Midterm Campaigning and the Modern Presidency: Reshaping the President's Relationship with Congress [Hardcover]

Providing a unique resource for readers seeking to understand the relationship between presidents, parties, and Congress, this book offers a new explanation of the motivations, strategies, and impacts of presidential midterm campaigns.

Congress has been shaped by an unlikely forcepresidential involvement in midterm campaigning. This book argues that midterm campaigning is a presidential Trojan horse and that in undertaking it, presidents have brought their parties to heel; indebted individual representatives and senators to them; and broken the ability of Congress to effectively check the executive office.

Midterm Campaigning and the Modern Presidencylooks at why presidential midterm campaigning emerged during the post-war period and why it did not emerge sooner; it then describes how presidents have shrewdly coordinated their midterm actions to not only shore up their immediate needs but also to remake in their own image both their party and Congress as a whole. Not merely about any particular election or candidate, the book shows that presidential midterm campaigning has a lasting impact on the behavior of Congress and on the future course of American political affairs.

Acknowledgments
Chapter 1The Place of Midterm Campaigning in American Politics
Chapter 2Sketching the Relationship between the President and Congress
Chapter 3The Historical Problems of Midterm Campaigning
Chapter 4A Transformation in Presidential Behavior
Chapter 5Modern Presidential Midterm Strategy
Chapter 6The Impact of Presidential Midterm Campaigning
Chapter 7The Future of Midterm Campaigning
Appendix A: Midterm Data Set
Appendl#…