. The
Washington National Cathedral - Services Following Deaths of American Presidents
has been site of several funerals and associated memorial services. The
Department of State in 9 June 2004 published the explanatory
Department of
State Washington File Memorializing U.S. Presidents upon the death of former
President Ronald Reagan.
State
Funeral Fact Sheets from Log Cabin Republicans has 9 sections on the entire
event.
Don't overlook
Dead Presidents (from Manus Hand) for details, including a FAQ site.
See also in this file: Assassinations, Assassination Attempts,
and Security measures; Gravesites of presidents; Obituaries of presidents.
G Return to Specific Topics (A to Z)
Genealogy of Presidents:
See
Genealogy of the US Presidents for a database.
GenWeb@JRaC US Presidents
Genealogies procaims your ability to find their genealogies and your own.
Geneva Convention and Article 3 on prisoners of war:
Geneva Convention relative to
the Treatment of Prisoners of War, enacted on 12 August 1949, includes a
Common Article 3 specifying permissible manner of treatment of
prisoners of war. A synopsis on its context and effect from the 2001 ISIL
Year Book is Common
Article 3 Of Geneva Conventions, 1949 In The Era Of International Criminal
Tribunals - [2001] ISILYBIHRL 11 (sponsor: World Legal Information Institute).
For broader guidance on the Conventions, see Reference Guide to the Geneva
Conventions.
See
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 05-184 (2006) or
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ()
[05-184] for application to Bush Administration treatment of detainees
dating from 9-11-2001.
Gifts of State:
As publicly elected leaders of a superpower
state, modern presidents receive numerous foreign gifts which go into Library
and public hands. Some are expensive, elaborate and beautiful. An
exhibit of some is at NARA's
Tokens and Treasures: Presidential Gifts with links to each of the last 12
presidential administrations.
Government's Greatest Achievements and Endeavors:
Government's 50 Greatest Endeavors from The Brookings Institution shows 50
tasks, with a link to each one.
Government's Greatest Achievements of the Past Half Century -- Paul C. Light
is his analysis of this Brookings endeavor.
Government's 50
Greatest Endeavors - Methodology outlines how this list was derived from 450
historians and political scientists in summer 2000.
Government's Greatest Achievements of the Past Half Century is the full
report of 50 successfully completed (or near-completed) endeavors. Also
see
Government's Greatest Achievements HTML Timeline or
Timeline3 (in
Flash) for listing by Congress dating from the 78th Congress in 1944.
Government Secrecy:
The Federation of American Scientists specialize in uncovering
this problem. See FAS Project
on Government Secrecy and the excellent Bush
Administration Documents on Secrecy Policy from an Administration that so
far may prove the new standard-bearer for secrecy claims by any American
executive. Their Congressional
Documents on Secrecy covers 1997-2004. Other Government Secrecy Related
Web Sites (from Steven Aftergood) has links.
Gravesites of presidents and vice-presidents:
Most of these are personal tour and hobbyist products. One can tour these via
American Presidents Life Portraits - Gravesites, or
Presidents Graves
(including Vice Presidents), or
All the
President's Graves by Joe Ryan. A slide show of gravesites is linked from
US Presidents by The Cemetery
Project - Famous Dead People ("a Mission of Grave Importance").
Presidential Burial
Sites - My Travel Hobby - Listed by President also does the job.
Arlington National Cemetery cites
John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
President of the United States, and
William Howard Taft,
President of the United States - the only two ex-presidents interred there.
See also: Assassinations, Assassination Attempts,
and Security measures; Funerals of presidents; Obituaries of presidents.
Greatness of presidents:
I recommend caution in assessing these, but they're undeniably popular and widely used as
summary judgments of our 43 presidents, including our 12 modern ones.
In 2009, see
C-SPAN Survey of Presidential Leadership from 65 presidential historians.
George W. Bush ranks 36th out of 42, one rank below Tyler and ahead of Harrison,
who served barely a month in 1841 before expiring in favor of Tyler. On
the upside, Harry S. Truman now ranks 5th, below only Lincoln, Washington,
Franklin Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt. Methodology is same as the
2000 survey cited below.
A compilation of presidential greatness surveys is
at
Historical rankings of United States Presidents - Wikipedia. It averages 12 dating from 1948 through 2005 per
president. Another is Rating Game
from Professor Ahern at the University of Dayton (see
index 313 for details
on his online course).
