James A. Stimson is Raymond Dawson Distinguished Bicentennial Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned his B.A. from the University of Minnesota and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1970. He previously taught at SUNY-Buffalo, Florida State, and the Universities of Houston, Iowa, and Minnesota. Stimson is former President of the Midwest Political Science Association and Treasurer of the American Political Science Association. He has authored or co-authored five books, Yeas and Nays: Normal Decision-Making in the U.S. House of Representatives (with Donald R. Matthews), Issue Evolution: Race and the Reconstruction of American Politics (With Edward G. Carmines), Public Opinion in America: Moods, Cycles, and Swings, and The Macro Polity (with Robert S. Erikson and Michael B MacKuen), and Tides of Consent: How Public Opinion Shapes American Politics (Cambridge, 2004). He has won the Heinz Eulau and Gladys Kammerer Awards of the American Political Science Association, the Chastain Award of the Southern Political Science Association, the Pi Sigma Alpha award of the Midwest Political Science Association. Former editor of Political Analysis, he has served on the editorial boards of American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Methodology, Public Opinion Quarterly, and American Politics Quarterly and authored articles in all the major journals of political science. David A. M. Peterson is an assistant professor of political science at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2000. He has previously published in American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, and other journals. He was winner of the 2002 Patrick J. Fett Award from the Midwest Political Science Association for the best paper on Congress and the Presidency.