The fight over the confirmation of Clarence Thomas for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court was another round in a struggle between Congress and the White House for control over the government of the United States. The intensity of the battle over the Thomas nomination reflected the Republican determination to counter the attacks upon presidential appointees that Democrats in Congress staged in the course of this struggle.

The conflict over the Thomas confirmation became so fierce largely because it turned into a two-way battle. The Democratic attack upon Thomas was met by a Republican counterattack upon Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of sexual harassment. Republican senators evidently decided that the time had come to fight efforts by Democratic Congresses to curtail the power of Republican presidents.

Battles between Congress and the presidency have become central to American politics in recent years. As the Republicans tightened their hold on the White House and the Democrats their grip on Congress, each party came to despair of gaining control of the opposition's bastion by defeating it in the electoral arena. Instead, each party sought to strengthen the institution it normally controls while weakening the one it regarded as beyond its reach electorally (Ginsberg and Shefter 1990).

In particular, Congress attempted to reduce the president's ability to gain power from his control over the national security apparatus by sponsoring a number of legislative restrictions on the foreign policy powers of the president—the War Powers Act, the Arms Export Control Act, and the Foreign Commitments Resolution.

Although I have enjoyed five productive and stimulating years in the House of Representatives, my satisfaction is tempered by the conviction that our collective response has often been inadequate to our country's needs. In the near term we are faced with a stubborn recession, the need to ease its pain and to promote economic recovery. But the long-term challenges are even more daunting: laying the groundwork for improved economic performance and an enhanced quality of life by investing in research, education, and training; rebuilding and extending our infrastructure; broadening access to adequate health care; stimulating savings and investment; and achieving budgetary accountability and control.

The 102nd Congress has made some progress on these issues, most notably by approving a major high-way-transit program and an ambitious rewrite of the Higher Education Act. But on many other fronts Congress has found it difficult to act, and the president has offered little in the way of a domestic program save occasional vetoes of Democratic initiatives.

The most obvious immediate barrier to effective governmental action is the federal budget deficit. The failure to correct the problem in the 1980s, when the economy was healthier and could have more easily withstood austerity measures, has left Congress and the president with equally unpromising alternatives: either rely on symbolic, hortatory, and largely ineffectual actions to counter economic adversity, or fund more serious recovery measures at the expense of a dangerous deepening of the deficit.

The United States Supreme Court today is an object of intense speculation. After two decades of anticipation by Court watchers, the Court may be ready to enter a new era in its history. Commentators debate what the new era will look like, if it does indeed develop. Will the Court reject altogether its mission of protecting individual liberties? If so, what new role will it adopt?

Because the Supreme Court is an important and intriguing institution, such speculation is understandable. But ultimately, even the most perceptive observers have a limited capacity to predict the Court's direction as a policy maker. These difficulties in prediction reflect a fundamental reality about the Court: its path is not the inevitable product of the political and social forces that shape its behavior. Rather, less systematic factors can influence the Court's path, making the Court's role as a policy maker largely upredictable.

Political science has been slow to address the political and policy issues of AIDS. It was not until 1987—six years after recognition of the epidemic by the Centers for Disease Control—that the American Political Science Association first sponsored a panel on AIDS policy at its annual convention. A second panel, on comparative public policy issues and AIDS, was not held until 1989, but that panel was sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Caucus for Political Science, not the APSA. A 1987 special issue on health policy of PS: Political Science & Politics contained not a single reference to AIDS. When it comes to using its accumulated wisdom to help society understand the phenomenon of AIDS, professional political science lags far behind psychology, anthropology, sociology, and other social science disciplines.

By downplaying AIDS, political science has not only acquiesced in trivializing this deadly disease and in marginalizing groups initially identified with it, but it also has squandered an important opportunity for itself. To what degree might the study of AIDS test the breadth of current explanatory theory? What testable hypotheses might be generated from studies of AIDS policies? What does AIDS tell us about processes of political mobilization, policy making, the creation of political networks or alternative power maps?

Ronald Moe's lucid article, “Political Science and the Savings and Loan Crisis” (1991), considered what the political scientist's role might have been in regard to that crisis (had not our profession given up its expertise in that area). His comments led me to reflect on the role of the political scientist in relation to another national crisis—the Gulf War of 1991. During the war, and in the months preceding it, it seemed that political science—or at least my specialty, international relations (IR)—had no role to play. This strange fact results from certain paradoxes that actually encourage us to foster a separation between academic expertise in international relations, and public knowledge of how foreign policy decisions are made.

Within hours of the war's beginning, I called several IR colleagues to get their opinions as to why the United States had taken the plunge. I got appropriate, you might say textbook, answers. One colleague went right for the military rationale: “to save us from the Peace Dividend,” “to give us the chance to test new weapons,” and—one that I wouldn't have thought of myself—“to deplete inventory.” Another mentioned the more abstract balance-of-power principle, expressed in this case as “to keep our little brothers (i.e., the Third World) in their place,” while others thought of domestic factors, such as “to divert attention from the S&L crisis,” or economic advantages, such as “Saudi is footing the bill.”