American Presidency Research Paper

This paper falls between the extremes of a pure research paper and a pure essay, and it should have elements of both types of writing. You will need to conduct research into things not fully covered in the course and to lay out the basics of the relevant issues while also placing it all in a broader context and saying something evaluative about it.

The general purpose of the assignment is to use materials and ideas from the course as a springboard for an original analysis of the U.S. presidency. You should identify one aspect of the question below, do some research on it, and clearly articulate and systematically develop a specific thesis about it. The various smaller questions and points that follow the main question are intended mainly to get you to think broadly about the main question, so you might well not want to thoroughly address every little point.

Topic: Contextualizing Trump: Over one year into Donald Trumps second term, people are still trying to figure out how such an unusual politician got (re)elected and what his presidency means. In Subverting the Republic, Nicholas Jacobs & Sidney Milkis argue that Trumps brand of presidential politics is not so much a shocking departure from tradition as it is a symptom of a constitutional disease that has long afflicted the American polity. They say that for all the precedents shattered by his presidency, Trump also fits a pattern (231-2), and they purport to explain how Donald Trumps use of presidential power exacerbated the pathologies plaguing Americas presidency-centered democracy (21). Do you agree with their diagnosis? Insofar as it is persuasive, what does it mean for the future of the presidency and American politics and government?

It must be 2,500-3,300 words in length (which is roughly equivalent to 9-12 pages); no more/less. Please put your word count on the cover, and ensure it falls within the permissible range. Use standard formatting (12-point font, 1-inch margins, and double-spacing). Please use either footnotes or parenthetical in-text citations, but not endnotes (Smith, p1).1 And include a complete bibliography at the papers end (APA 7th edition) (which need not count in the word count)

Sources:

1. Internal sources: Your analysis must be very firmly grounded in ideas and materials from the course, so; You must specifically cite and quote from the book by Jacobs & Milkis at least three times.

Source to cite and quote by Jacob & Milkis: Subverting the Republic

– Jacobs, Nicholas & Sidney Milkis. Subverting the Republic: Donald J. Trump… Kansas, 2025.

Jacobs, N., & Milkis, S. M. (2025). Subverting the republic. University Press of Kansas. (APA)

You must specifically cite and quote at least two other sources from those listed on the syllabus. Depending on your particular approach and argument, all this may be more or less easy to do. The requirement is for at least 7 total citations to course sources is a bare minimum, and many good papers will be even more closely connected to various materials from the course.

You must cite at least two lectures.

Syllabus sources to use:

• Howell, William G. The American Presidency: An Institutional Approach… Princeton, 2023.
• Lowande, Kenneth. False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power... Kansas, 2024.

For the 2 needed citations from the Class lectures use:

(American Presidency Lecture notes PDF)

2. External sources: You must also conduct some outside research on your chosen topic, so you must use and quote at least three high-quality outside sources (i.e., not in the syllabus). Since the quality of your research is a component of your grade (see below), you might want to use more than this required minimum. (books, articles, academic journals, etc)

3. At least one citation per page: In addition to the above requirements for internal and external sources, every single page of your paper must contain at least one citation.

There is a pdf of the book Subverting The Republic, in case the link doesn’t work