Students will learn and identify methods to research documents, audio, other media resources and understand how a president (or multiple presidents) used presidential power of speech and words to enact legislation and/or create presidential precedents that become a focal point of their presidency or afterwards.
• Identify presidential actions that were performed by presidents
• Identify precedents that have been in place from individual presidents, and recognize if they were followed by other presidents that followed
• Presidential speeches
• Presidential Interviews
• Government Legislation (that passed and/or failed)
• Students are assigned an individual president (or small group of presidents) that they will research.
• Students then identify the famous statement(s) that were made by the president.
• Students will rank the most influential if a president has multiple.
• Students then determine how the phrase/statement made by the president influenced future presidents for actions that are performed (or not performed). Students should explain the link between presidents.
Example:
1. Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, focusing on the treatment of black Americans and his goals for their participation in Government and society. Lyndon Baines Johnson cited the emancipation Proclamation for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights act of 1965, focusing on what Lincoln had hoped to accomplish as well and how presidents after Lincoln but before him and often refused to address the subject.
2. George Washington, in his farewell address to the nation after his 2nd term in office, warned the American public about becoming entangled in foreign alliances. The American public, during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, openly discussed their desire to follow this advice and thus applied pressure to these presidents to remain neutral during the world war that was occurring at that specific moment. This resulted in little or no American involvement in WWI and WWII when they first began in Europe (and the cutting of trade with Japan during WWII).