Taking the Initiative

Download or read book Taking the Initiative written by John B. Bader and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking the Initiative shows that majority party leaders in Congress have set and successfully pushed their own policy agendas for decades--revealing the 'Contract With America' as only the most recent, and certainly not the most successful, example of independent policy making. Cutting deeply into the politics and personalities of three decades of party leadership, John B. Bader probes the strategies and evaluates the effectiveness of House and Senate leaders operating in a divided government, when Congress and the presidency are controlled by different political parties. He provides a historical context for analyzing the"Contract" and shows that aggressive agenda-setting has long been a regular feature of majority party leadership. Bader interviewed more than seventy congressional leaders, staff members, party officials, and political consultants, including speakers Thomas "Tip" O'Neill and Jim Wright, for this book. He supplemented these interviews with research in largely unexplored archival materials such as press conference transcripts, notes from White House leadership meetings, and staff memoranda on strategy.