My paper topic narrowed and matured alongside my Truman Scholarship application this semester, and ended up becoming a much-expanded version of my Truman policy proposal. I chose to focus on the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which has largely defined the US-Africa economic relationship since its passage in 2000 under President Clinton. In eliminating tariffs, quotas, and duties on African exports to the US, AGOA redefined the US approach to Africa by shifting the focus from unilateral aid dispensation to more inclusive trade engagement, leading most commentators to hail it as a significant success. Indeed, between 2001 and 2011, exports to the US from AGOA-beneficiary nations rose over 500%, from $8.15 billion to $53.8 billion.

While this and other research seems to indicate pretty clearly that AGOA has encouraged economic growth, boosted job creation, and benefited participant nations, what is less clear is what AGOA has been missing and where it could improve. This became the focus of my research, since AGOA is set to expire in 2015 creating a huge opportunity for the President and Congress to redefine our now 15-year old approach to Africa. While my paper goes into much greater detail regarding both the triumphs and challenges of the current approach — and my recommendations for a future policy — the central elements I identified for inclusion in a new AGOA were increased infrastructure development in Africa, expansion of the Regional Trade Hub system, and a comprehensive effort aimed at lowering the costs for American businesses to operate in Africa.

If the US manages to include these three things in a new and improved AGOA policy, then I feel sure both Africa and the US will benefit. Africa appears poised only to continue rising; thus, the US must ensure it has a robust, intelligent approach to Africa and our relationship with it if we are to simultaneously help Africa develop while also helping ourselves prosper. Thanks for reading this brief preview; let’s talk about it more in DC!

Franklin McGuire
The Citadel

I found that the most important issue within the debate is whether or not the U.S. is at “war” with terrorists and whether or not the targets of drone strikes are thus “enemy combatants”. Traditionally, the American response to the international outrage at the collateral damage (even if small) of drone strikes has been that these are acts within a “War on Terror” against enemy combatants. This argument does indeed offer powerful justification against critics, because lined up against other modern wars, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and most recently Libya, the civilian-to-military casualty ratios in drone warfare compare quite favorably.[1] The deaths of innocent women and children are extremely regrettable but become costs of war from within this framework. However, this argument requires there to be an ongoing “War on Terror.” International law demands this, or the program amounts to plain and simple assassinations with bloody and unacceptable casualties. Nevertheless, even if we accept that this is a real war, the program remains in hot water; because while the international argument requires that the U.S. be at war, the constitutional argument requires that these strikes not be acts of war.

Domestically, the past two presidencies (which include both parties it should be remembered) have justified the constitutionality of the drone program on the grounds that drone strikes do not constitute acts of war and therefore do not need Congressional approval. The 2001 Authorization of Military Force certainly cannot be interpreted to cover the full extent of the drone program. As a result, if the “War on Terror” exists, it is illegal. Because of this, the argument in support of drone warfare becomes self-defeating. In my analysis, this served as the final nail in the coffin for a program with considerable benefits but ultimately unacceptable flaws.

I began my research interested in how the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) could be used as a bargaining chip between Congress and the President, in ways that distort it from its primary intent of feeding children and creating habits for a life of healthy eating. The incentive to distort certainly exists. At 32 million children, 5.76 billion meals served, and over $1.3 billion at stake per school year, the program justifiably garners attention from the food service and agriculture industries, school administrators, and child nutrition advocates.

After a phone call with President Clinton’s Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, it was clear that the Secretary of Agriculture receives constant pressure from Congress to declare certain commodities as in surplus, ensuring that NSLP purchases millions of dollars of product from a given farming region or state. During Secretary Glickman’s term, canned salmon and cherries were the two most purchased commodities by NSLP, which he primarily credits to the congresspersons from the states that produce those commodities. Nevertheless, this is not the first time such an observation has been made. As former New York Congressman Charles Godell once said of the program, “I think we can state without much question that the commodity distribution program was not a program primarily established to feed the hungry in this country.” While he led the USDA, Secretary Glickman also received instructions from the Oval Office to purchase pork in surplus to boost low pork prices and help ensure a Clinton victory in several electorally vital Midwest states.

To my surprise, though, commodities still only provide 20% of the overall calories within a school lunch. They are miniscule relative to the competitive food industry. Items like snack food, candy, and even a la carte items like pizza and hamburgers represent the real adversary to child nutrition advocates and a real ally to congressional opportunism. Unlike a USDA-reimbursable school lunch, these foods have very low or no nutritional standards. 

Dating back to the Carter Administration, the prevalence of competitive foods in cafeterias has oscillated, usually dependent on if a Republican or Democrat is in the White House. Occasionally, school administrators and the private food industry have even worked in unison to overturn nutrition regulations, simply because cash-strapped school districts needed an additional revenue stream. The policy results of an unregulated cafeteria are apparent: staggering childhood obesity and declining nutritional quality.

The final portion of the paper analyzes the context leading up to this regulatory stalemate that the 111^th Congress was eventually able to move past by passing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, a collaborative work of First Lady Michelle Obama, then Chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. The act expanded Presidential power drastically by enabling the USDA to regulate all school foods, not just those that are reimbursable within NSLP. The new regulations were released by the USDA earlier this month for public comment. Although my topic is a little more unconventional than the others I have been reading about, I look forward to sharing my research with everybody.

Mike Norton

University of Arkansas

(Image Source: Wikimedia; Chart: USDA Food and Nutrition Service)

In October, my mentor pointed me to an article that appeared in the Guardian about the UK declining to provide the US with strategic vantage points from which to strike Iran if the need were to arise–because, the UK representative argued, such a preemptive strike would be premature. 

This then led me, as a first year law school student, to wonder what the international standards for allowing preemptive strikes are. My research has since then focused on 1) the history of international law surrounding preemptive strikes, 2) the actions that past US Presidents have taken in regard to these conventions and their result, and 3) suggesting any implications this might have for dealing with Iran.

International legal scholars cite Article 38 of the International Court of Justice as the authoritative enumeration of the sources of international law. These include three principal sources: 1) treaties and international conventions, 2) custom, and 3) general principles of law.  Treaties between two or more nations create law between them much the same way contracts create law for individuals. Custom is more elusive, and can become the de facto law merely if states engage in a practice over a period of time and perceive this practice to be law. Finally, the most contested source comes from general principles of law, which include: 1) basic legal principles common in most domestic legal systems, such as res judicata and estoppel, 2) various a priori principles that states have come to accept when they engage the international community, such as being bound by a treaty they signed, and 3) higher principles of equity and humanity, similar to natural law.

Article 2, section 4 of the United Nations Charter prohibits the “threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” Article 51 of the United Nations Charter allows self-defense as an exception to Article 2(4), but is ambiguous as to the right to a preemptive strike in self-defense. A literal reading indicates that self-defense is inherently acceptable “if an armed attack occurs against a Member,” which would seem to rule out a preemptive strike. Restrictionist scholars take this approach. However, in what Arend and Beck call the “counter-restrictionist view,” this enumeration of a scenario where self-defense would be acceptable is not exclusive, and leaves room for preemptive actions.

My paper addresses several critical developments in the international community, such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the Middle East War of 1967, and the 1981 Israeli strike on Iraq’s Osarik nuclear reactor, to discover whether the restrictionists or counter-restrictionists have won the argument.

The conclusion seems to be that although the UN Charter does not explicitly allow preemptive strikes, the custom has been to allow them as long as they display the necessary elements of self-defense: necessity and proportionality. The next steps in the paper for policy purposes would be to get a sense for how recent Presidents have dealt with international requirements with regard to preemptive strikes, whether they mattered, and what the ramifications for our policy vis-à-vis Iran are.

I’m looking forward to our meeting next week and learning some more from you all!

Dealing with the scope of my project has been one of my greatest challenges. At first, I worked to narrow the focus of my project so significantly that it would be manageable within the time and page constraints of the fellowship project. In this spirit, I sought an indirect but nevertheless significant way of researching the ideological bases of the political parties. I want this project to help me understand how the parties are similar ideologically, whether their ideological differences set apart the two organizations distinctly, and how an improved understanding of both organizations—independently and as components of a greater system of partisanship—can impact future political decisions for elected officials and voters alike. To do this, I decided to focus my research on members of Congress who moved away from their political parties to become partisan independents. Together, these criteria yielded four members of Congress: Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr. of Virginia (1965-1983), Representative Virgil Goode of Virginia (1997-2008), Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont (1989-2007), and Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (1989-2003). Within the first draft of my paper, I only included Byrd and Jeffords because of the project constraints, but I plan to expand the project to include at least one if not both of the other examples. Both Goode’s and Lieberman’s cases would complicate the project in distinct ways. Lieberman’s party switched occurred in the midst of a reelection campaign and provided a means to run for reelection despite losing the Democratic primary election for his Senate seat. This marks an important distinction from Byrd’s and Jeffords’s party shifts, neither of which occurred in the immediate context of a reelection campaign. Nonetheless, electoral pressures are ever-present for members of Congress, and so this point perhaps isn’t too distinctive. Goode’s case presents a unique caveat in that he was elected a Representative rather than Senator. Politics across the two legislative chambers differ substantially, and so I’m slightly hesitant about the additional considerations required by such a comparative project across cases. Given the constraints of the Presidential Fellowship project, does it make sense to incorporate all four distinct cases despite their differences? Would it restrict the applicability of my project to only center my research on three cases?

In moving forward with my project, I’m also concerned about the applicability of my project given its now very narrow scope. Through my research, I want to be able to say something substantial about partisanship in general, and I’m worried about being able to make broader claims about American partisanship using these four very particular cases. To me, they seem like very valuable examples, despite how particular they are, but I would love to hear others’ perspectives, too.

One interesting point that I have come across in my research is the extent to which President Obama’s foreign policy aligns with that of President George H.W. Bush. I have found it particularly interesting to note some of the personal statements comparing the two. For example, Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, put it thus: “Everyone always breaks it down between idealist and realist. If you had to put [Obama] in a category, he’s more realpolitik, like Bush 41.”[1] The two have also both been on the receiving end of accusations of being too willing to deal with dictators. In the 1992 campaign Bill Clinton accused President Bush of “coddling dictators from Baghdad to Beijing.”[2] In the 2008 campaign another Clinton, this time Hillary, similarly rebuked President Obama for his openness to meet with dictators without preconditions.[3] Perhaps most poignantly, President Obama himself has remarked, “I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush.”[4] At a town hall meeting he similarly explained, “The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional, bipartisan, realistic foreign policy of George Bush’s father, John F. Kennedy, of in some ways Ronald Reagan.”[5]

I have also found it interesting to note some of the ways in which the similarities between the two extend beyond these public pronouncements. Both Presidents have given great weight to the views of Brent Scowcroft, for example. President Bush appointed Scowcroft to be his National Security Advisor, a position he held for the entirety of the administration.[6] Obama did not appoint Scowcroft to a position in his administration, but he did defer to many of Scowcroft’s opinions when forming his team during the transition period after the 2008 election. Scowcroft’s influence was particularly visible when he recommended the appointment of former Marine Corps Commandant James Jones to the position of National Security Advisor and Obama acquiesced despite barely knowing Jones.[7] President Obama’s decision to keep Robert Gates as his Secretary of Defense is similarly telling. Gates was one of the only members of the George W. Bush administration to retain his position in the Obama administration. He was also a protégé of Scowcroft. Gates had served as Scowcroft’s deputy in the George H.W. Bush administration, during which time they worked together on the invasion of Panama and Operation Desert Storm.[8] Scowcroft had later endorsed Gates for the position of Director of Central Intelligence, which he assumed during the last year of the George H.W. Bush administration.[9] In fact, Scowcroft’s influence over the president has been so extensive that Denis McDonough, President Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor, stated, “Scowcroft is someone the president really admires.”[10]

I am looking forward to sharing more about my research and learning more about everyone else’s!

Jonathan Messing

University of Pennsylvania

Through research of the various inequalities of voting power and weight among citizens in several states, it has become clear that the Electoral College favors voters of some states while disadvantaging others.  This is due to the incongruity of a winner-take-all system within states and the federal republic meant to provide political equality for all citizens of the U.S.A.  In 2008, while Florida’s 27 electoral delegates represented almost 480,000 voters, each of the three Wyoming delegates represented only 135,000 voters.[1]  According to Sarah K. Cowan, Stephen Doyle, and Drew Heffron of The New York Times, “[t]hat makes a voter casting a presidential ballot in Wyoming three and a half times more influential than a voter in Florida.”[2]

The existence of swing and battleground states exacerbates this problem because some voters in some states become more meaningful to candidates than others.  Voters in a decidedly red or blue state mean little to candidates that are concerned with states that could go either way.  The phenomenon of battleground states elucidates why President Barack Obama spoke 16 times in Colorado since January 2009, despite never visiting Idaho or Utah and visiting Wyoming and Montana only for family vacations.[3]   This face-time is important because it forces the candidates to engage with the people they represent and encourages citizens that their politicians care about their preferences and interests.  A candidate that provides face-time to certain states while ignoring other states undermines the ideal of equal representation and worth for all U.S. citizens. 

If these basic arguments are true, why is the Electoral College still around? First of all, many other political issues—including defense and the national debt—crowd out discussions of our electoral process that occurs only every four years.  Secondly, many scholars and policymakers still believe the Electoral College preserves the federal nature of our republic and the importance of states.  Proponents of the Electoral College, however, neglect the effects of an unbalanced and divided system on our electoral such as decreased voter turnout and periodically silenced voices in a winner-take system. 

Reforms to the system include an electoral system based on congressional districts and a national bonus plan that would add 102 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote on top of their electoral votes from states.  These plans are interesting, but come nowhere close to what is needed.  A national popular vote would rid the system of the current complexity, give equal voice to all Americans, increase voter turnout, and help unite our oft-divided and unequal republic.  Even Thomas Jefferson recognized that as an advanced democracy, we should compel our government to respond to unfair truths by compelling our institutions to evolve and adapt.  The problems with the current Electoral College are undeniable.  With that in mind, the choice of the American President may be the most important in the world and there should no doubt that choice should lie in the hands of all of the American populace. 

Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Necessity

My paper started with a focus on Abraham Lincoln and his understanding and use of presidential war powers.  I initially used a large portion of my paper to address Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief, which for much of the war also required him to be General-in-Chief. In this role Lincoln periodically tried to take the reins from his generals, but more importantly he developed and promoted two key Union military strategies – concentration in time, which he phrased as “those not skinning can hold a leg,” and focusing on the Confederate armies, not their cities. Since submitting the first draft of my paper, however, I have moved away from this narrower view of Lincoln to one focused on his definition of presidential war powers and the constitutional justifications he offers for their existence along with how he used those powers – spending money without congressional appropriations, blockading the South without a congressional declaration of war, increasing the size of the regular army without congressional legislation, suspending habeas corpus without congressional approval, and issuing the emancipation proclamation without congressional authorization.

This shift in focus has led me to two interesting discoveries about Lincoln’s theory of executive power. First, I found that Lincoln used the concept of necessity as the crux of his position on executive power. Reading through Harold Holzer’s Lincoln on War, a collection of Lincoln’s writings and speeches related to the war, the argument that a certain action was necessary or indispensable seemed to come up every other page. In six sentences of one letter to General Butler, Lincoln used the words necessary or necessity eleven times! Necessity appears 946 times in the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Examining how Lincoln used the concept of necessity in many of these writings led me to the conclusion that Lincoln thought he could constitutionally act beyond his explicit constitutional powers so long as the action was necessary or indispensable to the preservation of the Union and the Constitution, which the president’s unique oath required him “to preserve, protect and defend.”

The second interesting conclusion I reached came from examining the precedents of executive power Lincoln had to work with, especially Thomas Jefferson’s view as expressed in a letter to John B. Colvin. Jeremy David Bailey’s article, “Executive Prerogative and the ‘Good Officer’ in Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to John B. Colvin,” was invaluable for me in understanding Jefferson’s views on executive prerogative and the key distinctions between Jefferson and Lincoln. It was quite interesting, however, to see one stark similarity between the two men – following the Chesapeake affair when a British war ship (the HMS Leopard) fired on an American navy vessel (the USS Chesapeake) and killed 3 Americans and wounded another 18, Jefferson banned armed British ships from U.S. waters, called on governors to ready their militia quotas, and appropriated money to purchase articles of war all without congressional authorization. He justified these measures as “indispensable” or as Lincoln would say necessary. 

I am looking forward to seeing everyone at the Spring Conference. 

Accordingly, I decided to narrow my approach a bit and focus on a particular aspect of public image: the mass media’s role in constructing a candidate’s campaign. This interest sprung from a body of literature that says, “men and women campaign on the same issues and so things are equal now.” Simply put, I wasn’t buying it. Perhaps campaigns, once reduced to issue discussions, look the same when we vary candidate gender. But I couldn’t observe Hilary Clinton’s experience in 2008, or Michelle Bachmann in 2012 and conclude that things were “equal.” Something about the nature of campaigns still featured real differences between men and women.

Research led me to wonder if those “real differences” stemmed from contextual factors rather than anything to do with the candidates themselves. That is to say, the individual politician is engaging in recognizable and largely universal strategies for communication and self-presentation. But, those individuals may then be operating in different political environments and some of those differences may be dependent on gender, which may explain why we experience Clinton’s campaign distinctly from, say, Barack Obama’s campaign.

This line of thinking led me to scrutiny of the media. Perhaps Saturday Night Live had really hit the nail on the head during this 2008 skit featuring Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hilary Clinton, denouncing the sexism they faced at the hands of major media markets.

Ultimately, my study was limited and my findings not entirely conclusive. There was no measurable difference in the way the media covered male and female candidates in the 2012 Senate elections. But, I do think this is a line of questioning that needs to be continued and expanded.

This essay has made me truly aware of partisanship in Congress and how it affects gridlock. In the past I have to admit that I was someone who refused to rationalize with the opposing political party and come to a mutual understanding. I thought my political views and the views of my party were correct and that was it. This essay however has made me realize that partisanship and lack of compromise will never result in effective policy or what is right for our country, just circular reasoning and frustration. I have also really enjoyed getting to know my colleagues in this Fellowship and everyone’s help during the Fall Conference to better understand my essay for myself. 

I look forward to seeing all of you in a few days! 

Katie Donelson