Mark J. Rozell

In this volume Rozell and Peterson bring together a collection of new essays exploring the unparalleled impact of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the modern presidency. Of all the modern presidents, FDR looms largest. Indeed, most scholars date the origins of the modern presidency to FDR, and many assert that no one since has achieved his level of greatness in office.The essays are organized into two broad sections: The first examines FDR's impact on the creation and development of the administrative presidency and the legacy of the New Deal; the second looks at FDR's legacy to presidential leadership and the exercise of presidential powers. An important volume for scholars and other researchers of the FDR era and the modern American presidency.

The Press and the Bush Presidency is the third book by political scientist Mark Rozell to examine modern presidential press relations. It offers the first comprehensive review of press coverage of the Bush presidency and a comparative analysis of the relations between modern presidents and the press. Based on an analysis of the coverage in six leading print sources, as well as interviews with administration officials, Rozell describes and analyzes how journalists struggled over four years to interpret and define the presidency of George Bush and how his administration, during that period, attempted to deal with the media. What journalists write about the Bush presidency reveals much about the underlying values of presidential leadership and those of the modern press. Rozell, therefore, makes an important contribution both to presidential studies and to political communication.

Over the past decade, the public's opinion of Congress has declined—election after election—to record lows. Mark J. Rozell examines the electorate's ongoing disgust with its legislature and the reasons for it. Putting recent Congresses in historical perspective, he notes that our modern representatives are actually less corrupt than those of the past, due in large measure to increased public scrutiny and ongoing tightening of ethics and conflict of interest rules. Still, the public remains skeptical, indeed hostile, toward that most representative of our national institutions. Rozell finds that much of the blame goes to highly negative press coverage of the Congress, and government in general, and that while Congress has always been a favorite target of critics and comedians, healthy skepticism has now largely been replaced by a debilitating cynicism that undermines the foundations of representative government. A major study which will be of interest to scholars and students of American politics, government, and media.