Texas Politics & Government: Ideas and Institutions

Richard Pious’ book on the presidency has always been one of my favorites. Here’s a synopsis of his description of the prerogative powers of the president : Prerogative power Although presidential power seems circumscribed by constitutional limitations and the difficulties of working with coordinate institutions, presidents have a way around these difficulties. At times they claim vast prerogative powers, based on their own reading of the Constitution. Armed with these powers, they unilaterally take actions to resolve serious policy disputes or to manage crises, and then justify their actions to Congress and the American people thereafter, defending both the legitimacy of acting (their right to exercise power) and the authority of their actions (the wisdom of their policies). From the beginning of the nation, prerogative power has settled significant disputes. George Washington unilaterally declared neutrality in the British-French conflict of the early 1790s, although not...

I asked the students in my Texas state and local government class at ACC to complete a questionnaire on political issues, labeling it an Ideology Test. All twenty-two students completed the questionnaire. The first question asked students to indicate their ideology: liberal, moderate, or conservative. Here are the results: A majority of the students consider themselves moderates. The next largest category, conservative, was chosen by nearly one-fifth of the students. The same percentage (18 percent) chose liberal. The students were then placed on a 7-point scale based on their attitudes on six issues, three of which dealt with a choice between equality and individualism and the other three dealt with a choice between individualism and social order, which involves traditional social values. Each student's choices on the six issues was coded: (1) On the first three issues, the choices was coded according to whether the student chose equality or individualism. If a student ch...