The Reconstructive Obama

4292 words 18 pages
The Reconstructive Obama It is ambiguous as to how President Barrack Obama shapes our politics in terms of our political regime, but it can be determined through the present outcomes of his leadership today. In The Politics Presidents Make, by Stephen Skowronek, describes that there is a life-cycle of inaugurated presidents through the history of the United States. A political regime is defined as a full cycle of presidents that induce change in our politics until it is repeated again. Through this, it is possible to determine where President Obama would stand in our political time. Skowronek also mentions four leadership categories in which past presidents are placed in: politics of reconstruction, politics of disjunction, politics of …show more content…

“Lincoln’s response to the section crisis of the 1850s plunged the nation into a civil war, and Roosevelt’s New Deal failed to pull the nation out of the Great Depression.” Reconstructive presidents do not always find all solutions to the problems of the previous regime but they are the ones who were able to do what their predecessors could not do and that was to gain support for governmental power on new terms and to initiate the solutions to previous problems by being able to vision a new set of possibilities for the nation. John Adams, Herbert Hoover, and Jimmy Carter are examples of presidents in the times during politics of disjunction. This category of presidential leadership is when the president is affiliated with the regime party but still during a vulnerable phase. Usually during the politics of disjunction, affiliates who want to reform the status quo policies cannot reform fundamental change because they are already too tied to these status quo policies which were formerly created by the previous president. When the affiliated president seeks to reform the status quo policy, the majority orthodox party reacts against reform. This then leads to a crisis where the president moves to earn the support of the orthodox party and alienates the reform party. Then this leads to a collapse in their leadership prospects due to the inability to act while trying to

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