As the CEO of the administrative state, the president has the procurement power to dictate the terms and conditions on which the federal government will do business with the private sector. By way of delegated statutory authority, executive order, and agency procurement and acquisition rules, the president can call the shots. Anyone wishing to do business with the federal government must meet the president's contract terms and conditions. Presidents use this “power of the purchaser” to exercise political control over procurement rulemaking and to influence public policy in areas unrelated to the federal government's “efficient” purchase of goods and services. Procurement—and the power of the purchaser—must be viewed as a powerful weapon of coercion and redistribution in the president's political and policy-making arsenal.

The Obama administration struggled throughout its first term to live up to its campaign promises to reverse the most objectionable of the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies and to govern by “rule of law” principles. It is clear that most of these policies continued with minimal changes, and some even expanded to include more controversial elements such as targeted killings. The most visible policy failure has been the inability to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Efforts to accomplish this closure became entwined with two other unfulfilled campaign promises—rejection of the use of military commissions for prosecuting terrorist suspects and halting the practice of indefinite detention of uncharged suspects. In this article I analyze the impact of the role played by the rivalry for influence between White House political advisors and policy principals, on the one hand, and executive branch legal advisors, on the other, on the failure to roll back Bush's counterterrorism policies.

Recent work on the constitutional signing statement suggests such tools can be designed to defend constitutional and institutional powers or help presidents shape policy. Much less is known about rhetorical signing statements and their significance for presidential power. Our analysis from 1981-2008 demonstrates that rhetorical signing statements are calculated messages that vary in purpose from heaping praise on Congress to credit claiming and building political capital. The findings highlight the role of political conditions like divided government and presidential approval levels as well as salience of legislative opportunities in explaining the type of rhetorical message aimed at Congress.

The active role of the Federal Reserve (Fed) in responding to the financial crisis has provoked questions not only about its policies' economic wisdom but also about the political significance of the Fed's exercise of expanded power. This article places the Fed's actions into perspective, framing three counterfactuals that yield different vantage points on the key question: Have the Fed's actions in the financial crisis and beyond amounted to a “power play” intended to marginalize elected authorities in the management of the national economy? I begin with an overview of the relationship over the postwar period between the Fed and the presidency, and then employ this historical baseline in analyzing three key episodes: the response to the crisis as it emerged during the final years of the Bush administration, the surprising decision by the Obama administration to continue the policy trajectory set by the actions of the Fed and his Republican predecessor, and the stabilization policies implemented by the Fed since the onset of the financial crisis. I find no strong evidence that the Fed's actions exceeded the rubric expected on the basis of its evolving responsibility to meet emergencies in a financial marketplace where the pace of innovation is high and in the context of political party polarization that has stalemated fiscal policy.

Scholars interested in the power of the presidency often overlook the importance of a crisis. The right kind of event, however, has characteristics that create a window of opportunity for a president to exert or expand his unilateral power. Failure to explore this relationship leaves a gap in our knowledge regarding presidential power, which this article addresses. The results show foreign policy crises provide the largest window for a president to increase his authority. Economic crises and most natural disasters have little to no impact on unilateral power. Epidemic outbreaks are the exception, though compared to a foreign policy crisis, the impact is relatively small. Finally, the findings suggest a president suffering from institutional constraints or lacking in skill and will has the ability to increase his power whenever a foreign policy crisis occurs.

The United States has reached an unprecedented level of inequality in presidential elections. In 2012, only 10 states drew the major party presidential candidates for postconvention campaign events, and those same 10 states attracted 99.6% of all general election television advertising spending by the campaigns and their allies. The remaining 41 spectator states (counting the District of Columbia) included all 38 states that had been similarly overlooked in 2008. This article details these inequalities and their roots in state statutes allocating electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. It argues that states should end this inequality by enacting the National Popular Vote interstate compact, which would ensure that it is the popular vote in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that determines who becomes the president.

This article uses forecasts of the contested vote in presidential primaries to assess competing hypotheses about political power in presidential nominations. Forecasts are estimated using information from the invisible primary and from the earliest nominating elections as a means of assessing which nominations were largely settled during the invisible primary consistent with Cohen et al. (2008) and which were influenced more by momentum during the primaries as Aldrich (1980) and Bartels (1988) argue. Both patterns exist, which suggests that future research on presidential nominations should focus on why party elites and mass partisans unify more in some years than in other years.

Generally, the appropriate private cause of action against officials who, under color of federal law, violate someone's constitutional rights is to seek damages in a Bivens lawsuit. When national security issues are involved, however, the federal courts regularly bar relief under Bivens. As the recent appellate decisions in Lebron v. Rumsfeld, Padilla v. Yoo, Doe v. Rumsfeld, and Vance v. Rumsfeld display, even when the rights violations involve torture and similar acts, which “shock the conscience,” there is no Bivens relief available to plaintiffs.

This article explores the nature of congressional-presidential relations regarding war making in the early republic. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I argue that Congress was not primary in war making during this period. Examining small wars, particularly those against native tribes, demonstrates how little influence Congress had, with oversight generally occurring only after the fact. Rhetorical presidential support for Congress's role did not accord with their practical readiness to initiate and manage hostilities unilaterally. The willingness of modern presidents to act without congressional consent is therefore not necessarily a historical aberration.