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The Place of Midterm Campaigning in American Politics 5 potential motivations for a be­hav­ior that consumes a huge amount of presi- dential time and energy during ­every midterm cycle, some of which could point to a profoundly dif­fer­ent purpose for, and impact of, said be­hav­ior. Likewise, the operative presumption that midterm campaigning is largely about ­either presidential or congressional electoral needs further narrows our range of vision with regard to this be­hav­ior and effectively leaves us with a potential “how,” “where,” or “who” of two—­presidents must focus on ­either states that are impor­tant in a subsequent election or on congressional races that need assistance. This suggests that presidents are not, in fact, individu- als motivated by policy, but rather by a scorecard. Why ­ else would we pre- sume that all they care about is the electoral outcome and not the subsequent (and far more substantively impor­tant) ­legal and policy outcomes that occur as a result of elections? Fi­nally, seeing the be­hav­ior as predestined and obligatory obscures its potential impact and importance. This is ­because what the be­hav­ior can do is, to an extent, a function of why it is done—at least, if it is done thought- fully and well. Consequently, by simply advancing the thesis that midterm campaigning is merely another unexceptional facet of the modern presidency and that it happens to the combination of the vicissitudes of fate and the whims of ­others, we lose sight of what midterm campaigning might actually be accomplishing—­because we are looking in all the wrong places. Dif­fer­ent Foundation and Dif­fer­ent Questions To assess midterm campaigning in a new light, it is necessary to lay a new foundation. Rather than grounding its assumptions in the Neustadtian modern presidency, this book grounds itself in presidency presented by Steven Skowronek. As he adeptly put it in The Politics Presidents Make, the presidency is an office that regularly reaches beyond itself to assert control over ­ others, one whose deep-­seated impulse to reorder ­things routinely jolts order and routine elsewhere, one whose normal activities and operations alter system bound­aries and recast po­liti­cal possibilities.14 This disruptiveness is a necessary by-product of the place of the presidency within American politics—­the office most imbued with public “trust,” but lacking in the constitutional means to effectively carry it out. As Woodrow Wilson pointed out over a ­century ago concerning the limitations of the pres- idency, “the constitutional structure of the government has hampered and limited his action [with regard to leadership], but it has not prevented it.”15 Presidents have the potential to create po­liti­cal change, but they lack the inter- nal means to achieve it and are hampered by the nature of the constitutional