USC professor Dr. William Resh sat down with scholar Dr. Kenneth Lowande Friday afternoon to disscuss Resh’s upcoming book, “False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age,” and the reality of policies initiated by presidents close to elections.
The conversation, held in Lewis Hall on campus, was a part of the Sol Price School of Public Policy’s monthly lecture series, “BookMarked: Conversations about Civic Leadership.” Lowande, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, specializes in the study of presidential power and policy implementation.
“We tend to see executive orders and other kinds of executive actions have very little direct effect on public policy,” Lowande said. “We see a lot more of those in close proximity to elections, which suggests that presidents care about appearances and popularity in the moment.”
The BookMarked lecture series is part of the Price School’s Civic Leadership, Education and Research (CLEAR) initiative. According to CLEAR, the initiative was founded to develop a better understanding of public sector employment, including the civic leadership workforce.
In a statement to Annenberg Media, Resh described CLEAR as an initiative that “focuses on issues of governance capacity, diversity and the impacts of technology, politics and the economy on attracting and retaining the talent necessary to effectively develop and implement public policy.”
Lowande’s discussion marks the first BookMarked event of the semester. The monthly speaker series provides policy scholars an opportunity to discuss their recently published books. Past lecturers have discussed topics including polarization and AI impact within government.
Leo Lu, a second-year public policy master’s degree student, said the lecture helped him understand why presidents make certain policy moves close to election season, citing President Joe Biden’s executive order to restrict immigration from Mexico in June as an example.
“I was actually a little bit surprised by how many symbolic initiatives were out there,” Lu said. “For example, the Biden border wall one didn’t really make sense to me because I knew it would be struck down in courts, so why would they even do that? Now it makes a lot more sense for me.”
Lowande hosted a workshop for the Political Institutions and Political Economy (PIPE) Collaborative, a university-wide research project, immediately following his BookMarked event.
During the workshop, Lowande discussed the organizational hiring choices of presidents for their White House and the high turnover rates of White House staff. Lowande also explained why administrations hire staff close in ideology with the President and hire public relations experts over policy professionals.
Kyuwon Lee, an assistant professor of political science and international relations, found Dr. Lowande’s incorporation of data particularly valuable.
“Nowadays, a lot of people focus on the capacity of both executive and legislative branches, and for this talk, it’s really interesting that the presenter tries to gather the actual data about White House staff and then compare it with congressional capacity,” Lee said.
Previous BookMarked sessions are uploaded to CLEAR’s website. For more information about future events, students can subscribe to CLEAR’s newsletter.
Anna Fregene contributed to this report.