What Does the American Presidency Mean?

Richard Holtzman is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Department of Politics, Law, and Society at Bryant University. Holtzman's teaching and research focus on American Politics, and he has published on Presidential Rhetoric and on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

• PART I: Two Social Science Methodologies Introduction to the Book and Part I: What Does It Mean to Interpret the Presidency? 1. Characteristics of Interpretive Research 2. Methodological Positivism’s History of “Progress” in Presidency Studies 3. “The Interpretable Presidency” Revisited PART II: Interpretive Presidency Research and Its Relevance Introduction to Part II: The American Presidency is Rhetorical/Meaningful 4. How Does the American Presidency Mean? 5. What Does the American Presidency Mean?

Richard Holtzman has done what many strive for and few accomplish, namely present sophisticated insights in language that is approachable and unpretentious. Holtzman's core argument is that we cannot study the presidency without interpreting the presidency—that we must understand what the presidency is and means before we can establish what presidents do and how they do it. Interpretative research, Holtzman shows, thus forms the epistemic foundation on which presidency scholarship necessarily stands. Scholars from diverse backgrounds and methodologies will gain immensely from this book, which deserves to become a standard on graduate reading lists in American politics.Charles Zug, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of MissouriThis book demonstrates how much scholars of the presidency and of American institutions in general stand to gain from thinking about the study of politics as an interpretive enterprise. In the scholarly ecosystem of mainstream American political science ... this is a significant achievement.Presidential Studies Quarterly