New Books in American Politics

Joel K. Goldstein has written The White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden (University Press of Kansas, 2016). Goldstein is the Vincent C. Immel Professor of Law, Saint Louis University School of Law. Since the vice presidential choices have been made, it is time for a big book about the vice presidency. Goldstein has written that big, tracing 40 years of the evolution of this position. He focuses much of his attention on the innovative vice presidency of Walter Mondale. With the consent of President Carter, Mondale moved the office for the first time to the center of the White House, taking on a role in appointment decisions, policy, and on-going work of the president. Ever since, vice presidents have been following the Mondale model, growing the office in significance and potentially increasing the importance of who is nominated to how voters evaluate the ticket. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

22 Aug 201620min

Though not a household name today, Philip Pendleton Barbour was a leading political and judicial figure in antebellum America. In Philip Pendleton Barbour in Jacksonian America: An Old Republican in King Andrew’s Court (U. of Alabama Press, 2016), William S. Belko uses his career as an example of the political transformations of the second generation of American politicians. Born the year that America attained its independence, Barbour entered politics as a Jeffersonian Republican, championing the principles articulated by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. Though out of step with the economic nationalism that predominated in the aftermath of the War of 1812, Barbour found an ally for his cause of a limited federal government in Andrew Jackson, and by the end of the 1820s he became a leader in the fight against the Bank of the United States. Though Jackson sought twice to appoint him as his attorney general, Barbour preferred a position on the federal bench, and was ultimately nominated to the Supreme Court in 1835. As Belko shows, Barbour’s service on the Court contributed to the advancement of the Jacksonian economic vision in American jurisprudence, though his premature death in 1841 came before he would have had to face as a justice the increasingly contentious issue of slavery that would shortly dominate the national discourse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

18 Aug 201646min

This week we feature two new books on the podcast, both about corporate power. First, Zachary Roth has written The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy (Crown, 2016). Roth is a national reporter for MSNBC. Next, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is the author of Corporate Citizen? An Argument for the Separation of Corporation and State (Carolina Academic Press, 2016). She is an associate professor of law at Stetson University College of Law and a Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. The two books look at the state of the democracy, Roth from the perspective of a reporter covering voting rights issues in state and local government, and Torres-Spelliscy from the perspective of the constitution. Together, these two books address whether corporate power has grown too strong and whether reforms can shift the balance of power in U.S. politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

10 Aug 201642min

Known as the Iron Man of politics, Alben Barkley enjoyed a career that took him from rural Kentucky to the vice-presidency of the United States of America. In his book Alben Barkley: A Life in Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), James K. Libbey draws upon his many years studying Barkley to provide readers with insight into this dynamic and popular figure. Growing up in poverty, Barkley nonetheless acquired an education and began a legal career before his first run for county office. From there he won election to Congress, first as a member of the House of Representatives, then in 1926 as a senator. Once in the Senate he soon emerged as a leader of the Democratic caucus and was elected Majority Leader in 1937, from which position he shepherded through some of the most important legislation of the century. Selected as Harry Truman’s running mate at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, as vice president he was a nationally popular figure and the first one known by the affectionate moniker “Veep.” Though frustrated in his efforts to become the Democratic presidential nominee in 1952, he capped his career by returning to the Senate two years later, providing a fitting coda to his lifetime of public service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

13 Jul 201655min

Robert Boatright, associate professor of political science at Clark University, is the editor of The Deregulatory Moment? A Comparative Perspective on Changing Campaign Finance Laws (University of Michigan Press, 2015). Campaign finance reform has been a salient topic during this year’s presidential campaign. Everyone from Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton has offered opinions on how the money in political campaigns might be better regulated. This attention can be tracked to the most recent unraveling of existing federal regulations by the Supreme Court in a series of decisions, most famously Citizens United. But how does this U.S. story fit into a larger comparative policy environment? Boatright has edited a collection of perspectives drawn from a variety of national contexts, including Canada, Germany, and Australia. The volume shows the extent to which outside of the U.S., we are living through a deregulatory moment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

11 Jul 201619min

As a trailblazing attorney, Bessie Margolin lived a life of exceptional achievement. At a time when the legal profession consisted almost entirely of men, she earned the esteem of her colleagues and rose to become one of the most successful Supreme Court advocates of her era. Doing so, as Marlene Trestman demonstrates in Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin (Louisiana State University Press, 2016), required overcoming not just the ingrained assumptions that men had towards professional women during that time but also the poverty of her early childhood and the loss of her mother when Margolin was only three years old. As Trestman reveals, Margolin exploited to the full the opportunities she was given as a ward of the Jewish Orphans Home in New Orleans, which provided her with a comfortable upbringing and a good education. From Newcomb College and Tulane University, Margolin went on to a fellowship at Yale University and a career in the federal government, which she began by participating in the defense of some of the most important laws to come out of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program and concluded by championing measures mandating equal pay and opposing age discrimination. And yet Trestman shows that for all of the sacrifices she made to establish a career for herself, Margolin did so on her own terms and in a way that many Americans can relate to today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

26 Jun 20161h 21min

Scott Meinke has just published Leadership Organizations in the House of Representatives: Party Participation and Partisan Politics (University of Michigan Press, 2016). He is associate professor of political science at Bucknell University. How have Congressional organizations changed over time? How have House leaders used policy organizations and committees over time? Meinke has answered these questions in his new book. Through extensive archival and quantitative research, he shows the way these organizations have changed since the 1970s. Increasingly, House leaders use party organizations to advance the party’s policy agenda and to exchange information with supporters outside of Congress. As such, Meinke’s book fits into the ongoing exploration of the Congressional polarization and points in the direction of possible Congressional reforms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

20 Jun 201622min

George McGovern is largely remembered today for his dramatic loss to Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential campaign, yet he enjoyed a long career characterized by many remarkable achievements. In Rise of a Prairie Statesman: The Life and Times of George McGovern (Princeton UP, 2016), the first in a projected two-volume biography of the senator and Democratic Party presidential nominee, Thomas Knock chronicles McGovern’s life and career from his Depression-era upbringing in South Dakota to his 1968 reelection campaign and emergence as a presidential contender. Knock describes McGovern’s transformation from a shy young boy into a confident debater who, after America went to war in 1941, volunteered for service in the Army Air Corps as a B-24 bomber pilot and flew 35 combat missions over Germany and Austria. Upon returning home, he embarked on a path that took him from the ministry to a Ph.D. in history and then the college classroom before he settled upon a career in politics. After serving two terms in the House of Representatives and as Director of Food for Peace in the Kennedy administration, in 1962 McGovern won a seat in the United States Senate, where he emerged as a prescient critic of America’s descent into the Vietnam War. In detailing his opposition to that expanding conflict, Knock not only shows how McGovern emerged as a national leader, but also demonstrates the relevance of his vision to the challenges our nation faces today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

19 Jun 20161h 15min