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"Saladin M. Ambar"
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Malcolm X at Oxford Union
Malcolm X at Oxford Union tells one of the great unknown stories from the Civil Rights era, capturing the powerful oratorical gifts of Malcolm X and the changing world of racial politics - all from the vantage point of an old debate hall on the campus of Oxford in 1964.
eBook
How Governors Built the Modern American Presidency
A governor's mansion is often the last stop for politicians who plan to move into the White House. Before Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, four of his last five predecessors had been governors. Executive experience at the state level informs individual presidencies, and, as Saladin M. Ambar argues, the actions of governors-turned-presidents changed the nature of the presidency itself long ago.How Governors Built the Modern American Presidencyis the first book to explicitly credit governors with making the presidency what it is today. By examining the governorships of such presidential stalwarts as Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, political scientist Ambar shows how gubernatorial experience made the difference in establishing modern presidential practice. The book also delves into the careers of Wisconsin's Bob La Follette and California's Hiram Johnson, demonstrating how these governors reshaped the presidency through their activism. As Ambar reminds readers, governors as far back as Samuel J. Tilden of New York, who ran against Rutherford Hayes in the controversial presidential election of 1876, paved the way for a more assertive national leadership. Ambar explodes the idea that the modern presidency began after 1945, instead placing its origins squarely in the Progressive Era. This innovative study uncovers neglected aspects of the evolution of the nation's executive branch, placing American governors at the heart of what the presidency has become-for better or for worse.
eBook
The Rise of Sunbelt Governors: Conservative Outsiders in the White House
There have been two periods in American political development where governors and their particular brand of politics have held sway in the White House. The first period, occurring during the Progressive Era, was marked by presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who brought their state-honed reform agendas with them to the presidency. Threequarters of a century later, their push for greater federal authority over big business, machine politics, and ineffective direction of public policy at the local level, was met by fierce resistance from a different breed of governor-presidents. Hailing from the Sunbelt, these governors sought to overturn the \"Hudson\" progressive model. The conservative (and at times moderate) presidential politics of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush exemplified a brand of outsider governance dedicated to ending \"big government. \"Among their accomplishments was the confirmation of the American governorship as a distinctly powerful institution for shaping presidential behavior. This article examines this latter cohort of governor-presidents and the meaning they brought to \"outsider\" politics.
Journal Article
An “Unconstitutional Governor”
In the days following Woodrow Wilson’s election as governor of New Jersey, press coverage offered a conspicuous glimpse into just how significant a rupture Wilson’s victory was of the prevailing notions of executive leadership in America. More than anything, these were reflections upon what the governor-elect suggested for party leadership and the executive’s relationship with the legislature. New York’s Evening Post provided but one example: “Governors are coming more and more to be regarded as party leaders. In Woodrow Wilson’s case, the thing was perfectly clear, for he again and again notified voters that, if they elected him Governor, he
Book Chapter
Prince of the Hudson
On September 30, 1932, in the middle of his first campaign for the presidency, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke in front of a hundred thousand people in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Over thirty years removed from Robert M. La Follette’s governorship, Roosevelt was nonetheless compelled to pay homage to what had come to be known interchangeably as the “Wisconsin Idea” and the “La Follette School” of political thought.³ It was “Fighting Bob” La Follette who had a generation earlier personified the core tenets of progressive executive philosophy in Wisconsin. His was an avowedly executive-centered leadership—above party, plebiscitary in nature, and fiercely
Book Chapter
Emerging Executives of the Second Republic, 1876–1912
Just months into his first campaign for the presidency, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was forced to attend to some unfinished business in Albany. Despite his reluctance to assault his party or New York’s political machine, FDR nonetheless confronted New York City’s errant, albeit famously colorful mayor. For years, Jimmy Walker had provided ample ammunition to his political foes through his personal and political excesses. Over time, he had grown to personify graft and big city corruption. If Roosevelt were to win the Democratic nomination, he would have to satisfy the progressive elements of his party, who, since the time of
Book Chapter
Undoing the Framers’ Work
Fear of an unbound executive was at the heart of republican concerns at the nation’s founding. It was, as the biblical admonition suggests, the beginning of all knowledge.³ And yet that fear was overcome by progressives, as Alexis de Tocqueville—ever prescient—noted, by associating the national executive with the will of the people. In due time, the demos somehow became embodied in the president. To fear the national executive by this reasoning is to fear one’s own self-interest. And who would willfully disarm one’s own authority? Such was Tocqueville’s analysis in an age with “no great parties”—one overshadowed
Book Chapter