Abstract
During his final year in office, President Bush attracted a lot of attention for his extensive travel abroad. Having not traveled out of the country prior to his election to the presidency; his interest in personal diplomacy in his last few months in office seemed something of a departure. For example, in January 2008 President Bush embarked upon a seven-country, week-long tour of the Middle East. At the time, there was a general assumption in the press that because of his low popularity ratings Bush was using the trip to burnish the accomplishments of his tenure as president.1
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Notes
See Howard LaFranchi, “To Burnish Legacy, Bush Goes Abroad,” Christian Science Monitor, December 27, 2007. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1227/p01s02-usfp.html. But it is also true that other presidents have done the same. The National Taxpayers Union that follows this sort of thing notes that all two-term presidents since Eisenhower have averaged much more travel, in terms of days spent abroad, in their second terms.
See Table 3, Michael Tasselmyer, “Up in the Air: A Study of Presidential Travel and Its Uncertain Costs,” NTUF Issue Brief, June 26, 2013. http://www.ntu.org/ntuf/ntuf-ib-166-up-in-the-air.html (last accessed August 21, 2013).
Aaron Wildavsky, “The Two Presidencies,” Society 35(2) (January 1, 1998): 23–31.
See Frederick Paul Lee, “‘The Two Presidencies’ Revisited,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 10 (4) (1980): 620–628.
or Brandice CanesWrone, William G. Howell, and David E. Lewis, “Toward a Broader Understanding of Presidential Power: A Reevaluation of the Two Presidencies Thesis,” The Journal of Politics 70 (1) (2008): 1–16.
See Scot Schraufnagel and Stephen M. Shellman, “The Two Presidencies, 1984–98: A Replication and Extension,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 31 (4) (2001): 699–707.
Quoted in Frederick C. Mosher, “Presidential Transitions and Foreign Policy: The American Experience,” Public Administration Review 45(4) (1985): 468–474; 472.
See Hans J. Morgenthau, “To Intervene or Not to Intervene,” Foreign Affairs 45 (3) (1967): 425–436.
or Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton University Press, 1999).
See Dennis M. Foster, “An ‘Invitation to Struggle’? The Use of Force against ‘Legislatively Vulnerable’ American Presidents,” International Studies Quarterly 50 (2) (2006): 421–444.
or David H. Clark, Benjamin O. Fordham, and Timothy Nordstrom, “Preying on the Misfortune of Others: When Do States Exploit Their Opponents’ Domestic Troubles?” The Journal of Politics 73 (1) (2011): 248–264.
See George W. Baker, “Benjamin Harrison and Hawaiian Annexation: A Reinterpretation,” The Pacific Historical Review 33 (1964): 295–309.
For a detailed account of the coup, see Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom: 1874–1893: The Kalakaua Dynasty, Vol. III (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1967); Chapter 21 at http://www.ulukau.org/elib/cgi-bin/library?e=d-0kingdom3–000Sec-11en-50–20-frameset-book-1–010escapewin&a=d&p2=hardcopy&toc=2 (last accessed November 21, 2012). See also Charles W. Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison (New York: Times Books, 2005), p. 152.
See James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington DC: US GPO, 1898), pp. 348–349.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency 1963–1969 (Holt, Rinehardt and Winston, 1999), p. 517.
See Kyle Haynes, “Lame Ducks and Coercive Diplomacy: Do Executive Term Limits Reduce the Effectiveness of Democratic Threats?” Journal of Conflict Resolution (2012). http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/05/16/0022002712445739 (accessed June 4, 2012).
The source for this data is Patricia L. Sullivan and Michael T. Koch, “Military Intervention by Powerful States, 1945–2003,” Journal of Peace Research 46 (5) (2009): 707–718.
It has been estimated that as many as 400,000 Somalian refugees starved to death in 1992 alone. See James L. Woods, “U.S. Government Decisionmaking Process during Humanitarian Operations in Somalia,” in Learning From Somalia: The Lessons Of Armed Humanitarian Intervention, edited by Walter Clark and Jeffrey Herbst (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 151–172.
See Matthew A. Baum, “How Public Opinion Constrains the Use of Force: The Case of Operation Restore Hope,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 34 (2) (2004): 187–226.
Quoted in David J. Brulé and Wonjae Hwang, “Diverting the Legislature: Executive-Legislative Relations, the Economy, and US Uses of Force,” International Studies Quarterly 54(2) (June 1, 2010): 361–379; 361.
Charles W. Ostrom and Brian L. Job, “The President and the Political Use of Force,” The American Political Science Review 80 (2) (1986): 541–566.
Philip B. K. Potter, “Does Experience Matter? American Presidential Experience, Age, and International Conflict,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 51 (3) (2007): 351–378.
Jeffrey S. Peake, “Presidential Agenda Setting in Foreign Policy,” Political Research Quarterly 54 (1) (2001): 69–86.
Jeff Yates and Andrew Whitford, “Institutional Foundations of the President’s Issue Agenda,” Political Research Quarterly 58(4) (December 1, 2005): 577–585.
See an account of Nikita Khruschev’s diplomacy in Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev. Volume 3, Volume 3 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 2007).
For an example of this methodological approach in domestic affairs, see Gregory L. Hager and Terry Sullivan, “President-Centered and Presidency-Centered Explanations of Presidential Public Activity,” American Journal of Political Science 38 (4) (1994): 1079–1103.
For a more detailed account of President Eisenhower’s foreign travels, see Robert, H. Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries, 1st edn (W.W. Norton, 1981), p. 339.
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© 2014 Daniel P. Franklin
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Franklin, D.P. (2014). Leaving Presidents and Foreign Policy. In: Pitiful Giants. The Evolving American Presidency Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137408242_4
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