Air Midterm 2019

Relax. This “air midterm” does not count toward your grade; do not even turn it in. Instead, use it to appraise your own progress in the course. Try out this test, either in your head or on paper.If you flounder, then you should take more care with class sessions and assigned readings.

I. Identifications  In a short paragraph each, explain the meaning and significance of the following items. What is fair game for an identification?

• Items that we have discussed in class or on the blog;
• Items that appear in bold or italics in the readings;
• Items that cover several pages in the readings.

1. “Energy in the executive”
2. Self-evident truths
3. Moeurs
4. Richard Henry Lee
5. 501(c)(4)
6. Have-a-Little, Want-More
7. Shadow lobbying
8. Federal Register
9. Nuclear Freeze
10. The "minimalism" of the Constitution

II.   Short essays.  In a couple of paragraphs each, answer the following.

• Explain the impact of the Three-Fifths Compromise on political power in antebellum America.
• “[A]nd to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.”  Explain.
• “My view was that every executive officer, and above all every executive officer in high position, was a steward of the people bound actively and affirmatively to do all he could for the people, and not to content himself with the negative merit of keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin.” Explain.
• "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's [sic] most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. " Explain.

III. General Essays 

• According to Tocqueville, what are the main causes that maintain a democratic republic in the United States? Explain.
• Explain the major geographic and demographic divides in the 2016 election.

• "In all the reasoning found in The Federalist Papers," wrote Alinsky, "no point is so central and agreed upon as `Rich and poor alike are prone to act on impulse rather than pure reason and narrow conceptions of self-interest...'" Explain.  Is this point the central one in The Federalist?  

Bonus questions.  Very briefly identify the following:

• Bob Livingston
• Robert Livingston
• Monica Lewinsky
• Mary Beth LaBelle
• Robert Lighthizer