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This article introduces two newly available sources of data on presidents' legislative programs. The first consists of administration legislative initiatives cleared by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for submission to Congress. We refer to these records as "OMB logs" because they record OMB's clearance actions on executive‐branch legislative proposals. The second consists of memoranda, officially called Statements of Administration Policy, that OMB sends to floor leaders detailing the president's position on legislation pending floor consideration. We compare these new data on presidents' legislative initiatives and policy preferences with those contained in currently available sources—The Public Papers of the Presidents and Congressional Quarterly's scoring of presidential positions on roll‐call votes—and with a long available but seldom used fifth source, the Congressional Record. Both new data sources list bills and legislative preferences that are not included in the currently available sources. We illustrate the value of these new data by calculating presidents' impressive "legislative effectiveness" in the House when all presidential initiatives are taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Super-majorities have occurred frequently in Congress but have escaped scholarly attention. This paper employs new measures of positive agenda control and a unique data set of 3,407 nontrivial bills from 1981 to 2008 to answer two questions: how did legislative leaders construct veto-proof coalitions, and what did presidents do with them? Legislative leaders, we argue, deployed procedures to expand and sustain veto-proof coalitions, despite increasing polarization. The resulting history, which signaled members' commitment to a bill, provided information to the president that reduced uncertainty about possibilities for interbranch bargaining and the likely success of a veto. We find that positive agenda control increased the probability of vote tallies of two-thirds or more, especially after the 1994 election. In addition, we demonstrate that presidents concentrated veto activity on bills with outcomes of less than two-thirds, rejected some veto-proof bills for reputational gains, and deployed signing statements strategically. The analysis suggests that congressional leaders paradoxically gained capacity for nurturing large, bipartisan alliances as the institution became more polarized. Moreover, it demonstrates that strategic activity by legislative leaders is critical to explaining variation in presidential options for veto bargaining and signing statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though scholars have developed theoretically rich and empirically sophisticated accounts of presidential behavior within the modern era, it is less clear whether these insights shed light on presidents who served in earlier periods of history. In this paper, I sketch an outline of the incentive structures faced by late- nineteenth-century presidents that focuses on their contributions to party building and use county-level data from 1876 to 1896 to show that presidents' core partisan constituencies were disproportionate recipients of federal post offices. While presidential incentives may have differed across history, presidents appeared to be well positioned to act upon them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long noted how President Franklin D. Roosevelt used a network of formal and informal advisors and executive agencies. Few if any, however, have noted the advisory role played by Anna Rosenberg during the war years. Using both personal and presidential papers, this article explores the diverse ways that Rosenberg assisted Roosevelt, including conveying the demands of African American leaders, supervising troubled agencies, and most important, serving as the president's alter ego in labor-management relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers suggested weekly activities in learning mathematics for students from kindergarten to grade six. The activities are designed to help teachers and students explore the history of presidents in the U.S. as well as the presidential elections in various fields. It notes that they are intended to engage students to think like mathematicians. It mentions that they can be answered individually, by group, or as a class. The activities include comparing coins, creating a timeline of the presidents, and exploring presidential faces that appear on American coins and paper currency.