Paper II (The Presidential Campaign) 

 

Write an essay in which you report on the campaign activities of the candidates for President (and Vice President) of the United States.

 

To write such an essay, you must, at a minimum, do the following:

 

(a)   Read the newspaper(s) for the next 3 weeks.  At least 4 days per week, including Sunday, record all activities performed by the Presidential candidates.  You will need to record actions of by each and the types of policy matters they take actions on. 

 

You may choose to read or supplement your reading with “internet” paper(s).  (See the class “Resources” web page for Internet newspaper links).

 

You may not choose the Colorado Daily, USA Today or the Wall Street Journal.  There is no Sunday edition of these papers.

 

(b)  List the newspaper reports of the candidate activities as either a typed bibliography or diary of references. This list should include the date of the story, the author and headline, the page on which it appeared, as well as information on the candidate and his or her activities. (One way to keep this list is as an EXCEL spreadsheet as you did for the first paper.)

 

(c)   Tabulate your counts of activities by each candidate.  What activities are common to the Republican nominee?  What activities are common to the Democratic nominee?

 

(d)  Summarize your findings. Identify similarities and differences in what the different candidates do.  For example, consider the following questions:

 

What do the candidates do?

Does one candidate seem to adopt a different approach to campaigning than the other?

How many activities occur together and how often do they campaign absent the opposition candidate?

Do the VP candidates play a role as independent candidates or do the Presidential and VP candidate campaign together?

 

(e)   Evaluate these empirical findings in light of your readings so far this semester and the results of the general election November 4th.  Can you link the campaign to the outcome of the election or does it appear to be the case that factors outside the campaign determined the result.

 

Guidelines:

 

1. Your essay is due in lecture on November 18th.

 

2. Your essay should be 5-7 pages in length. You may count one or two pages of tables (but do not count the bibliography/diary/spreadsheet), using standard fonts and formats (1 inch margins, double-spaced, font size 11 or 12).

 

3. Your TA is available outside class to clarify issues and discuss the analysis and presentation of your results.  If you can’t meet with your TA during his or her normal office hours, please make an appointment to meet with them.

 

4. What your TA and I will be looking for:

 

  • the essay is coherently organized;
  • it examines the subject in appropriate depth;
  • it is well-written (it makes an argument that can be followed, grammar and spelling are acceptable; and it makes an occasional important/compelling/dazzling insight).

 

FAQs

 

A commonly asked question is “How many new stories do I need?”

 

There is no easy answer.  Some papers cover much more of the campaign than others and thus simply the choice of paper would determine the number.  There is not a maximum or the number that will best help you understand what’s going on.  It may be useful to distinguish national stories from local stories, particularly if Colorado remains a “battleground state”.

 

A second piece of advice.  In selecting stories, DO NOT take them all from the front page of the paper.   Different newspapers will emphasize different types of stories on their front pages.  Some campaign events are not major news and do not merit major coverage.  So read broadly through the paper to find these stories.