The Politics of Regulatory Change: National Forest Management Planning under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush

This paper examines regulatory change from the William J. Clinton administration through the presidency of George W. Bush by focusing on their respective efforts to alter national forest planning procedures mandated by the National Forest Management Act of 1976 (NFMA). While rule making has become an important alternative pathway for making policy, the strategies used to develop a new rule may vary among presidents because of differing values and management styles. Both presidents were adept at framing the planning regulation to reflect dominant values such as preserving ecosystems (Clinton) or administrative efficiency (Bush). Between‐administration differences in regulatory tactics also tended to alter the relative importance of institutional venues and, by extension, the influence exercised by differing political constituencies.     

The Rhetorical Strategy of George H. W. Bush during the Persian Gulf Crisis 1990–91: How to Help Lose a War You Won

Public perceptions of the relative failure of the first Bush administration's policy in the Persian Gulf crisis of 1990–91 can be attributed in large part to its failure both to remove Saddam Hussein from office and to eliminate Iraq's nuclear weapons programme. Those objectives were not, in fact, among those that the administration initially set out to achieve. Midway through the crisis, however, it altered its rhetorical strategy in a fashion that helped to emphasize their significance in the public mind. This rhetorical shift resulted from a belief that its primary objectives were failing to maintain public support for its policies. However, the evidence for such a decline in public support is ambiguous at best, and there is no evidence that the change of rhetoric had any effect upon public support. The Bush administration unnecessarily drew attention to objectives that it could not achieve and helped to ensure public disillusion with the eventual outcome of the conflict.