Who Can Win the Presidency in 2016?

The field is still crowded for the U.S. presidential nomination even though there are more names that have halted their quest for the job ("Who Is Running for President," The New York Times, October 21, 2015). The article analyzes each candidate's strengths, weaknesses, and unique appeal.

Review selected hard copy/online library books related to the campaign for the White House at LSC-CyFair Branch Library. (Note: Also check the library catalog for individual candidate names to find more information on them.) Click the title of a listed item, select the "Request" button in the listing, and enter your library card number and PIN for each title you want to reserve for pick up at the library.

Use these subject words and phrases to find more in the library catalog:

• campaign funds United States
• political campaigns United States
• presidential candidates United States
• right and left political science
• women presidential candidates

Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform by Robert E. Mutch.
Oxford, 2014
call number: 324.78 Mut

"Campaign finance expert Mutch surveys an incendiary and timely subject with considerable finesse. . . He surveys campaign financing trends and reform cycles during the 20th century. . . He briefly considers Barack Obama's 2008 campaign innovations, notably how his team used the Internet for fund-raising. Mutch includes detailed commentaries on Supreme Court rulings, focusing on the widely followed and criticized 2010 Citizens United case, the ruling that prohibits the government from restricting corporate and union political expenditures, and vastly widens the power of outside money in the electoral system. . . Given prevailing judicial thought on the First Amendment and rights of corporations, he is pessimistic about the possibilities of containing their influence in future elections. " - Publishers Weekly review excerpt

Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age by Jennifer Stromer-Galley
Oxford, 2014
call number: 324.73 Str

"The expansion of new technologies has presented candidates with greater opportunities to micro-target potential voters, cheaper and easier ways to raise money, and faster and more innovative ways to respond to opponents. The need for communication control and management, however, has made campaigns slow and loathe to experiment with truly interactive internet communication technologies. Citizen involvement in the campaign historically has been and, as this book shows, continues to be a means to an end: winning the election for the candidate. For all the proliferation of apps to download, polls to click, videos to watch, and messages to forward, the decidedly undemocratic view of controlled interactivity is how most campaigns continue to operate." - publisher summary excerpt

What Will It Take to Make a Woman President?: Conversations about Women, Leadership and Power by Marianne Schnall
Seal, 2013
call number: 305.409 Sch

"Schnall, a journalist who runs the website Feminist.com, has asked 30 successful and well-known women-e.g., Gloria Steinem, Maya Angelou, Anita Hill, Nancy Pelosi-and a few feminist men why we have not had a woman president. Their answers are alike: the responsibility of women for family care, the expectation that leaders will be men, the failure to recruit women for political or leadership positions, women's lesser access to money, and the stereotyped presentation of women in various media." - Library Journal review excerpt