Stability and Change in President Bush's Foreign Policy Beliefs, 2001-2005.

How much variance is there in the foreign policy beliefs of our current president, George W. Bush? Extending on a methodology developed in our piece on President Clinton's worldview in Presidential Studies Quarterly's summer 1998 edition, we seek to answer the following questions:First, what is President Bush's image of the international system in his first term? Second, does his image remain stable or does it change over time? Third, if his worldview does change, what factors help to account for this change? George Bush came to the presidency in 2001 with a lack of foreign policy experience and a desire to focus on domestic as opposed to foreign policy. With the 9-11 attacks, however, this domestic politics first emphasis seems to have changed. To seek answers to our questions, we content analyze all public statements of President Bush during his first term as found in the Index to Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. We develop a model that incorporates system characteristics, international environmental variables, domestic political factors and personality characteristics to explain the variance in President Bush's foreign policy emphasis and then estimate them using pooled time series analysis.We believe the paper addresses questions of real interest and importance to scholars of foreign policy making and the presidency including basic questions about the impact of domestic politics, system structure and personality characteristics. The questions are answered in a methodologically sophisticated and appropriate way that goes beyond case studies or anecdotal example. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]