All posts by: Dinah Winnick

“Obama’s speech Thursday night will not be the most important of his career, nor even his most important electoral speech…But Charlotte ain’t Denver, and this moment calls for neither hope nor change,” writes Thomas F. Schaller, professor of political science at UMBC, in his latest Salon column.

Schaller suggests, ‘What it calls for instead is an unapologetic defense of four years worthy of this president’s historical measure.” He expects Obama to tout the successes of his first term, but “to do so in humble, even sober tones,” given the country’s ongoing economic challenges and a less optimistic outlook than dominated the 2008 election.

For more on the Obama campaign’s 2012 approach and expectations for both President Obama and Vice President Biden’s DNC speeches, see Schaller’s column in the Baltimore Sun.

An article in today’s Baltimore Sun explores the Maryland GOP’s efforts to have a greater impact in the Democratic-leaning state. One aspect of this work could be capitalizing on an open seat for governor and a potentially messy Democratic primary in 2014 by remaining unified behind a single GOP gubernatorial candidate.

“They can hope for a disorganized Democratic Party and fuel that dissension,” UMBC political science professor Thomas F. Schaller told the Sun. This could “put them in a position to be there like a trapeze to catch the governor’s race if it drops.”

During his speech accepting the GOP vice presidential nomination, Paul Ryan used strong language blaming President Obama for the unraveling of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson Commission, created to develop a policy strategy for fiscal sustainability. Ryan remarked, “He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.”
PolitiFact asked a number of experts, including UMBC political science professor Roy T. Meyers, for their take on Ryan’s remarks. “‘They?’ ‘Them?’ Why didn’t he say, ‘us?’” wrote Meyers. “It’s beyond hypocritical. It’s repeatedly and cynically dishonest.”
Experts from the American Enterprise Institute and Taxpayers for Common Sense agreed. They cited Ryan’s failure to mention that he served on the commission and personally voted against the group’s proposal, which ultimately did not receive enough “yes” votes to be sent to Congress for action.

Social Movements and the New State: The Fate of Pro-Democracy Organizations When Democracy Is Won, from Stanford University Press, is the latest book by Brian K. Grodsky, associate professor of political science at UMBC. Reviewers have called it “exceptionally rich” and “theoretically innovative.” The book description reads:

The world’s democracies cheered as the social movements of the Arab Spring ended the reigns of longstanding dictators and ushered in the possibility of democracy. Yet these unique transitions also fit into a broader pattern of democratic breakthroughs around the globe, where political leaders emerge from the pro-democracy movement that helped affect change. In Social Movements and the New State, Brian Grodsky examines the relationships between new political elites and the civil society organizations that brought them to power in three culturally and geographically disparate countries—Poland, South Africa, and Georgia.This book argues that the identities and personal networks developed during the struggle provide “movement activists” with opportunities to influence minor issues, but that new and differing institutional pressures create schisms on broader policy that can turn prior bonds into a liability rather than an asset. Drawing on media analyses and more than 150 elite interviews, Grodsky offers a rare empirical assessment of the degree to which social movement organizations shape activists’ beliefs and actions over the long term.