Rough Draft draws the curtain on the race and class inequities of the Selective Service during the Vietnam War. Amy J. Rutenberg argues that policy makers' idealized conceptions of Cold War middle-class masculinity directly affected whom they targeted for conscription and also for deferment. Federal officials believed that college educated men could protect the nation from the threat of communism more effectively as civilians than as soldiers. The availability of deferments for this group mushroomed between 1945 and 1965, making it less and less likely that middle-class white men would serve in the Cold War army. Meanwhile, officials used the War on Poverty to target poorer and racialized men for conscription in the hopes that military service would offer them skills they could use in civilian life. As Rutenberg shows, manpower policies between World War II and the Vietnam War had unintended consequences. While some men resisted military service in Vietnam for reasons of political conscience, most did so because manpower polices made it possible. By shielding middle-class breadwinners in the name of national security, policymakers militarized certain civilian roles—a move that, ironically, separated military service from the obligations of masculine citizenship and, ultimately, helped kill the draft in the United States.

Government bureaucracy is something Americans have long loved to hate. Yet despite this general antipathy, some federal agencies have been wildly successful in cultivating the people’s favor. Take, for instance, the U.S. Forest Service and its still-popular Smokey Bear campaign. The agency early on gained a foothold in the public’s esteem when President Theodore Roosevelt championed its conservation policies and Forest Service press releases led to favorable coverage and further goodwill. Congress has rarely approved of such bureaucratic independence. In Congress vs. the Bureaucracy, political scientist Mordecai Lee—who has served as a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill and as a state senator—explores a century of congressional efforts to prevent government agencies from gaining support for their initiatives by communicating directly with the public. Through detailed case studies, Lee shows how federal agencies have used increasingly sophisticated publicity techniques to muster support for their activities—while Congress has passed laws to counter those PR efforts. The author first traces congressional resistance to Roosevelt’s campaigns to rally popular support for the Panama Canal project, then discusses the Forest Service, the War Department, the Census Bureau, and the Department of Agriculture. Lee’s analysis of more recent legislative bans on agency publicity in the George W. Bush administration reveals that political battles over PR persist to this day. Ultimately, despite Congress’s attempts to muzzle agency public relations, the bureaucracy usually wins. Opponents of agency PR have traditionally condemned it as propaganda, a sign of a mushrooming, self-serving bureaucracy, and a waste of taxpayer dollars. For government agencies, though, communication with the public is crucial to implementing their missions and surviving. In Congress vs. the Bureaucracy, Lee argues these conflicts are in fact healthy for America. They reflect a struggle for autonomy that shows our government’s system of checks and balances to be alive and working well.