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REECE: Today we're going to be looking at the executive branch. Specifically, we're asking the question "Has the presidency become too powerful?" My name is Bryan Reece. I'm going to be arguing that it has become too powerful. My opponent today is Professor Falcon. He's going to be arguing that it has not. Why don't you start it off, Dennis?
FALCON: Well, you know, I'll talk about the last two presidents that most of our students -- that we've had experience with; Bill Clinton and George Bush. Both presidents, immediately after taking the oath for their second terms were, basically, were in embroiled in -- stuck in what we could call lame duck mode. Once they got sworn into their second terms, no matter what was going on in the world around them, they both found themselves facing those same time-tested difficulties and barriers that presidents have always dealt with.
REECE: Okay. The lame duck -- you're right. There's a brief period with every presidency where they're no longer going to be president at some point and they do become a lame duck, but that's a very brief period. Those other times I'd say they had become mighty powerful.
FALCON: So what I would say is that those brief periods basically bring us back to reality, and no matter who the president is; it kind of like humbles them, because all these powers that they seem to possess in the height of their presidencies are also laid low at some point. So there's a balance.
REECE: But this lame duck issue -- the transition between the elected president and the president-elect has always --
FALCON: I'm going to ride this horse till it dies.
REECE: Yeah, this is all you got, probably.
FALCON: No, it's not all I got. Because if you think about -- well, look at poll numbers -- job approval ratings for president -- those decline, basically, for every single president, you know, barring some national crisis like 9-11 or something like that. But every president in the modern era, their poll numbers, they go down year after year after year. So that when they take their first oath of office they might seem all-powerful, the most powerful planet or man on the planet position, et cetera. But you know what? By the time they leave, they're older, they're tired, they can't wait to get out of office.
REECE: How can you say the guy has not become more powerful or the presidencies have not become more powerful when the Founding Fathers, they said -- under Article Number One -- "Legislative power is going to go with the Congress"? If you open up books, and many authors argue that the presidency is the chief legislator. The most powerful legislator.
FALCON: That's a different argument though.
REECE: No, it's the same argument. He has legislative power now.
FALCON: I think we started the conversation with has it become too powerful.
REECE: Do the Founding Fathers want this person to be a legislator, maybe a little veto power.
FALCON: I'll violate the debate rules. I agree with you on something.
REECE: Okay.
FALCON: The presidency has grown in power as envisioned by the Founding Fathers. That's not that they expected what we have today, but I'm not going to go so far to say that the presidency -- the modern presidency today, really exercises powers that make them uncheckable. Our system of checks and balances still works. The fact that we're stuck in the filibuster fight -- right now as we're speaking though probably have long term repercussions. President can't get people voted on for the federal courts.
REECE: Well, let’s take a look at another
FALCON: So it doesn't matter how powerful -- they can't even get a nomination through the process.
REECE: I'm not saying they're all powerful. I'm not saying it's God sitting there. I'm saying they're too powerful. Let me give you the example of chief diplomat. This is the power where the president is supposed to maintain relations with other countries. When this power was originally dished out, the Founding Fathers were basically saying, "We need somebody to take care of France." That was the only country that the United States was really concerned with. England was an enemy. Now we are concerned with every single country in the world, and who gets that power of chief diplomacy? The president. One guy.
FALCON: And good for us. The President of the United States, whether it's George Bush, Bill Clinton, if we go further back, when they travel abroad, when they go overseas and they meet with leaders from other countries, it's not like other leaders around the world are bowing down to them and kissing their ring, you know, no disrespect to the Pope. But presidents -- the modern presidents, probably from Reagan on, if we really look critically, when they go abroad, when they go overseas and meet with other dignitaries, other heads of state, heads of government, they're meeting with equals.
REECE: But do you think the Founding Fathers would have done that? I mean, Article Number One is about the Congress. That's the most important institution.
FALCON: -- is the equal on the international stage. The international --
REECE: Why can't it be the Speaker of the House or President of the Senate or something like that? I think that's what the Founding Fathers would have said. The Founding Fathers wanted to keep that president from becoming like a king and now you're saying since he has to meet with kings, it's nice he's meeting with equals. That's not what we want. We wanted the legislature, the peoples institution to be the --
FALCON: Again, to get back to this nomination thing. We might not send the member of the House, let's say the Speaker of the House, to represent the United States, the foreign head of state, et cetera. But that doesn't say that they don't have power. Right now, again, we happen to be caught in a controversy where, let's say, it's an ambassador to the United Nations that has been nominated is suffering all kinds of hardships in terms of being -- going through the process. In this case, it's the United States Senate and leaders on both sides and you have members on both sides who are exercising their power, exercising their constitutional influence, and they're basically creating a drag. They are slowing the President of the United States down. So in that sense, they have input. They have good influence.
REECE: You keep saying he's not all-powerful; that's true. He is not all -- he can't tell the Congress do this and snap his fingers and it happens, but he has become much more powerful, too powerful, to the sense that it's difficult for the Congress to battle with this person at times. It's difficult for the courts to battle with this person. It's difficult for the states to battle with the president. We treat him like a king.
FALCON: Do we have an imperial president?
REECE: No, well, I think maybe we do. Maybe we've moved into a position where we are not letting the most democratic institution make our most important decisions. Rather, we're relying on this person that's becoming something like a king.
FALCON: Then I'll issue you a challenge as part of the debate. How would you further limit the powers of the president? How would you scale things back? Given the world that we live in today, sure we need somebody who can respond quickly to emergencies, national emergencies, domestic –- foreign, domestic attacks, et cetera. We need somebody who can respond. So you don't want to take that away from the president.
REECE: At least three or four ways I could see limiting the president. First of all, his role as head of state. The Constitution does not say who's supposed to be head of state. We've just historically given that over to the president. Now, he runs around throwing the baseballs out, doing all the unofficial things that make him like the lead American in so many Americans minds.
FALCON: Well, since head of state is primarily symbolic --
REECE: Why couldn't he move that to somebody else?
FALCON: Since that’s primarily symbolic --
REECE: But it's important symbolically. Okay. Go ahead.
FALCON: Would you take away the president's power to pass executive agreement?
REECE: No, that's the one where he's supposed to be in charge. He is the chief executive. That's what all the Founding Fathers –- the Jeffersonians, the Madisonians --
FALCON: Would you be in favor of Congress passing legislation that would allow them to either give advising consents on executive agreements to make them more like treaties?
REECE: Yes. The treaty is in the Constitution. It's a main intention. Executive agreement may come out once in a while, but I think the president is abusing too much power if they're going into executive direction.
FALCON: Or -- so you -- let's say -- we talked about Commander-in-Chief just a second ago. The War Powers Act passed back in the 1970s, after the Vietnam War, has never really been tested in court. Do you think that congress should exercise the War Powers Act in regards to Iraq?
REECE: Well, don't you think the president -- by ignoring the War Powers Act. Where is it being used, really?
FALCON: Well, in this case, again, I'm going to give you some ground, because I don't think the Congress has lived up to its responsibility and challenged the president when it comes to --
REECE: And why not? Because the president is too powerful. What can they do?
FALCON: I actually --
REECE: If the president commits our troops to war, what can they do?
FALCON: But I don't think it's because the president is too powerful. What I think is because the American people themselves are just looking for leadership and because the presidency is a singular office. It's an office that speaks with one voice like Harry Truman’s plaque, right? "The buck stops here." If Congress were to assert itself, if we had people in Congress, the Democrats, the Republican party, if we had individual members that would stand up on their feet and challenge the president, I believe that our system could take that challenge and that the president would be shown to be basically as vulnerable as he is.
REECE: I think you're explaining why the president has become so powerful. Maybe the people are giving the power to the presidency, but that agrees with my argument. He has become too powerful.
FALCON: But basically my argument also is that if Congress lived up to its responsibility and if members were to act more responsibly in the interest of the people, that the president would find that he's evenly matched with the leaders of the House.
REECE: That supports the argument also. That explains why the president has power. The Congress has not acted responsibly. I mean, you're feeding into the argument here. The Congress is responsible; therefore, the president has power. The public gives them power; therefore, the presidency --
FALCON: I think what we're doing is we might be confusing it the way a lot of people do. You confuse presidents with the presidency.
REECE: That's correct. We're not talking about Bush or Clinton here.
FALCON: The constitutional presidency is the same constitutional presidency that we had under Ford, under Nixon, under Carter, under JFK, under Johnson. It's the same institutional presidency.
REECE: It's the same institution.
FALCON: But back then you had legislative leaders like Lyndon Johnson or others who were basically able to establish their own power bases and stand up against strong presidents or weak presidents. So the presidency itself, I would say, hasn't grown as much as you like –- I think you're suggesting it has. But the circumstances, I think the circumstances we're living under, because the war on terror, the attack on 9-11, have given us the perception, especially with the war in Iraq, that the presidency is exercising more power than --
REECE: Yeah, I think one of the problems --
FALCON: But I think it's situational. Like I said, it's just the -- it's still only a few years after 9-11. I think the American people are still just reeling or reacting and it's just somebody exercising power.
REECE: But that's part of the problem. Crises that happen, you get the Depression, you get World War II, you get Vietnam, 9-11. What happens is in all these situations, the president usually expands his power for a little while, because the public wants him to. He expands his power to address terrorism. He expands his power to address poverty with the Depression. And then once when the crisis goes away, he doesn't take his power back. He keeps it. He just maintains it and it's growing and growing and growing.
FALCON: Okay. Since we can't make them take it or give it back -- go here with me, because I've gone with you a couple places already. If you could go back to a time period or to a president that didn't exercise the excess of powers you're claiming they exercise now, where would you go?
REECE: I'd start with George Washington. I mean, that was a powerful legislature.
FALCON: Alexander Hamilton wanted to make him king. You want to go that far back?
REECE: Well, he didn’t take it. He's the guy who said two terms is enough for any man. He was the one that turned it down. Now, we have people saying, "Oh, I want more elections."
FALCON: Now, George Washington is too easy, because go back -- give me somebody else.
REECE: Look, I think the demarcation is FDR.
FALCON: How about Lincoln?
REECE: FDR forward, FDR before less power. This is where you see the change in presidential power and an aggrandizement. FDR started the ball roll.
FALCON: And again it has to do with when the United States became a world power because of World War II. When we became embroiled in international affairs that were way beyond our ability to deal with them, when the national economy was going -- so again, situational. Anything that's situational, I argue that we can deal with, but it's not institutional.
REECE: You don't see this as bad a thing.
FALCON: The same checks and balances apply that applied under George Washington. The same checks and balances, and the separation of powers and federalism, that applied under Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt, all required the same --
REECE: No, you're right. They're all there in the Constitution. Those never changed. Separation of powers, checks and balances -- right on -- three different branches. They're all in the Constitution, but they're implemented differently now. George Bush is a powerful, powerful person in the United States compared to presidents prior to FDR. It's difficult to imagine the kind of power that he has.
FALCON: All I know is that he can't get his own party to agree on Social Security.
REECE: He's not all-powerful, you're right.
FALCON: He made that his number one issue. His agenda for his second term, we're not even six months into his second term and he's already hit the wall. So, in that sense --
REECE: Well, he's not powerful enough to get a bad idea through, maybe you're right. There are -- I'm not saying he's all-powerful, you're right. But we certainly have seen an aggrandizement going on in the process. I mean, for Pete's sake, look at the military now. It's the most powerful military, maybe in the history of the world, and one guy is in charge of it.
FALCON: And here's one. We haven't even mentioned the courts yet. All we have to do is start talking about this same president in the last couple of years -- last year -- has been basically told by the Supreme Court that he abused his powers and that the President can't indefinitely incarcerate American citizens and label them as enemy combatants.
REECE: Well, what have they done about it?
FALCON: Here's the President being told you must give these people their rights, you must recognize their rights to due process and the constitution. So that Mr. President, you overstepped your bounds.
REECE: What have they done about it, really?
FALCON: It's the same thing. They're getting a trial. These people are going to get lawyers.
REECE: You don't think -- we still got the Patriot Act.
FALCON: The President hasn't turned these people over.
REECE: We've still got the President hounding everybody. We've still got the President checking who's connected on the internet. We've still got all this stuff going on. I mean, scaled back in a few instances, but he has this incredible kind of power and it's starting to get a little creepy here.
FALCON: Well, I just hope he's not listening to this debate, because he's going to start getting a big head after listening to you.
REECE: Well, we can go on and on about this issue. Some people argue that the presidents still operate in a system of checks and balances, separation of power. It's essentially the argument that Professor Falcon made. My feeling is that the presidency has become too powerful over the last 200 years. We'd like you to weigh in on this issue. What do you think?