Samuel Kernell is a distinguished professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. He has also taught at the University of Mississippi and the University of Minnesota and has served as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kernell received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He has written numerous articles and books, including Strategy and Choice in Congressional Elections, 2nd edition (1983, with Gary C. Jacobson), James Madison: The Theory and Practice of Republican Governance (2005), Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership, 4th edition (2006), and The Logic of American Politics, 6th edition (2014, with Gary C. Jacobson, Thad Kousser, and Lynn Vavreck).