The Presidency

I)       The Power of the Presidency

A)    Powers Granted to the President Alone by the Constitution

1)      Serve as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces

2)      To commission officers of the armed forces.

3)      Grant reprieves and pardons for federal offenses (except in cases of impeachment).

4)      Convene Congress is special sessions.

5)      Receive ambassadors

6)      Take care that the laws be faithfully executed.*

7)      Wield “executive power.”

8)      Appoint officials to lesser offices.

B) Powers of the President Shared with the Senate

1)      Make treaties

2)      Appoint ambassadors, judges, and high officials.

C) Powers of the President Shared With Congress as a Whole

1)      Approve legislation

II) The Evolution of the Presidency

A)    Establishing the Legitimacy of the Presidency—This is not something we think of much today (even with everything that occurred in the 2000 election, few people argue today that George W. Bush was an illegitimate president). The early presidents had been prominent political leaders during the Revolution, and the office of the President was relatively small, and not terribly influential. Political appointees tended to be well-known and well-regarded, and willing to put the good of the nation above “faction.”

B)    The Jacksonians and the Re-emergence of Congress—at a time roughly corresponding to the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), broad changes began to occur in American politics.

1)      Mass political participation—universal white manhood suffrage.

2)      Emergence of modern political parties

3)      The Cult of Personality—Jackson saw himself (and, just as importantly, was seen by many other people) as a “tribune of the people.” As the personification of the voice of the American people, Jackson vetoed more legislation—on both constitutional and policy grounds—than all of his predecessors combined.

4)      End of the Jacksonian Era—with the end of Jackson’s term in office Congress—particularly the Senate—reasserted itself, and remained the dominant political body for much of the next hundred years or so (with some notable exceptions).

5)      Lincoln and the Civil War—Lincoln, of course, was the major exception that proves this rule. Lincoln greatly increased the powers of the presidency, which were legitimized by the crisis caused by the American Civil War. Lincoln broadly interpreted his powers as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, as well as his charge to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

6)      Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson—through force of personality—especially on the part of Roosevelt, who was also quite adept at manipulating the press—both Roosevelt and Wilson were able to win back some control from Congress. After defeating Wilson’s proposed League of Nations, however, Congress was able to regain much of the power it had lost before 1932.

III) The Modern Presidency

A)    The White House Office—the “West Wing” of television fame. The White House Office consists of aids largely drawn from the president’s campaign staff, who themselves were drawn to the campaign because of their personal loyalty to the president or they shared the president’s political outlook. The White House staff do not have to be confirmed by the Senate, as many other presidential appointees must be.

1)      Ways of Organizing White House Staff

a.       Circular structure—a few key aids report directly to the President. This has the advantage of providing the president with lots of information to make decisions, but has the weakness of sometimes providing the president with conflicting information, and therefore slowing decision making—or encouraging the wrong decisions to be made.

b.      Pyramid structure—this hierarchical structure has clear chains of command, but also stifles the flow of information upward.

c.       Cluster structure—uses ad hoc task forces and key advisers reporting directly to the president with no clear chain of command. This has the advantage of relying upon subject expertise, but shares the problem of also hearing conflicting opinions and slowing the decision-making process.

B)    The Executive Office of the President—the agencies that make up the Executive office perform staff functions for the president, but are not housed within the White House—and significant numbers of personnel must be confirmed by the Senate.

1)      Office of Management and Budget (OMB)—The OMB is tasked with assembling and analyzing the figures the president submits to Congress for the yearly national budget, and studies the operations of the executive branch to devise reorganization plans and improve the flow of information about government programs, as well as reviewing the cabinet departments’ budgeting proposals.

2)      Council of Economic Advisors—a small group of economists who advise the president on economic matters, suggesting policies to be implemented.

3)      US Trade Representative—Provides expertise on trade policy, and helps to negotiate trade agreements between the United States and other countries.

4)      Council on Environmental Quality

5)      Office of Science and Technology

C)    Cabinet—in the modern era, the cabinet consists of temporary political appointees who preside over self-perpetuating bureaucracies; rarely can cabinet officers recommend policies based on the information they gather from their agencies.

D)    Independent Agencies, Commissions, and Judgeships—the president can also nominate people to four dozen or so commissions and agencies (like the Federal Communications Commission—the FCC). In the agencies that are quasi-independent, members are appointed for a definite term of years (which may overlap into another president’s term of office), while other agency heads serve at the pleasure of the president. Federal judges are appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and serve during their “good behavior” (or, effectively, until they chose to retire or die).

IV) Who Gets Appointed

A)    Popularity and Influence—while every president strives to retain personal popularity with the American public because of the influence his has over Congress, it is unclear exactly how great this influence is (particularly during the present time). American voters rarely vote for a Congressional representative because s/he will be friendly toward the president; it is more likely to be in reaction to the dissatisfaction with the party in power. This is usually borne out by election returns in non-presidential years, when the president’s party often loses more congressional seats than it gains.

B)    The Decline in Popularity—in the modern era, every president except Eisenhower, Reagan, and Clinton lost popular support between the time their political term began and it ended.

1)      The “honeymoon” period—the president is usually most popular immediately after his election in office—although none reached the level of popularity of Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first 100 days in office.

V) Presidential Character

            A) Dwight D. Eisenhower

            B) John F. Kennedy

            C) Lyndon B. Johnson

            D) Richard M. Nixon

            E) Gerald R. Ford

            F) Jimmy Carter

            G) Ronald Reagan

            H) George H. W. Bush

            I) Bill Clinton

            J) George W. Bush

            K) Barack Obama

VI) The Power to Say No

A)    The Veto—when the president refuses to sign a piece of legislation, he prevents it from becoming law unless Congress can muster two-thirds of its membership to override this veto.

1)      Veto message—often, a president will make a statement explaining his reason for refusing to sign a particular bill

2)      Pocket veto—when the president does not sign a bill within 10 days of the ending session of Congress, it is called a “pocket veto.”

3)      10-day limit—the president has ten days to veto legislation; if he fails to sign a bill, or issue a veto, before the ten days are up, the legislation automatically becomes law.

B)    Executive Privilege—although presidents have long claimed to be able to shield their communications from interlopers from Congress or the judiciary, the Supreme Court has been very reluctant to acknowledge that the president can actually invoke this privilege.

C)    Impoundment of Funds—Presidents have (sometime in the past) refused to spend money appropriated by Congress for particular purposes that they oppose. While this battle was long-standing (reaching all the way back to Thomas Jefferson), it was not until Congress passed the Budget Reform Act of 1974 that they attempted to force the president to spend all the money they appropriated. This particular law has not yet  been litigated before the Supreme Court, but it should be noted that the idea of a legislative veto upon which the entire notion rests has been found to be unconstitutional.

VII) The President’s Program

A)    Putting Together a Program—there are two ways for a president to put together a program for her administration: to try to develop policies for every possible program, or to concentrate on just a few programs. There are also several ways to attempt to implement this program

1)      The Trial Balloon—to leak parts of the proposed policy to see how they are received.

2)      In (relative) secret—to attempt to develop the policy in secret, and not to leak details to attempt to gauge public support.

B)    Measuring success—whether to gauge success by the number of proposed bills the president is able to get through Congress, or whether to count the number of favorable votes taken on which the president’s side prevails (note there is no accounting in this process for the number of proposed programs that work as they were proposed).

VIII) Presidential Transitions

A)    The Vice President—Eight times the vice president has become president because of the death of his predecessor; only three times since Thomas Jefferson has a man who served as vice president been the elected successor—Martin Van Buren, Richard M. Nixon, and George H.W. Bush.

B)    Problems of Succession—with the precedent of John Tyler, who assumed the full duties of the presidency after the death of William Henry Harrison, it was clear that the vice president would become president upon the president’s death. A question remained, however, who should become the next vice president. That question was solved by the passage of the 25^th Amendment, ratified in 1967 (after Lyndon Johnson succeeded John Kennedy as a result of Kennedy’s assassination), which created a process to choose a new vice president, and also permitted the vice president to assume the duties of the president should the president become incapacitated.

C)    Impeachment—The president and federal judges can be impeached for “treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors.” While this seems to indicate that impeachment should be limited to serious offenses, the two presidents who were impeached—Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton—were largely convicted of having policies unpopular with Congress.

IX) The President and Public Policy

A)    The President v. Congress—the president and Congress are rivals, even when they are from the same political party. This rivalry springs from two sources. First, the Constitution requires the two branches to serve its own needs, and they inevitably battle to do so. Secondly, the president and Congress serve to different political constituencies; each member of Congress answers to a local constituency, while the President was elected by a national constituency.

B)    The President and Foreign Affairs—because Congress is largely constricted by the Constitution on matters of foreign affairs, these matters have largely been left to the presidency. Within the executive branch, however, the president is challenged by his Secretary of State, who largely controls these affairs. In the modern era, the Secretary of State has been challenged by another executive officer, the Director of the National Security Council, as well as by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. With the growth of the Defense Department, and its ability to command funds, many of these efforts have been duplicated and rivaled by the Intelligence wing of the Department of Defense.

C)    Congressional Response—Congress has attempted to restrict this unbridled growth of the foreign policy apparatus in the executive branch by passing a number of laws, the most important of which was the War Powers Act of 1973, passed over President Nixon’s veto. This limits (or, attempts to limit), where the president can commit American armed forces.

D)    The President and Economic Policy—while the American people are largely supportive and forbearing in regard to foreign policy, the same cannot be said for economic policy—in part, because economic policy had an immediate effect on the lives of Americans. Ironically, the president has less control over economic policy, in part because economists often do not agree on the best policy for immediate circumstances, and because they are so bad at predicting what the economy will look like even six months in advance. Control of economic levers is also dispersed. The president and his administration also have direct control over a small portion of the federal budget, so that even severe cuts to those parts under his control would have little impact—and perhaps the most important economic institution in the United States, the Federal Reserve Board (or the Fed, as it is known), is an independent body over which the president has very little control.