Robert Spitzer (political scientist)

Robert James Spitzer (born September 12, 1953) is an American political scientist, commentator, and author. Spitzer is the author of numerous books, articles, essays, papers, and op-eds on many topics related to American politics. His areas of specialty include the American presidency and gun politics.

Spitzer is a distinguished service professor and chair of the political science department at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Cortland. He has taught at Cortland since 1979, and as a visiting professor at Cornell University since 1988. At Cortland, he has served as chair of the Political Science Department from 1983–1989, 2005–2006, and from 2008 to the present. He served as a member of the New York State Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution from 1986–1990.

In 1983 Spitzer's first book, The Presidency and Public Policy, challenged the model for presidential success espoused by Richard E. Neustadt with a policy approach based on Theodore J. Lowi's "arenas of power." Spitzer argued that the type of policy proposed by a president, not personal political skill, shaped the president's success in Congress. Michael A. Genovese felt "a more explicit application" to Lyndon Johnson's and Ronald Reagan's early years would have improved Spitzer's study, but otherwise gave it a collegial thumbs-up.

Prior to 1988's The Presidential Veto, there had been no analytical, book-length account of the subject in almost 100 years. Spitzer's work examines its history and concludes that the presidential veto has lost the revisionary power as the Founder's understood it at the Constitutional Convention. Melvin A. Kulbicki called the book an excellent text and a "well-written blend of theory and practical politics."

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