Kirjahaku

Accessible and memorable for today's students, Inside Texas Politics presents Texas government through an "insider's perspective" using engaging stories, contemporary news events, and current scholarship to help students understand and analyze politics in the great state of Texas.

Once, it was thought, a scandal was the kiss of death for a political career. Today, however, surviving scandal seems to be the norm. Donald Trump has weathered—and even perhaps benefited from—controversies that would have been unimaginable for virtually any other candidate. Prominent figures in both parties have won elections and remained in office despite credible allegations of wrongdoing. Do scandals still matter? When and why do voters punish politicians or give them a free pass?Charting the changes from Watergate to the present, this book is a rigorous and compelling investigation of the politics of scandals. Bringing together wide-ranging survey data, innovative experiment design, and historical analysis, Brandon Rottinghaus demonstrates how political polarization, affective partisanship, fading trust in media, and the spread of misinformation have diminished the resonance of controversies. Although scandals still fell many politicians, there is a clear trend over time for fewer voters to be swayed by them. In a polarized world, scandals take only a modest toll on politicians’ approval ratings, survival in office, ambitions, and legacies. In many cases, partisans accept—or even embrace—misbehavior from members of their own party and revel in scandals affecting the opposing party. Challenging conventional wisdom with extensive data, this book illuminates the declining significance of scandals and the consequences for democratic accountability.

Once, it was thought, a scandal was the kiss of death for a political career. Today, however, surviving scandal seems to be the norm. Donald Trump has weathered—and even perhaps benefited from—controversies that would have been unimaginable for virtually any other candidate. Prominent figures in both parties have won elections and remained in office despite credible allegations of wrongdoing. Do scandals still matter? When and why do voters punish politicians or give them a free pass?Charting the changes from Watergate to the present, this book is a rigorous and compelling investigation of the politics of scandals. Bringing together wide-ranging survey data, innovative experiment design, and historical analysis, Brandon Rottinghaus demonstrates how political polarization, affective partisanship, fading trust in media, and the spread of misinformation have diminished the resonance of controversies. Although scandals still fell many politicians, there is a clear trend over time for fewer voters to be swayed by them. In a polarized world, scandals take only a modest toll on politicians’ approval ratings, survival in office, ambitions, and legacies. In many cases, partisans accept—or even embrace—misbehavior from members of their own party and revel in scandals affecting the opposing party. Challenging conventional wisdom with extensive data, this book illuminates the declining significance of scandals and the consequences for democratic accountability.

Watergate, Iran-Contra, Lewinsky, Enron, Bridgegate: according to the popular media, executive scandals are ubiquitous. Although individual scandals persist in the public memory and as the subject of academic study, how do we understand the impacts of executive indiscretion or malfeasance as a whole? What effect, if any, do scandals have on political polarization, governance, and, most importantly, democratic accountability? Recognizing the important and enduring role of scandals in American government, this book proposes a common intellectual framework for understanding their nature and political effects. Brandon Rottinghaus takes a systematic look the dynamics of the duration of scandals, the way they affect presidents and governors' capacity to govern, and the strategic choices executives make in confronting scandal at both the state and national levels. His findings reveal much about not only scandal, but the operation of American politics.

How Rick Perry navigated and shaped Texas politics as the state’s longest serving governor. Rick Perry, the charming rancher, pilot, and politician from West Texas who was governor from 2000 to 2015, is one of the most important but polarizing figures in the state's history. Over the nearly forty years he spent in the political arena, his political instincts served as a radar primed to sense future political opportunities. Hugging the arc of Texas political change, he shifted from a rural, “blue dog” Democrat to one of the most conservative politicians the state had elected up to that time, overseeing the enactment of controversial redistricting, voting, and abortion measures. Yet his evolution was complicated and incomplete, as his stands on such topics as immigration, vaccine requirements, and the use of state funds to attract business ran into opposition from a growing and ever-more conservative wing of the Republican Party in Texas-and the nation. Rick Perry is both a biography of Perry as a politician and a study of the shifts in state politics that took place during his time in office. Demonstrating that Perry ranks among the most consequential governors in Texas history, Brandon Rottinghaus chronicles the profound ways he accumulated power and shaped the governorship.