Building Coalitions, Making Policy

The Politics of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Presidencies

Martin A. Levin, Daniel DiSalvo, Martin M. Shapiro

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781421405957
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Getting past "No" in an age of partisan noise.

In an age when partisan politics has reached a deafening—and arguably impotent—pitch, how does the real work of politics get done? This book opens the door on backroom politics and gives readers an insider's perspective on the efforts of policymakers from three presidential administrations to get past the naysayers and effect real and lasting policy changes.

The editors take a comparative approach, offering a thorough overview of policymaking during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, with further discussion of President Obama's successful and failed attempts to build coalitions and get past no. The contributors, a national network of prominent political scientists, reveal the sausage-making of politics and policy. Readers can almost see the political players in the proverbial smoke-filled room, shirtsleeves rolled up and BlackBerrys in hand, developing the strategies and hammering out the compromises designed to hold the party base while winning over independent voters. Combining an insider's perspective with actual case studies, the volume examines the policymaking behind such programs as

• No Child Left Behind
• tax cuts
• Social Security privatization
• Medicare prescription drug reform
• education and immigration reform
• environmental policy
• judicial politics
• national security

Covering all major areas of policymaking, Building Coalitions, Making Policy gives instructors in political science, public administration and policy, American government, and American presidential studies plenty of provocative examples for classroom debate.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Coptright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Getting Past No: Building Coalitions and Making Policy from Clinton to Bush to Obama
• 1 The Electoral Connection and the Dissonant Game of Coalition Building in an Era of Partisan Policymaking
• 2 Why LBJ Is Smiling: The Bush Administration, “Compassionate Conservatism,” and No Child Left Behind
• 3 Splitting the Coalition: The Political Perils and Opportunities of Immigration Reform
• 4 Embracing the Third Rail? Social Security Politics from Clinton to Obama
• 5 The Bush Administration and the Politics of Medicare Reform
• 6 A Solution for All Seasons: The Politics of Tax Reduction in the Bush Administration
• 7 The Bush Administration and the Uses of Judicial Politics
• 8 A Feint to the Center, a Move Backward: Bush’s Clear Skies Initiative and the Politics of Policymaking
• 9 National Security, the Electoral Connection, and Policy Choice
• 10 The Dynamics of Presidential Policy Choice and Promotion
• 11 Touching the Bases: Parties and Policymaking in the Twenty-First Century
• 12 Bush’s “Our Crowd”
• 13 Politics, Elections, and Policymaking
• List of Contributors
• Index