Welcome to the third issue of the Baker Center Journal for Applied PublicPolicy. I am pleased that this issue, as its predecessors, evidences the vibrancy of the Baker Center’s governance and public policy programs and makes a contribution to our collective understanding about a variety of policy issues currently being discussed in America. Relating to our system of governance, Jess Hale Jr. examines a proposal for a uniform state approach to reining in renegade presidential electors and Professor Glenn Reynolds reviews Jack Goldsmith’s book The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration. Relating to media and foreign affairs and the role of the media in political life, Dr. Mike Fitzgerald and two of his students provide us with “A Comparative Study of Images Created by Press Coverage of the United States and the Republic of Belarus.”
Relating to health policy, Dr. David Mirvis, recently appointed as a Senior Fellow for Health Policy at the Center, explores the public policy implications of viewing health as an engine of economic growth.
Relating to energy and environmental policy, Drs. Bruce Tonn and Amy Gibson and Baker Scholars Stephanie Smith and Rachel Tuck explore U.S. Attitudes and Perspectives on National Energy Policy. I am also very pleased that this issue includes a report of an excellent conference – “Formulation of a Bipartisan Energy and Climate Policy: Toward and Open and Transparent Process “- that was co-sponsored by the Baker Center and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. This issue also includes the result ofanother successful collaboration between the Baker and Wilson Centers that focused on “Five Public Policy Ideas for Building Obama’s New Economy.” I look forward to further productive collaborations between the Baker and Wilson Centers.
Relating to global security policy, this issue includes a Student Symposium onNational Security. Although the Baker Center Journal has provided an outlet for publication of student scholarship since its inception, I am particularly pleased that the student co-editors - Baker Scholars Elizabeth Wilson Vaughan and Bradford A. Vaughan - took the initiative to expand upon the efforts of their predecessors and to provide us with an expanded set of excellent students essays each of which addresses an important national security policy issue. It is an important part of the Baker Center’s mission to engage UTK students in the political and public policy process, and I applaud our student authors fortheir contributions to this symposium.
I hope you find this issue of the Baker Center Journal for Applied Public Policy to be both interesting and thought-provoking and that it will encourage you to participate in America’s unique and wonderful political and policy processes
