Staff, Bureaucracy, and the Washington Pressure Cooker

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REQUIREMENTS

Limit 4, single-spaced, type-written pages, 12-pt. font Times Roman font, 1 inch margins. The
paper will count for 20% of your final grade. Papers must be in Word, PDF, or RTF format.
Papers must include your name, student ID#, and the title of class. This is both a creative
exercise and a test of what you have learned so far in the course. Use your imagination as well as
apply your knowledge of relevant information in answering the questions. Papers are due in my
Brightspace “Assignment” folder no later than Monday, June 11 @ 11:59 p.m. Late papers will
be docked a letter grade after each day it is late (however, early papers are accepted). Feel free to
use sources such as the Internet, magazine and newspaper articles, books, and any others you
might come across; however, you MUST cite all sources used, as well as utilize quote marks
when directly quoting a source.

QUESTIONS

Compare and contrast the movies in Section III. How can members of Congress and the
president make solid decisions in the pressure cooker that is Washington, DC? What role does
staff and the executive branch bureaucracy play in the decision-making process? How important
is staff and the bureaucracy in protecting Congress and the president politically? Explain. Be
sure to draw on all the movies in this section, the assigned readings, and any others you can think
of, in answering these questions. Remember: there are no “right” or “wrong” answers to these
questions—simply opinions which are either well-defended or not.

Movies List

III. Staff, the Bureaucracy, & Decision Making

A. Thirteen Days (2000) [145 min.] {June 4} {{Topic: Crisis Decision-Making: Cuban Missile Crisis}}

B. Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) [102 min.] {June 5} {{Topic: Cold War Decision-Making}}

E. Wag the Dog (1998) [97 min.] {June 6} {{Topic: Manipulating the Public}}

C. The American President (1995) [115 min.] {June 7} {{Topic: Before the “West Wing”}}

D. Too Big to Fail (2011) [99 min.] {June 8} {{Topic: 2008 Financial Crisis}}