policy decision Quotes
Canes-Wrone developed Conditional Pandering Theory. The very popular Presidents do not have to engage in pandering. The unpopular presidents will not be helped much so they have little to gain by using this technique which is personally distasteful to almost all politicians. It is the middle of the road Presidents who tend to make the biggest use of policy pandering.
The message was in response to Senate Resolution 282 inquiring about the Teapot Dome scandal. Later of course, he claimed that he did not know any of the details.
Thomas Jefferson thought that Franklin should write the first draft of the Declaration of Independence:
The problem was that Congress was gridlocked on the slavery issue. The Southern states had more than their proportional share of Congressional power with slave populations being counted as 3/5 of a person for seats in the House of Representatives and parity with the other states in the Senate. The South could not stop all the attempts to debate slavery and the abolitionists attempts to end it, but they could block all legislation that might curtain slavery. As the United States was getting more sophisticated and educated hostility toward slavery was steadily increasing. The economies of the non Southern states was growing faster and more assuredly than the slave economies of the South. Abolition was all but inevitable but it would still take more time. Note that the President totally deferred to Congress on the leadership of what the policy should be. Presidents at that time were far less influential in making national policy and national legislating than they have become. Many think that the balance has shifted too far towards the Executive Branch.
