 Mexican (but not African). Parsons identified herself as an indigenous American, claiming that the “white capitalists” were the true foreigners. But US officials along with the mainstream media portrayed Parsons and other anarchists as non-white foreigners who threatened American ideology and territorial integrity. Despite Parson’s denial, reporters labeled her as being a Negro, which was part of a concerted effort to further marginalize anarchist activism.
Of theoretical interest is the book’s challenge to Rogers Smith’s “multiple traditions” approach to American political culture. Whereas Smith suggests that racism has been rooted in a discrete, ascriptive/ethnonational tradition that has existed throughout US history alongside liberalism and republicanism, Basson argues that “racism was inherent in the full range of political discourses in the United States at the turn of
the twentieth century” (p.180).
from various background considerations about executive power to four cases of alleged overreaching. This is controversial stuff, and Pfiffner’s account invites a number of criticisms, most of which he seems to anticipate. For example, one might ask whether Pfiffner unfairly singles out Bush. After all, other presidents have engaged in some of these actions, too. Pfiffner concedes that during the twentieth century, most presidents have dominated Congress, but he claims that “this domination reached a peak under the presidency of George W. Bush” (p.57). For Pfiffner, Bush simply went much further than his predecessors.
Yet, through executive orders and other vehicles, presidents often adopt the posture of command. In THE PREEMINENCE OF POLITICS, Ricardo Jose Pereira Rodrigues argues that in practice executive orders confirm Neustadt’s thesis. Executive orders are shaped by the president’s political environment, and their effectiveness is constrained by actors inside and outside the government. Rodrigues concludes that the active use of executive orders by modern presidents does not signify a dangerous expansion of executive power.
In this study, Rodrigues is concerned with political checks on presidential power, and, for the most part, sets aside legal considerations. Accordingly, the interaction of law and politics is not much explored in this book, rendering the study less interesting to scholars of public law than, for example, Phillip Cooper’s excellent BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT....For Rodrigues, it does not matter whether an executive order has any foundation in statutory or constitutional law, the president is simply exercising power (executive or legislative) that is shared with Congress. As I will argue below, this approach necessitates that the book’s upbeat conclusions be qualified.