Strategic Analysis
Within the first season of House of Cards, Frank Underwood has to make a series of decisions which he uses to strategically move him forward on his path back to the white house from the senate. There are four key strategic interactions that allow Underwood to fully be in control of his own destiny as he pursues breaking into the white house these are, helping pass an educational bill, working with Zoe Barnes, working with Peter Russo, and agreeing to vet possible Vice Presidential candidates. As Underwood’s strategy goes on it is clear that each step he takes will move him closer and closer to the white house and will eventually land him a seat as the Vice President of the United States. Throughout the first season of the show, Underwood uses strategic thinking, framing, and commitment devices to negotiate efficiently with others and change their perceptions to allow him to gain political power in the most efficient manner possible. While Underwood uses these tools in his strategies, it is clear he also uses a great deal of misdirection in order to get others to collude with him in his actions to gain political clout.
As Frank Underwood evaluates each situation, he does so strategically. He is sure to take into account all known interests of each person he is working with so he can manipulate them to work to his favor. As he evaluates these variables, he is able to then make a binary decision of whether he will choose to collude with an individual or to ignore them. When viewed from the individuals point of view, this seems similar to a prisoners dilemma where the odds are never tipped in your own favor as Underwood is a man with a great deal of power and a large network from being within the senate fo...
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...thus making in him ineffective. If Frank chooses to deny Tusk’s requests, he could find himself not being recommended to be the Vice President and all of his hard work could very well be soon forgotten. While this may be a step back from what Frank was hoping, he may still be able to continue to destroy those within President Walker’s cabinet. Frank ends up being an opportunist in this scenario as he finds it’s more pragmatic for him to make his own solution. By creating a ton of commotion through his other connections, he is able to strong-arm Tusk into an agreement in which he and Tusk will work together in an equal and loyal partnership because Frank realizes that Tusk needs him in order to pass the foreign policies (pertaining to China) that are within his interests. Tusk ends up giving in to this proposal and deciding to vet Frank for the Vice Presidency.
Along with killing two people because of his poor decision that night, Frank was paralyzed ...
Frank has an interesting view on the way man has progressed morally. I think that he says that we don’t really know our morals until we have them truly questioned. In this he implies that the people who have strong morals, not only will stay true to them, but will survive. An example of this is Randy Bragg. Randy, on the day of nuclear fallout, stopped on the side of the road to help a woman. This shows that he has respect for the human race as a whole. The opposite of this was Edgar Quisenbury. Edgar valued nothing but money. In the end, the absence of money caused Edgar to become an example of Darwin’s “Only the strong” theory as he shot himself.
Opinion: Why do you think Frank has confessed at this time? What is his motive? Has he underestimated his brother, or has he estimated correctly?
After analyzing the Coastal Medical Center, it is apparent that the employees and staff have no conception of the mission, vision, and values of this health care facility. In addition to this lack of structure, CMC has many projects in the midst of production that lack support of a common goal, employees are unsatisfied with their jobs, the two boards lack ability to agree on strategic decisions for the organization,, and the medical center has a dismal reputation when it comes to quality care.
Frank is constantly doubting himself and life because of the elusiveness of happiness for example, “ Is life itself an illness or a syndrome? Who knows? We’ve all felt that way I’m confident, since there’s no way I could feel what hundreds of millions of other citizens haven’t” (p. 135). Frank finds an opportunity to travel to Florida to find Walter’s daughter as he told him in a letter. After staying there for a couple days, Frank finds peace in Florida and decides to stay there in order to start a new life and forget all the troubles back home. Towards the end of the novel, it shoes how the death of Walter changes the way Frank acts and saves his own life.
Facing hardships, problems, or obstacles shouldn’t discourage one from completing their task or job. Many of authors usually put their characters through tough complications to show the reader that no matter what happens; anyone could pull through. In the short story, “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connel, the main character Mr. Rainsford gets stranded on an eerie island with a bad reputation. He meets General Zaroff and gets thrown into a huge hunting game, where his life is on the line. In the end, he wins the game and will continue to hunt animals, but not people, as the general once did. He will continue to hunt because one, hunting means everything to him. Two, he will not continue the general’s crazy ways, and resort back to the legal and non-dangerous to other humans sport. Third, he feels powerful when he becomes the hunter and not the hunted. Giving up hunting would be like giving up his life, so just because of a minor block he had to overcome, he will not give up hunting.
“One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed. On guard Rainsford.”
I will start with explaining Neustadt’s arguments about presidential power in his book. Then further my answer to the extent in which compare other political scholars, Skowronek, Howell and Edwards in response to Neustadt’s points of view about American presidency.
The holocaust is known for the great number of deaths; including the six million Jews. Ida fink is a writer that captures this time period in her works. In “The Key Game” she appeals to pathos because of imagery used, connections to your own family, and dialog used by both the father and mother. Through her fiction stories, she tells tales that relate to what could have been and probably what was. Ida Fink is known for telling her stories in a journalist like tone with very little color. In her stories, she does not like to tell you how to feel she instead leaves that up to the reader. Fink does place some hints of emotion just by writing the story alone. The interpretation of her works is left up to the reader. As you read through her stories some will find more emotion, some will find more logic, and some may see more ethics. At the moment, we will be looking more on the side of emotions within this story.
In the television series, House of Cards, a position in Congress is the basis of the show and the main character, Frank Underwood, thrives for his goals of personal achievement and working his devious plans into a profit for himself and ultimately achieving anything he wants no matter what it takes. Frank Underwood is an extremely intelligent congressman, who lives in Washington D.C. representing his home state of South Carolina, but has always put his self first. At the introduction of the show he states, “I see two different types of pain, useful pain, that helps you grow, and useless pain that does nothing but cause suffering”. These sorts of pain, but more importantly the meanings, explain a specific part of his distinctive morals that carry his actions along and show how he works with certain people or conflicts. His eminent colleagues of the U.S. legislative branch, specifically congress, perception of Frank is that he does whatever he can to make the government stronger while his intellectual perception is the contrary. While his colleagues trust him, it is hard for Frank Underwood to show a virtuous personality, enough to have full faith and trust especially regarding a huge decision he makes to murder a member of the Legislative branch. This internal situation, mirrors the philosophy (shown in the book, “The Prince”) of the political Philosopher, Niccolo Machiavelli, who has provided many with the conflicting opinion of modern times political contemplation. The scene in the last few minutes of “House of Cards: Chapter 11” exemplifies Frank’s means for consequentialism by, the fact of achieving his ultimate maxim or intended end. There is no skepticism that Frank’s actions do not follow solitarily consequentialism but ther...
Howell’s theory of unilateral action describes a more isolated president. But this does not mean that his insistence on unilateral presidential action is not valid or does not provide us with a valuable model for analyzing presidential power. Howell is certainly right in pointing that Congressional oversight is made more difficult by the multiplication of the unilateral tools the President can use to alter policies. The criticism stems from the fact that his book’s title seems to give the impression that his theory comes as an irreconcilable alternative to Neustadt’s version of presidential power of “persuasiveness”. Alternatively, Neustadt’s theory suffers from an institutional level analysis. Skrownek (1991) in his book, “The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton” have suggested that there are clear patterns of contextual circumstances that may explain the variation in presidential leadership. While not denying a role of personal attributes he clearly demonstrated that personal contributions of presidents cannot be truly understood without an appreciation of the institutional contexts in which they operate (Skrownek
Richard E. Neustadt, the author of Presidential Power, addresses the politics of leadership and how the citizens of the United States rate the performance of the president's term. We measure his leadership by saying that he is either "weak or "strong" and Neustadt argues that we have the right to do so, because his office has become the focal point of politics and policy in our political system.
He starts to really care for Dwayne because they both have depression in common. At one point in the movie, Frank and Dwayne were having a conversation and Dwayne mentioned he wished he could sleep till he was 18 so he could skip all the bad parts of high school. Frank then quotes a French writer, “When it gets down to the end of your life and you look back at all those years that you suffered, you will realize those were the best years of your life because they made you into the strong person you are now”. Frank and Dwayne then continued to talk about the struggles of life. Is seems to me the way Frank can reflection on his own depression can really help others. It shows that he understands what he did and that he will handle it differently next time. There were no blatant biological and psychological stressors that influenced Frank’s depression. There was no indication of past family medical problems that would have made him susceptible but according to Beck’s therapy Frank probably inherited a genetic disposition that made him susceptible to depression. If Frank wasn’t predisposed, he could have handled all of the bad events without getting mad and impulsive. He could have had a positive outlook instead of going into deep depression and trying to kill himself. The social-cultural/environmental stressors were the primary influences that cause his depression. He believed he was a full grown adult and was supposed to have his life together but it was the complete opposite. He had a romantic failure, a career disappointment, he lost his job, his homosexuality stigma, and then he lost his apartment. For most of the movie he was handling his depression really well, but it wasn’t until he ran into is ex-student/lover that his improved mood started to spiral back downward into a depressed mood. This showed he still has
Persuasion in Julius Caesar was an indispensable factor in the play. From Decius’s sly flattery to Antony’s significantly impressive speech to the commoners, many different ways of persuasion were used in Julius Caesar. Its power was demonstrated through eloquence between Brutus and Antony to the commoners at Caesar’s funeral. As a result of their speech, Antony succeeds to appeal to their emotional feelings, he swayed them to think conspiracy can’t be justified and makes them go against the conspirators. Cassius and Brutus failed to justify their conspiracy which gave Antony a precious chance to gain the crowd’s trust. Now I’m going to analyze how persuasion by different characters in the story Julius Caesar turned the tables around.
During the first scene of House of Cards, the viewers are given their first impression on Frank Underwood. Frank walks out of his house to the sound of a crying dog that has been hit by a car. He approaches the dog alone and gives a monologue to the audience. Frank mentions how he has no time for useless pain and he is one that likes to take charge by finding a solution. He then begins to snap the dog’s neck. This simple monologue sums up Frank’s ruthless and dominant personality throughout the show. This scene is just one of the many scenes that represent how Frank does not let anything stand in his way, especially women.