Millard Fillmore and the Compromise of 1850

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred I. Greenstein ◽  
Dale Anderson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Emotional Intelligence ◽  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Organizational Capacity ◽  
Political Skill ◽  
Vice President ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Critical Part ◽  
The Status

This chapter assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Millard Fillmore, focusing on six realms: public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, policy vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. Vice President Fillmore unexpectedly became the thirteenth president of the United States following the death of Zachary Taylor on July 9, 1850. Fillmore had been sidelined in his predecessor's administration, but in his capacity as presiding officer of the Senate, he had carefully followed the heated congressional debate over the status of slavery in the Mexican Cession. Plunged immediately into a crisis when he assumed the presidency, Fillmore played a critical part in the enactment of compromise legislation that appeared at the time to have averted the threat of a war between the slave and free states.

The Rough and Ready Leadership of Zachary Taylor

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred I. Greenstein ◽  
Dale Anderson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Organizational Capacity ◽  
Political Skill ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Palo Alto ◽  
White House ◽  
La Palma ◽  
Buena Vista

This chapter assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Zachary Taylor, focusing on six realms: public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, policy vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. Taylor was accomplished career officer who lived up to the nickname “Old Rough and Ready.” By February 1847, he had won a series of battles at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterrey, and Buena Vista. The last victory, in which Taylor's forces won despite being outnumbered three to one, earned the general instant fame. On December 2, 1847, Taylor returned to the United States and began his transition from soldier to would-be politician. After being elected president, it comes as no surprise that Taylor governed the nation in a manner better suited for the battlefield than the White House.

Franklin Pierce and the Kansas-Nebraska Act

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred I. Greenstein ◽  
Dale Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Intelligence ◽  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Organizational Capacity ◽  
Political Skill ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Presidential Nomination ◽  
Fugitive Slave ◽  
Policy Vision

This chapter assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Franklin Pierce, focusing on six realms: public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, policy vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. Pierce won the Democratic Party's 1852 presidential nomination after a forty-eight ballot impasse in which none of the party's top three leaders was able to muster the two-thirds vote needed to become the Democratic flag bearer. A gregarious nonentity, he took office amid growing anger over the Fugitive Slave Act and passed on to his successor an acutely polarized nation. Pierce's historical reputation is captured in a survey of sixty-four historians conducted by C-SPAN in which he ranked fortieth in a field of forty-two.

Abraham Lincoln: Consummate Leader

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred I. Greenstein ◽  
Dale Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Intelligence ◽  
Cognitive Style ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Organizational Capacity ◽  
Political Skill ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
White House ◽  
State Legislator ◽  
Policy Vision

This chapter assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Abraham Lincoln, focusing on six realms: public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, policy vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. Lincoln entered the White House following a mere eight years as a state legislator and two years in the House of Representatives. He excelled in all of the qualities used here to assess leadership. In the realm of communication, he showed acumen in the way he managed his message, the vision conveyed in his statements, and the clarity of his rhetoric. His organizational methods were unsystematic but effective, and were driven by his political acumen. Lincoln was also a master politician who could cooperate with others regardless of their viewpoints.

The Disastrous Presidency of James Buchanan

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred I. Greenstein ◽  
Dale Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Intelligence ◽  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Organizational Capacity ◽  
Political Skill ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Common Phenomenon ◽  
James Buchanan ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Civil War Era

This chapter assesses the strengths and weaknesses of James Buchanan, focusing on six realms: public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, policy vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. Buchanan was a Northern politician with Southern principles—a common phenomenon of the Civil War era. He had been a presence in American politics for more than four decades when he assumed the presidency. It was widely expected that his extensive political experience would enable him to reverse the spiral of conflict between the free and slave states, but when he stepped down, several Southern states had left the Union and war was imminent, in no small part because of his pro-Southern policies.

Multicultural Assessment of Personality and Psychopathology in the United States: Still Art, Not Yet Science, and Controversial

1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard H. Dana
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Therapeutic Assessment ◽  
Culturally Competent ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
The Status ◽  
Training Research ◽  
Multicultural Assessment ◽  
Personality Description

This paper describes the status of multicultural assessment training, research, and practice in the United States. Racism, politicization of issues, and demands for equity in assessment of psychopathology and personality description have created a climate of controversy. Some sources of bias provide an introduction to major assessment issues including service delivery, moderator variables, modifications of standard tests, development of culture-specific tests, personality theory and cultural/racial identity description, cultural formulations for psychiatric diagnosis, and use of findings, particularly in therapeutic assessment. An assessment-intervention model summarizes this paper and suggests dimensions that compel practitioners to ask questions meriting research attention and providing avenues for developments of culturally competent practice.

Off to a bad start: John Adams’s tussle over titles

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C Alexander
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Vice President ◽  
The United States ◽  
John Adams ◽  
The Press ◽  
First Session

From the first days, of the first session, of the first Congress of the United States, the Senate was consumed by an issue that would do immense and lasting political harm to the sitting vice president, John Adams. The issue was a seemingly unimportant one: titles. Adams had strong opinions on what constituted a proper title for important officers of government and, either because he was unconcerned or unaware of the damage it would cause, placed himself in the middle of the brewing dispute. Adams hoped the president would be referred to as, “His highness, the President of the United States of America, and Protector of the Rights of the Same.” The suggestion enraged many, amused some, and was supported by few. He lost the fight over titles and made fast enemies with several of the Senators he was constitutionally obligated to preside over. Adams was savaged in the press, derided in the Senate and denounced by one of his oldest and closest friends. Not simply an isolated incident of political tone-deafness, this event set the stage for the campaign against Adams as a monarchist and provided further proof of his being woefully out of touch.

scholarly journals Discursive Strategies and Sequenced Institutional Change: The Case of Marriage Equality in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110205
Author(s):  
Giulia Mariani ◽  
Tània Verge
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marriage Equality ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Status ◽  
Private Actors

Building on historical and discursive institutionalism, this article examines the agent-based dynamics of gradual institutional change. Specifically, using marriage equality in the United States as a case study, we examine how actors’ ideational work enabled them to make use of the political and discursive opportunities afforded by multiple venues to legitimize the process of institutional change to take off sequentially through layering, displacement, and conversion. We also pay special attention to how the discursive strategies deployed by LGBT advocates, religious-conservative organizations and other private actors created new opportunities to influence policy debates and tip the scales to their preferred policy outcome. The sequential perspective adopted in this study allows problematizing traditional conceptualizations of which actors support or contest the status quo, as enduring oppositional dynamics lead them to perform both roles in subsequent phases of the institutional change process.

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