Objective: This essay assignment requires you to demonstrate understanding of what you have read in the
course. It requires you to take a position and support it using expert opinion (The Revel readings) by
developing an analysis of the essay question.
Assignment:
Write an analytic essay by taking a position and support it using expert opinion (the Revel readings and the
discussions, videos, presentations in class only). An analytic essay is a type of an expository essay , it begs
you to formulate and defend a thesis, or argument (your argument).
Essay Question:
How would you explain the gap between rhetoric and reality in the idea of the American Dream? Do you
believe in the American Dream? If yes, why? If not, why not?
INSTRUCTIONS:
This is an analytic essay-exam answer that is meant to be brief but well-reasoned and thorough examining a
political behavior, phenomenon, policy, based on the Revel readings, not a research paper. It is not necessary
or even recommended, that you research beyond the course readings to complete it. But you should discuss
the texts in some detail, and use short quotes when appropriate.
Length: 3 - 4 pages, double spaced, Times New Roman (12), 1 inch margins
STYLE: All references must be cited. Use in-text citation next to quotes or paragraphs with author’s last
Name and page number , e.g. (Nathan, p.25). In our case (Revel, ch.11, p 3).
Provide a list of readings cited in a ‘works cited’ page in the end, or your 4the page. Although you
are using only Revel, the works cited page is a mandatory part of your essay.
The Revel Articles…
Chapter 1 Democracy and American politics
Russian Interference in American Elections
January 2020
In his report to the Attorney General in April 2018 and in his congressional testimony on July 24, 2019, special
counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russia, an openly hostile foreign power, intervened in the 2016
presidential election in the United States with an eye toward creating turmoil and uncertainty and influencing its
outcome in favor of Republican Donald Trump over his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. These findings
were substantiated in reports issued by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee in October 2019
after its own investigations and witness interviews, which showed how the Russian intelligence services, often
operating through the Kremlin-directed troll farm (the Internet Research Agency), used social media to sow
discord among groups in the United States and distribute false information in a campaign to undermine the
Clinton campaign.
Elections are central to democracy, the subject of this opening chapter and a theme we return to throughout
this book. Our objective in this chapter is to clearly define democracy and help you assess the degree to which
the United States is becoming more or less democratic as you learn more about our constitutional system, the
actors, and institutions that are important in American politics (including public opinion, political parties, interest
groups, the media, social movements, and elections), and the institutions that make and execute federal
government policies (Congress, the president, and the judiciary).
One of the things you will learn is that democracy in large societies requires, in addition to political liberty and
political equality, the existence of free and fair elections. Democracy is fundamentally a system in which
citizens shape what the government does. The best mechanism for doing so is the election where voters cast
their ballots in favor of candidates who support their preferences about what government should do or against
candidates who don’t support their preferences. When false information sowing fear and discord floods the
electoral process, trust in the integrity and reliability of the election process can only diminish among the public.
The troubles in the conduct of our elections is one of many themes in this book. We are in a confusing time in
our nation’s history. Americans are not confident that the U.S. economy can deliver on promises of shared
prosperity for ordinary people, nor are they confident in the ability of our political and governmental institutions
to be responsive to the concerns of the public and to fashion solutions for the country’s most pressing
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problems such as access to health care, meeting the threat of global climate change, or fixing our immigration
and refugee systems. Our aim in this book is to provide tools to help students better understand where many of
these problems come from, why government and political leaders act as they do in the face of these and other
problems, and how responsive to the people the American political system is and how it might become more
so.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President (Oxford, U.K.:
Oxford University Press, 2018).
Cristiano Lima, “Senate Intel’s newest Russia report undermines pro-Trump conspiracy theories,” Politico,
October 8, 2019 online at https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/08/intelligence-committee-russia-trumpreport-040736.
Blair Guild, “Intelligence Heads Convene at WH Briefing to Warn of Election Interference,” CBS News, August
2, 2018. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/live-white-house-briefing-august-2-2018-live-stream/.
Robert Mueller, “Full transcripts of Robert Mueller’s testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence
Committees,” NBCNews, June 24, 2019. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/full-transcript-robertmueller-house-committee-testimony-n1033216.
Jonathan Lemire and Zeke Miller, “Don’t Meddle in the Election, Please” Time Magazine online, June 28, 2019.
https://time.com/5616919/trump-vladimir-putin-g20-election-interference.
Chapter 2 - The constitution
The Supreme Court Rules Against Trump Administration on Citizenship Question
August 2019
Because seats in the House of Representatives are divided up among states based on population, the Framers
included a provision in the Constitution requiring a national census every ten years. Specifically, Article I,
Section II of the Constitution requires the “enumeration” shall be carried out, “within every subsequent Term of
ten Years.” Seats are distributed to states based on their population, but so too is federal spending on
important items such as Medicare and highway maintenance; the higher the population a state has, the greater
the amount of money it receives.
The Trump Administration, and the Commerce Department in particular—which is charged by Congress with
carrying out the Census—proposed asking individuals whether or not they are a citizen on the 2020 Census.
The Department argues that this will result in “more complete and accurate data,” while others argue that it will
discourage some types of individuals, especially immigrants (legal and undocumented) from responding out of
fear the government will use the data to identify them. While using Census data this way is illegal, this fear is
not without justification: the government used Census data to intern Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Regardless, the result of a citizenship question is likely to be an undercount of population in states which have
high numbers of non-citizens living in them.
What does the Constitution say about counting citizens or non-citizens? The answer is, not much. The
Constitution directs the Census to be carried out “in such Manner as directed by law,” and originally made
specific provisions for slaves and Native Americans. But, the federal courts have long interpreted the Census
to be a count of all people, and the apportionment of House districts be made on the basis of total population,
rather than total number of citizens. Specifically, the courts have said that citizens and persons are not used
interchangeably in the Constitution, thus they must mean something different. There is also the possibility that
adding a citizenship question to the Census violates the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment in that
the federal government added the question at least in part with the intent of discriminating against certain
groups.
The State of New York, one state that was likely to lose federal funds and representation if a citizenship
question was included on the 2020 Census, asked the Federal Courts to intervene, and in June 2019, the
Supreme Court ruled against the Federal Government, effectively barring the citizenship question from
appearing on the 2020 Census. Notably, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a majority opinion which was not a
legal victory for either side.
The final vote was complicated, with the Court’s conservative majority agreeing with some parts of the
decision, while the liberal justices agreed with other parts. The Court ruled that asking about citizenship does
not violate the Enumeration Clause of the Constitution, saying that the clause gives Congress, “virtually
unlimited discretion in conducting the decennial ‘actual Enumeration,’" and Congress "has delegated its broad
authority over the census to the Secretary." This means that Congress and the Executive Branch can decide
how to conduct the Census.
Instead, Justice Roberts took a much narrower interpretation of the question, and said that the Secretary of the
Commerce Department’s rationale for asking about citizenship, to better enforce the Voting Rights Act, was
“pretextual,” meaning it was not the real justification and instead was an excuse for an action the Secretary
already planned to take, in violation of the relevant administrative law.
In short, if the Department of Commerce or the Trump Administration could develop a legitimate reason for
asking about citizenship, and take the proper steps to do so, it would be allowed to ask about citizenship on the
Census. This is a much weaker ruling than if the Supreme Court had said that asking about citizenship is
unconstitutional. Because the Census forms must be printed soon, the Trump Administration will not be able to
meet the burden established by the Supreme Court in time, and the citizenship question will not appear on the
Census.
In the aftermath of the decision, President Trump made bold statements about challenging the decision
(though it is not clear to whom) or about issuing an executive order, which would have almost certainly been
struck down by the Federal Courts. Instead, the Department of Commerce announced it would try to use
existing data to determine the number of non-citizens in different jurisdictions, and Trump abandoned the effort.
The controversy over the Census demonstrates the importance of the Constitution in American politics, but
also its vagaries. It is not an instruction manual for running the government, but more of an outline about the
basic operations of the three branches and the states, including powers, limitations, and structure. As a
consequence, new issues and questions are constantly arising, and reasonable people disagree about how
best to interpret and implement the Constitution.