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 25th 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.
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