John L. Massaro

John L. Massaro

John Massaro writes about politics in traditional and non-traditional arenas including politics in the music of Bruce Springsteen and in basketball. He is State University of New York (SUNY) Distinguished Teaching Professor and Emeritus Professor of Politics, SUNY, Potsdam College. Most recently, March 2018, he gave an invited presentation, “Springsteen and Personal Political Development” to a group of professors and students at Sapienza, the University of Rome. He is currently retired and living in Wells, Maine where he continues to write op-eds, essays, book manuscripts and plays. His current project is a book-length manuscript tentatively titled, “Beyond Springsteen: The Boss In A Simple Life.”

Massaro has published articles in The Maine Review, National Review, Backstreets, Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine, The Journal of American Culture, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Political Science Quarterly, Federal Bar Journal, Judicature, and The Executive Educator. He has written two books, Supremely Political: The Role of Ideology and Presidential Management in Unsuccessful Supreme Court Nominations (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990) and Deflated Dreams: Politics and Basketball (a 2016 e-book available through Amazon.) He is most proud of his oft-cited book Supremely Political and two other projects. Massaro speaks truth to power in his, “Pyrrhic Politics? President Bush and the Nomination of Clarence Thomas” in Honor and Loyalty: Inside The Politics of the George H. W. Bush White House (Leslie D. Feldman and Rosanna Perotti, eds. Greenwood Press 2002.) His article describing his teaching of the first semester-long course on Bruce Springsteen ever offered in higher education broke a path for many others in the field of cultural studies. See his, “Shaking the City’s Walls: Teaching Politics with The Boss” in Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies and the Runaway American Dream, (Kenneth Womack, et al, eds., Ashgate, 2012.)

Massaro’s dubious claim as an objective observer of politics continues to rest in part on his having received a personal note from conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. and a Christmas card from Communist Party presidential candidate Gus Hall in the same year. His equally dubious claim as both a political scientist and a writer is testified by the common wisdom among political scientists that he is a “good writer” and among writers that he is a “good political scientist.”