How should scholars who study American politics change what they do in light of the Trump administration?
The emerging consense is: write about Trump, go normative, and raise "alarm bells."
TLDR: This is a bad idea.
@JohnHolbein1 it sounds trite but this critique often means "I don't think your results mean what you say they do" -- which is actually an important thing to have right before putting this stuff out into the world
Very important and timely reminder for everyone in the media; Trump isn't an aberration, here. All contemporary presidents caught on to the fact that the media tends to parrot policy announcements in a way that makes the political shop in the WH very happy.
NEW: It’s a familiar pattern: Trump announces a new policy on Truth Social. News alerts are sent out. Lawmakers issue statements. Furor ensues.
And then ... nothing.
In today’s newsletter, I investigate: how often do Trump policies announced on social media actually happen?
@Spencer_Goidel cool. curious how are you acct for the dramatic variation in N from cycle to cycle? my guess is the differences in these lines would be swamped by error bars
@dbroockman It takes annoying, tedious things that sometimes tooks hours and were not fun, and does them in seconds. Whenever I read doom-takes about AI, I circle back to this.
I used Claude Code to build an website that implements the simulations presented in "Making in the Supreme Court: The Politics of Appointments, 1930-2020" (with Chuck Cameron) that predict the composition of the Supreme Court under different scenarios.
https://t.co/Mh4d3P5ndm
This is a really hard position to take in the academy. It is also correct. It's impossible not to be alarmed by Trump--but alarm shouldn't drive scholarship. We need a firewall between our personal views and our academic writing.
How should scholars who study American politics change what they do in light of the Trump administration?
The emerging consense is: write about Trump, go normative, and raise "alarm bells."
TLDR: This is a bad idea.
...we need to invest more resources into understanding what happens after the president says "go."
Applications due Feb 16. Please reach out to me with questions.
https://t.co/VwKoGikPsm
I'm hiring a Postdoctoral Research Fellow!
Something that should be obvious after this past year: The American presidency and the executive branch, more broadly, are far and away the most important political institutions in American politics.
Many thanks to generous support from the Hewlett Foundation for seeing a desparate research need. If we are in a new era when most policy is made by American presidents from the top-down...