<Emphasis Type="Italic">The Daily Show with Jon Stewart</Emphasis> and Audience Attitude Change During the 2004 Party Conventions

The intention of this analysis is to examine The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’s coverage of politics and assess the persuasive power of the program’s unique brand of humor. Evidence from a content analysis of The Daily Show’s “Indecision 2004” coverage of the Democratic and Republican Party Conventions shows the program’s humor was much harsher during the Republican Convention than it was during the Democratic Convention. While the humor in both conventions was heavily based on self-deprecation and the exploitation of conventional political stereotypes, the ridicule of Republicans focused much more on policy and character flaws. Humor pointed toward Democrats, on the other hand, tended to focus more on innocuous physical attributes. Analysis of panel data collected by the National Annenberg Election Survey during the 2004 national party conventions shows that exposure to The Daily Show’s convention coverage was associated with increased negativity toward President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. These relationships remain significant even when controlling for partisan identification and ideology. Attitudes toward the Democratic ticket, John Kerry and John Edwards remained consistent.     

Federalism, the Bush Administration, and the Transformation of American Conservatism

Most recent Republican presidents have proposed signature federalisminitiatives intended to devolve power or sort out federal andstate functions. The Bush administration has not propoundedan explicit federalism policy of this sort, but its approachto federalism can be gleaned from analyzing presidential advocacyof legislation and constitutional amendments, fiscal policies,administrative actions, and judicial policies. What emergesfrom this analysis is an administration that has been surprisinglydismissive of federalism concerns and frequently an agent ofcentralization. In one sense, Bush is merely the latest in astring of presidents who have sacrificed federalism considerationsto specific policy goals when the two have come in conflict.However, the administration's behavior is somewhat surprising,given the president's background as a governor and the factthat he has been the first Republican president to enjoy Republicancontrol of Congress since 1954. Our explanation for the Bushapproach begins with the president's lack of any philosophicalcommitment to federalism and explores the changing status offederalism concerns within conservative ideology. Any explanationfor the Bush approach should account for this shifting politicaldynamic, which has seen Republicans in recent years become increasinglysupportive of exerting federal authority on behalf of theireconomic and social objectives, encouraging Democrats at timesto become more supportive of state authority.     

Guess What Happened on the Way to Revolution? Precursors to the Supreme Court's Federalism Revolution

In recent years, the Rehnquist Court has been accused of usheringin a "federalism revolution." The Court's decisions have beencontentious and often viewed as assertions of the Court's anti-majoritarianpower. However, these assessments misunderstand the role ofthe Court in the American political system. Not only are theCourt's recent decisions relatively modest departures from existingconstitutional doctrine, but its rediscovery of federalism follows,rather than leads, developments in the elected branches. Effortsto rehabilitate federalism as a political value began in theelected branches as early as the 1960s. By 1980, federalismhad become an important cleavage issue between the parties;Republicans advocated a form of "fixed federalism" while Democratsadvocated a form of "flexible federalism." Despite the desireof the Reagan and Bush administrations to use the judiciaryto advance the GOP's view of federalism, confirmation hearingsfor members of the Rehnquist Court demonstrate that Democratsin Congress paid little attention to federalism. Attitudes aboutfederalism thus made their way onto the Court without noticeand without challenge, and the sharp disagreements that emergedon the Court during the late-1990s mirror the same party cleavagesthat developed much earlier in the elected branches.     

Inventing the ‘axis of evil’: the myth and reality of us intelligence and policy-making after 9/11

George W. Bush has claimed that the latest intelligence estimates single out Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as an ‘axis of evil’ fomenting terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. However, the intelligence itself demonstrates that this concept has been largely manufactured and the CIA bypassed in favor of a pre-existing political consensus among right-wing Republicans. In reality, the ‘axis’ serves to perpetuate an American ‘preponderance of power’. It justifies specific policies which had already been decided before Bush came to power and which now have popular acceptance through their association with the successful war on terrorism.     

The battlefield of ideas: the legitimation of political violence in Northern Ireland

Abstract. Northern Ireland has suffered consistently from the effects of political violence since the late 1960s. This article argues that anyone who engages in political violence seeks legitimation for his acts and it assesses the attempts by Republicans and Loyalists in Northern Ireland to legitimate their violence. The legitimation of both Loyalist and Republican violence is shown to consist of arguments drawn from a wide range of theoretical traditions by no means confined to Northern Ireland. Republicans draw upon nationalism, Catholicism and Marxism whilst Loyalists make use of contractarian ideas and Protestant theology. Both sides have been relatively successful in persuading potential supporters of the legitimacy of their activities. The article concludes by analysing weaknesses in each attempt at legitimation and by indicating how the diversity of the rival packages may prove counterproductive in the long run. The capacity of each group to generate the additional support needed to achieve its ends is seriously doubted.     

The Political Origins of the Financial Crisis: The Domestic and International Politics of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

For much of the last decade it was clear that the commercial operations of the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were creating an increasing systemic financial risk. That risk was compounded by the fact that the Japanese and Chinese central banks were acting as cheap creditors. The Bush administration and some Republicans in Congress made efforts from 2001 to create a tougher regulatory framework for Fannie and Freddie. Fannie and Freddie were able to defeat these attempts to constrain their operations by a four-fold political strategy involving campaign contributions to members of Congress, a vast lobbying apparatus, the cultivation of a political language around affordable housing for minorities, and abusing and smearing their regulator. Since Japan and China understood that the US government would have to assume Fannie and Freddie's liabilities in a crisis they had no incentive to expose the political fiction that it would not.     

Generational changes and party identification

The party identification of nonblack voters, separated by region, is examined within three broadly bounded cohorts or political generations consisting of those whose first votes were cast prior to 1932, those of the New Deal era whose first votes were cast between 1932 and 1964, and the post-New Deal generation who have come of voting age since 1964. Inter- and intragenerational comparisons are presented for three political eras reflected in NES data: 1952–60, 1964–76, and 1980–88. Outside the South, the post-New Deal generation was more pro-Democratic in the period 1964–76 than was the older New Deal generation. However, they also led the surge away from the Democrats and to the Republican party between 1980 and 1988. Nevertheless, in the latter period they were less dominantly Republican than were the members of the New Deal generation. In the South the better educated voters of the post-New Deal generation led the realignment that largely eroded the Democratic plurality between 1960 and 1988. Nationally, the policy preferences of the post-New Deal generation in the 1980s further polarized party differences between Democrats and Republicans. This occurred largely because of the substantially greater liberal cast of post-New Deal Democrats' preferences. On other issues, party differences were maintained, but Republicans as well as Independents and Democrats in the post-New Deal generation exhibited visibly more liberal preferences than did their older partisan counterparts in the New Deal generation.     

Enron, a Perceived Crisis in Public Confidence, and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002

In the spring of 2002 Congress passed and President Bush signed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), the first major piece of campaign reform legislation since the early 1970s. While momentum for reform had been growing since the mid-1990s, without the Enron scandal and its potential threat to public officials, additional support to overcome the procedural barriers and opposition from the Republican leadership in both the House and Senate would have been difficult to overcome. In addition, Bush Administration ties to Enron had the effect of demobilizing the president on the issue, making it virtually impossible for him to veto a bill he fundamentally opposed. The Enron scandal provided the “window of opportunity” needed by reform-oriented elites to pass a controversial and far-ranging law that was not a high priority on the public's agenda. The end result is a law, pending a Supreme Court ruling on its constitutionality, that has the potential to alter fundamentally how electoral campaigns are funded and conducted.     

Barack Obama and the South: demography as electoral opportunity

ABSTRACT

Barack Obama was more successful in the South in the 2008 election than many previous Democratic presidential nominees had been. While John McCain continued Republican dominance in the conservative region, it was a major breakthrough for a northern liberal Democrat, especially an African American from Illinois, to win three southern states and secure 55 electoral votes. Florida, North Carolina and Virginia were good opportunities for Obama because, demographically, they had come to resemble other large states outside the South. In these ‘converging’ southern states, the Latino and Asian communities had grown substantially. The percentage of college-educated Whites had increased and there had been large-scale migration from other regions of the country. The states that Obama won in the South were not as ‘southern’ as they once were. In some southern states, those called the ‘neo-Confederate South’ in this article, white support for Obama was less than John Kerry had received in 2004. This decline in white voting for the Democratic presidential nominee occurred despite the difficult economic times that enveloped the country in the months preceding the election, and the general unpopularity of the incumbent Republican administration headed by George W. Bush. Some of these states, like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, had been among the most intransigent states in resisting the claims of the civil rights movement for social and political equality for African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. In the future it may be more accurate to speak of more than one South, rather than refer to the region as an undifferentiated whole.     

Thwarted voters at the 2000 US presidential election

This article examines the behavior at the 2000 US presidential election of the self-described Democrats who, prior to the election but after the candidates were nominated, preferred Bill Bradley to Al Gore, as well as of the Republicans who had a higher opinion of John McCain than they did of George W. Bush. These “thwarted voters” are examined with regard to turnout, candidate choice, and motivations, and they are compared on these dimensions with thwarted voters at earlier US presidential elections. Attention is given to estimating the extent to which their behavior in 2000 was critical for the popular vote totals, and counterfactual analysis is employed to estimate the probable effects on the election’s outcome of marginal alterations in the voters’ perceptions of the candidates’ attributes.     

Fear in the Voting Booth: The 2004 Presidential Election

Every presidential election offers interesting questions for analysis, but some elections are more puzzling than others. The election of 2004 involves two linked and countervailing puzzles. The first is: How did President George W. Bush manage to win at all, avoiding the fates of George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter? The other is: Why didn’t he win by a more substantial margin than in his first election, as all reelected presidents since Eisenhower were able to do? On the one hand, in the wake of September 11, the president had approval ratings around 90% and the threat of terrorism remained a substantial concern through Election Day. This would seem to afford Bush an overwhelming advantage. On the other hand, the public’s views of the state of the economy and of the course of the war in Iraq were negative. We think that the juxtaposition of these questions will help to explain the outcome of the election and of the pattern of the results. Moreover, by unpacking our explanation of the vote into three policy-related issue components—economic retrospective evaluations, domestic policy views, and foreign policy views—we examine the way these preferences contributed to the electorate’s voting decisions.     

Trajectories of Arts and Culture Policy in New Zealand

This article examines how arts and culture policy has been discussed since the 1960s in New Zealand, showing how it has increasingly been coupled with the construction of national identity. It also suggests that the rhetoric of the current Labour government marks a significant change. Against the traditional understanding of arts and culture as public and cultural goods, whose vital ‐ if intangible ‐ benefits justify the inevitable economic cost, since 1999 they have been fundamentally re‐imagined as contributing to a cohesive society ‐ through the fostering of “national identity” ‐ and also to a dynamic economy ‐ through the creation of jobs. This change is seen as an element of “third‐way” politics, and is argued to limit dangerously the sort of art that can be funded and valued.     

Why George W. Bush Is a Unilateralist and How It Will Affect the 2004 Presidential Election

ABSTRACT

U.S. President George W. Bush has had a stormy relationship with Europe. Bush campaigned on a theme of putting America's interests first and eschewing multilateralism when necessary. Since taking office, Bush has been true to his campaign pledges. Bush's style and substance have caused many in Europe to regard him as a “buffoon” at best and a dangerous cowboy at worst. What the Europeans do not seem to understand is that, for better or worse, George W. Bush's view of the world is held by a substantial portion of the American people, and even when the U.S. had a more Euro-friendly leader in President Bill Clinton, America's policies were often at odds with those preferred by its allies in Europe. This is due to a fundamental difference that has developed between Europe and the United States over the last century. Today, no matter who occupies the White House, American foreign policy is likely to be in conflict with Europe's. Far from being a liability, this difference is likely to be a political asset to George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.     

REAGANISM AS CORPORATE LIBERALISM: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE AMERICAN FUTURE

The "corporate liberal" regime that held together in America from the end of World War I1 to the 1960s was marked by broad agreement on ideology, public policy and a stable ruling coalition centered in the Democratic Party. This regime unraveled in the late 1960s and 1970s with the relative decline in American military and economic hegemony and the rise of a "left liberal insurgency". Key corporate liberal intellectuals and constituencies migrated to the Republican Party under Reagan. Reaganism will not sustain itself because its coalition partners are too disparate, its failure to transform the Republicans into a majority party, a lack of consensus on many issues, and the continued decline of the U.S. in the international economy. Corporate liberalism will find itself migrating to a revitalized Democratic Party, under a centrist leadership favoring fiscal responsibility, government-corporate partnerships, and a more efficient military.     

In Play: A Commentary on Strategies in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election

“A lot of military battle plans going back to the Civil War say ‘whoever controls the Mississippi controls America.’ And Bush is marching straight up the Mississippi,” the Democratic strategist said. “We’ve just retreated from Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri. They already control Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky. Bush is now moving in on Iowa and Wisconsin. And except for Illinois, which isn’t in play, there’s only one state left: Minnesota, the mouth of the river. And it’s dead even [i.e., a tie] there.” From CNN.com, ALLPOLITICS, September 23, 2004: Mercurio, John and Molly Levinson. “CNN Survey: Bush widens lead in Electoral College.” CNN Political Unit. 27 Sept. 2004 <http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/ 09/23/electoral.map> “All total, 21 states are in play. Some will bounce between “lean [toward a candidate]” to “tossup” throughout the campaign.” USA Today, July 25, 2004: “AP: Bush leads Kerry in electoral votes.” A.P. 25 July 2004, <whttp://www.usatoday.com/news/Politicselections/nation/President/2004-07-25-bush-kerry-electoral-votes_x.htm>     

The First MBA President: George W. Bush as Public Administrator

President Bush was praised early in his first term as a tough-minded decision maker who knows how to get things done. This essay argues that President Bush possesses formidable political skills that have helped him achieve many of his policy goals, focusing on his most important national security policies: the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism and the treatment of detainees, the use of intelligence leading up to the war, and the reorganization of the executive branch. In the end, however, President Bush's deficiencies as a public administrator have undermined his policy successes.     

The Bush Administration and National Security Policy-making: A Preliminary Assessment

The Bush administration's approach to national security policy–making, at least as judged by the early record, can be characterized accordingly: managerial, collegial, incremental and pragmatic. Each of these elements will be considered in turn as part of a preliminary assessment of whether the Bush administration's approach to American national security is adequate to deal with the challenges that the United States will face in world affairs during the "post–Cold War era" of the 1990s.     

THE 1976 ELECTION AND THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM

Abstract The elections, remembered as the first in which an incumbent President was defeated since 1932, show other characteristics inconsistent with usual interpretations. The Democratic Party's selection procedure managed to produce a moderate around whom the party could unite for the first time since 1964 while the Republicans experienced a damaging fight which the more extreme candidate almost won. Analysis of the results refutes many common conclusions. The popular vote was not as close as in other postwar elections; regional variations less pronounced and party more important in the campaign than had been supposed. The Republicans showed surprisingly strongly in the Presidential election, but did disastrously again in others. No satisfactory theory explains the discrepancy. Republicans still challenge strongly for the Presidency but consistently fail elsewhere.     

Polarizing cues

People categorize themselves and others, creating ingroup and outgroup distinctions. In American politics, parties constitute the in- and outgroups, and party leaders hold sway in articulating party positions. A party leader's endorsement of a policy can be persuasive, inducing co-partisans to take the same position. In contrast, a party leader's endorsement may polarize opinion, inducing out-party identifiers to take a contrary position. Using survey experiments from the 2008 presidential election, I examine whether in- and out-party candidate cues—John McCain and Barack Obama—affected partisan opinion. The results indicate that in-party leader cues do not persuade but that out-party leader cues polarize. This finding holds in an experiment featuring President Bush in which his endorsement did not persuade Republicans but it polarized Democrats. Lastly, I compare the effect of party leader cues to party label cues. The results suggest that politicians, not parties, function as polarizing cues.     

Partisan schemas and economic voting: The federal budget deficit and the 1988 presidential election

This paper considers the issue of the budget deficit and its influence on the 1988 presidential election. Specifically, we are concerned with the role of partisan economic schemas, and the possibility that many voters might have supported the incumbent Republicansbecause of the deficit problem (reasoning that the GOP, regardless of the failures of the previous 8 years, was the best party to reduce government spending). We find that the deficit issue, despite its high salience, did not have an overwhelming impact on the 1988 race, but what effect it did have apparently favored the Republicans. We demonstrate that schematic voters concerned about the deficit were, indeed, more likely to support George Bush over Michael Dukakis. We conclude by discussing the importance and limits of partisan schemas in explaining economic voting.