‘Politics’ Archives
American Enemies
American Enemies Foreign policy, domestic discourse and mass media have often coincided in the identification of “acceptable” external American enemies, both vilified and stereotyped, with potentially painful consequences for those who might be associated with these groups within the US. The culture of the select reviled enemy as global [...]
Presidency
Presidency The president of the United States is one of the most powerful political figures in the nation and the world. As the leader of the United States, he or she is expected to create and implement new legislation and involve the United States in the affairs of other countries. Yet little power is invested in the office of the president [...]
Federalism
Federalism Federalism is one of the basic structural components of our system of government. Along with separation of powers, and checks and balances, federalism defines the relationship between various governmental actors. Separation of powers and checks and balances describe and regulate the distribution of power within the national [...]
Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore After the death of President Zachary Taylor in 1850, Vice President Millard Fillmore became the 13th president of the United States. Fillmore worked to make a compromise between antislavery Northerners and proslavery Southerners. His efforts led to the breakup of his political party, the Whigs. Millard Fillmore was born in [...]
American Welfare Reform
American Welfare Reform The American income maintenance system is in reality a patchwork of programs aimed at different populations and financed and administered by federal, state and local governments. Further, it is divided into “insurance-like” programs, for which eligibility is based on a history of wage earning, and “welfare” [...]
Soap Operas
Soap Operas In spring 1999, the daytime serial All My Children ended thirty years of family and community intrigue and relationships, presented every Monday through Friday. It was soon replaced by the younger and steamier Passion. Demographics and settings may change, but the idea scarcely varies. Soaps provide dramas of emotion and [...]
Polls
Polls As currently understood, “polls” refer to techniques that combine some form of questionnaire with advanced statistical techniques to produce measurements of public opinion. Although informal straw polls were already used to give rough measures of political support in the latter part of the nineteenth century, they did not gain [...]
Progressivism
Progressivism An American political and social movement of the late nineteenth century that infl uenced the spirit of territorial expansionism policy in the two decades before 1914. The most dramatic example of the emergence of the United States as an imperial power was the Spanish-American War in which it eliminated Spanish infl uence in the [...]
Congress
Congress The Congress of the United States is the legislative branch of the federal government, established by Article I of the Constitution. Congress comprises the 435-member House of Representatives and the 100-member Senate. Each House member represents a portion of a state, and all House districts include approximately the same number of [...]
Anarchism
Anarchism During the early Cold War, the anarchist tradition was kept alive by Dwight Macdonald’s lively journal, politics (1944–9). Avoiding the era’s Manichean politics, Macdonald published independent thinkers who rejected the platitudes of both Cold-War America and Soviet-style state socialism. By the 1960s, some of the New Left’s [...]
