Christopher Putney

  • Permalink Gallery

    Long Read: Trump’s threats of violence against protestors reflect a racist order defined by nationalism in US history.

Long Read: Trump’s threats of violence against protestors reflect a racist order defined by nationalism in US history.

Share this:

This week, in reaction to the unfolding protests across the US in the wake of the killing of George Floyd during his arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota, President Trump likened the unrest to ‘domestic terror’, and vowed to ‘dominate the streets’. Christopher Putney writes that Trump’s rhetoric is the latest expression of a racial order that has been ever-present in American political development, and always defined Blacks and other […]

June 5th, 2020|Christopher Putney, Justice and Domestic Affairs|0 Comments|
Read More
  • Permalink Gallery

    Why Donald Trump’s model of executive power cannot cope with the Covid-19 crisis 

Why Donald Trump’s model of executive power cannot cope with the Covid-19 crisis 

Share this:

Since his election, President Trump has largely governed as he campaigned, with appeals to nativism and prejudice, and has transformed the presidency into a kind of performance, writes Christopher J. Putney. With a president who is constitutionally incapable of real leadership, he argues, American democracy is wholly unprepared for the crisis.

Stripped of its partisan iconography, all of the familiar institutional trappings, and its near-mythic role in Americans’ collective imagination, the presidency is really about one […]

March 19th, 2020|Christopher Putney, Elections and party politics across the US|0 Comments|
Read More
  • Permalink Gallery

    Trump’s likely impeachment acquittal shows just how much the Constitution has decayed

Trump’s likely impeachment acquittal shows just how much the Constitution has decayed

Share this:

Last week the United States Senate voted not to hear from further witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, very likely paving the way for the president to be acquitted on all the US House’s impeachment charges. Christopher J. Putney writes on what politicians and pundits have been getting wrong about impeachment. The impeachment and Senate trial are […]

February 4th, 2020|Christopher Putney, Elections and party politics across the US|0 Comments|
Read More
  • Permalink Gallery

    Donald Trump’s rhetoric isn’t the end of the presidency as we know it, but a symptom of what it has become

Donald Trump’s rhetoric isn’t the end of the presidency as we know it, but a symptom of what it has become

Share this:

President Trump’s use of Twitter to engage directly with the public may seem like a new era for the presidency. But, argues Christopher Putney, Trump’s tendency to reach out directly to voters is actually the latest iteration of a form of presidential rhetoric that is a century old. Looking back to Woodrow Wilson, he reminds us, that in the […]

March 20th, 2019|Christopher Putney, Democracy and culture|0 Comments|
Read More
This work by LSE USAPP blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported.