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Hi. Welcome to Week Three.
This is Podcast 5. We're going to be talking about the Presidency.
We're accustom
to thinking of the president as one of the most powerful people in the world.
He's often called the "leader of the free world."
But if you look at the Constitution, this person actually
only has a few expressed powers. If you remember our discussion of the Constitutional Convention,
we have this independent presidency precisely because there is a sense that
without a branch that could enforce federal laws over the states,
we would have a republic just about as weak as the one we had under the
Articles of Confederation.
And we wanted this president to be separate from
the legislative branch, unlike what you have in a parliamentary system.
So, like many things in government, the presidency has changed a lot
over time, and what started out as a relatively weak office
has actually expanded its reach in power greatly
as different presidents asserted authority
over regulatory areas,
assembled a cabinet with cabinet secretaries to oversee various
policy areas, and right now the executive branch employs
many tens... hundreds of thousands of people
across the country, if you consider its expanded reach.
So Article Two of the Constitution is the source in the president's power.
Take a look at it. You'll see that Section One
begins by stating the executive power should be vested in a president of
the United States of America.
It defines the term of office, which is four years; defines how we elect that president,
which is called the electoral college; and of course there's some qualifications
- basic qualifications -
including that you must be a natural-born citizen.
A requirement that many people think, today, as a little outdated.
It probably should be updated but, as you know, it's difficult to change
the Constitution via amendment.
So then there are other main powers specified in the following sections:
he is the Commander-in-Chief, meaning he
commands the military and use of force.
He has the power to negotiate treaties with foreign countries.
He has the power to appoint high-ranking government officials,
and often with Senate approval of those officials.
He has the power to give Congress information
during what's now kind of a media event
call the "State of the Union," which is a speech he gives
to Congress and the nation updating the country on what's going on.
And he can also require a special session of Congress if he believes that's necessary.
And finally, he receives ambassadors of other nations.
So he's also our Head of State.
And as you remember, the president, probably his greatest power,
at least in lawmaking, is that he has veto power over every law passed by Congress,
which can be overwritten, of course, by a two-thirds vote in Congress.
So those are the expressed powers
but, as I said, the presidents have gone far beyond
those expressed powers and claimed both implied an inherent powers.
These are powers often open to interpretation.
But usually the president asserts these powers by saying
"Well these aren't in the Constitution, but they are necessary in order to carry out
the expressed powers that are in the Constitution, and all the other
responsibilities of the presidency."
So an example of that,
that's often cited is executive privilege, which is the president's
ability to withhold sensitive information from Congress
and the public when national security is involved.
President Nixon tried to assert this privilege during the Watergate scandal.
He wanted to withhold these tapes that were so incriminating
of him and his staff, but the good news is a federal judge ruled that
these tapes could not be covered under privilege.
So there is a check on these privileges that the president asserts
and it resides in in the judiciary. So when the president overreaches
we have a way of checking that power.
So most if you've grown up believing that the president
is perhaps more powerful than any other branch of government
but if you look closely at how the government operates on a day-to-day basis,
he's actually quite limited in what he can accomplish.
And, you know, some of you have witnessed this by being disappointed that
President Obama
who came into office in 2008 with a very bold agenda
and this message of hope and optimism that he laid out in this campaign,
well, he has been largely ineffective in getting that agenda through.
But as I mentioned before, under divided government
when a different party controls different branches of government,
the President really has a hard time brokering compromise and getting the other party
that controls Congress, in this case the Republicans,
to affirm his agenda. A few quick examples on how
the president's power might be limited in the day-to-day...
I mentioned the president can put forth his agenda,
usually in the State of the Union speech,
that's widely televised, but of course
the shape of that agenda ends up being determined by Congress.
He can be blocked in his legislative goals
simply if the Speaker of the House disagrees with him, which he does quite often at the moment.
The president can command military forces
but, of course, Congress is the only one that has the power to declare war.
So often the president feels it's necessary, if he's going to move troops into combat,
to try to get congressional
authorization for that, even though
in the Constitution - nothing there says that he has to do that.
The President is also the head of the executive branch departments
and agencies but this is just one of those shared powers,
or concurrent powers, with Congress.
Congress has to provid the authorization and funding
for those executive departments and sometimes is called the
"power of the purse string"
meaning the power to give or withhold funds,
which has a direct effect on how effective the executive branch can be.
So we still have checks on this power
and the President may seem to have a lot of expressed powers, but those are often
limited by Congress.
There's an old term that you may have heard...
its associated with Theodore Roosevelt, one of our early 20th century presidents,
called the "bully pulpit."
And that just means that the president has this unique power
of being the person everyone is listening to,
and pretty much any words that come out of the president's mouth,
at any given time, are reported on.
And so maybe this is his greatest power of all... something that's not written down anywhere...
because 18th-century folks could never have imagined
a world that we live in where a President's
video can be transmitted within seconds, globally.
So the President may be limited in some of his powers,
but the power to communicate effectively, I think,
is one of the greatest powers of all, especially in the
age of television and the Internet.
And so, you may want to consider,
when we consider who are the most effective presidents,
especially in the last 50 years, we often go to those who were the best communicators.
President Reagan, in fact, had a nickname; they called him the "Great Communicator"
because he really had a way of
expressing hope and optimism, and some American ideals that spoke to everybody.
So even if you look at his legislative record and
depending on which side of the aisle you're on, you think
it's good or bad, there can be no
disagreement that he was a great communicator,
and that those presidents that are able to communicate their agendas
often wield the greatest power.
So, a few things to ponder about the Presidency itself...
First: are we afraid that the President has actually expanded his powers too much
and that the bureaucracy that he uses to enforce it
- we're going to talk about bureaucracy in the next podcast -
has that become too overreaching?
So, where are you gonna draw the line on presidential powers?
And do we have enough checks on that power?
You know, in the early days of the Presidency some presidents had maybe one secretary
and a few staff members, and today the White House employs
between 2000 and 2500 people... just the White House...
and of course many more thousands within the executive branch and bureaucracy.
And we spend $300 to $400 million dollars just on
the White House's operations and those employees.
So I guess something to ponder is
is there an end to this expansion in presidential power?
And how do we accomplish that, if we want that?
I'd also like you to look at the Electoral College and understand how it works.
We elect presidents mostly based on who wins the popular vote of each state, with a few exceptions...
some states split their electoral votes,
but most give all their electoral votes, which are the number of representatives
and senators they have,
they give them all to the person who wins the popular vote in the state.
We don't elect presidents based on the popular vote the nation as a whole.
And a lot of people think that's quite an undemocratic
institution that we have written into our Constitution.
One of the effects is that during a campaign
there are actually only a few states that have a large number of electoral votes
and that often go one way or another,
to one party or another, in an election. We call them "swing states"
and it's really only the people who live in those states that
get attention during a presidential campaign or presidential primary campaign.
You know the biggest example of that is
Iowa and New Hampshire, who normally we wouldn't think of as
large, or influential states... they have a great deal of influence
being the first states in the primaries
during a presidential campaign. So I'd like you to think about whether
the Electoral College is an outdated way of
electing the president and how we might change that?
Thanks! See you next time!