The conventional wisdom about presidential campaigning in midterm Senate elections is that presidential efforts lack impact or have negative impact. We discuss conceptual problems with the conventional view and offer an alternative that views presidential campaigning as strategic. We test this alternative and find support for it. Further, we find that presidential campaign efforts have a positive impact on the vote through the mobilization of nonvoters. Finally, in a significant number of cases, presidential campaigning may have been the margin of victory for candidates of the president's party. We discuss the implications of these findings on assessments of the president and relations with Congress during the second half of the term.

The effect of public presidential approval on congressional support for the president has been the subject of considerable debate and controversy. Systematic, quantitative studies have been unable to demonstrate convincingly that public approval leads to greater legislative support for the president. The lack of constituency-level public approval data has hindered resolution of the controversy. Studies have relied upon either election results or national-level approval data as substitutes, but both alternatives are problematic as measures of public approval at the constituency level. In this paper, we use new data gathered from 50 state surveys in September 1996 that asked respondents, among other things, to rate the job performance of the president. We test whether or not public approval in the states affects senators' support for the president and also look at some hypotheses: whether or not minority party status, running for reelection, electoral vulnerability, and presidential coattails interact with constituents' approval of the president to affect senators' roll-call support for the president. With controls for partisanship and ideology of the senator and the state, analysis indicates no support for the hypothesis that public approval of the president leads to greater presidential support among senators. Presidents believe that high public approval will enhance their chances of legislative success with Congress.1 In contrast, among political scientists a diversity of opinion exists on this point. Studies have reported the full range of possibilities: that public approval leads to greater member support for the president, that it has no effect, and even that it has a negative impact!2 One source of the controversy among political scientists is the absence of appropriate measures of public approval. In particular, to date no study has been able to use constituency-level measures of public approval.

Studies find minimal evidence that general‐purpose local governments draw down slack resources set aside during prosperous times to contend with economic downturns; although they maintain, in some cases, unrestricted fund balances well in excess of professionally recommended levels. Replicating divergence from the trend methodology in the state of Illinois that provides greater discretion to create and use savings, the analysis finds counties budget slack resources counter‐cyclically (in downturn but not in upturn years) when controlling for political/institutional, revenue, economic, and demographic factors. This article discusses plausible alternative explanations for non‐findings to explore in future studies.

In this article, the authors ask whetherpresidentid speech can affect public expectations of the economy, which t h q vim as an overallindicator ofpublic optimism or pessimism about the future. 739 argue thatforeignpolicy speeches, because oftheir nature, willhave stronger impats on thepublic's future orientations than other types of speeches, in particular, economic and domestic policy speeches. This derivesfom the leadersh;P image of the president presented in suh speeches. Finally, the authors argue that the popularity ofhe president at the time of the speech is apotentially important context for speechgiking 72e authors hypothesize that presidents will be more persuasive when thg arepopular than when t h y are not. i%e authors test these ideas on monthly time series consumer economic expectations data. Strong confirmation isfoundfor the impacts of speech type and thepopularity context. 72e article concludes with thoughts about future research directions.A small but important literature has found that major presidential speeches may improve the level of public approval toward the president under certain conditions (Ragsdale 1984(Ragsdale , 1987 Brace and Hinckley 1992). ' Ragsdale (1984, 980) reports that each Jefiey E.tance"(Po1itical Research Quarterly 1993).1. The literature on presidential rhetoric and speech making is actually quite massive. A thorough review can be found in Stuckey (1998). However, Edwards (1996,208-9) points out in his critical review of seven major studies that there is a "lack of documentation of any kind on behalf of their [the authors] assertions regarding the effects ofpresidential rhetoric" on public opinion. As our concern is with such impacts, we do not deal directly with this literature. Presidential Studies Quarter& 33, no. 2 Uune)

Although studies analyze the career paths of governors, virtually none investigates whether careers matter for how they perform once in office. This analysis merges attitudinal data from two 48-state ABC News/Washington Post national surveys with measures of career experience and state characteristics to assess the relationship between career experience and gubernatorial job performance. Controlling for contextual, attitudinal, and demographic factors, the results show that career experience in administrative and statewide executive branch offices relates positively to job performance. The analysis concludes by noting which careers matter for subsequent performance as governor and the implications this has for contemporary trends in the career experience of governors.