2.2 The Executive - Lecture Outline

 

 

The Executive Branch

 

  • Article II-The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States.

    1. Elected by Electoral college

    2. Born a citizen of the United States

    3. 35 years old

    4. Resident of the United States for 14 years

 

  • Constitutional Amendments

    1. 12th Amendment- Electoral College- One President, One Vice President.

    2. 22nd Amendment- Term limit of two terms or 10 total years of office.

    3. 25th Amendment- Presidential succession, incapacitation, relinquish temporary power

 

  • Constitutional Powers

    1. Appointment

      1. Cabinet

      2. Agencies

  • Federal Courts

    • Senatorial Courtesy

  1. Power to Convene Congress

    1. State of the Union Address

  2. Power to Make Treaties

    1. Fast Track

    2. Executive Agreements

  3. Veto Power

    1. Veto

    2. Pocket Veto

  • Line Item Veto 1996

    • Unconstitutional in Clinton v. City of New York (1998)

  1. Commander in Chief

    1. War Powers Act 1973- Passed over Nixon’s veto

      • President MUST obtain congressional approval before committing troops to a combat zone.

      • President notify congress within 48 hours of sending troops to foreign soil (CNN?)

      • President must withdraw troops within 60 days if there is no congressional Declaration of War.

    2. Power of the Pardon

      1. Ford to Nixon

      2. George Bush to Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger

  • Clinton to Marc Rich (political contributions) and Roger Clinton (brother, cocaine addict)

 

  • Evolution of Presidential Power

    1. Inherent Powers Theory. Alexander Hamilton- The President is vested with the powers of a king or of any other government.

      1. Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase

    2. Stewardship Theory of Power- “The president may take whatever action are deemed necessary in the national interest unless prohibited by the Constitution or by law.”

      1. Teddy Roosevelt’s Bully Pulpit. He believe that the President was the “Steward” in charge of the “general welfare” of the nation. Intervention into the coal strike.

    3. Taftian Theory. President is limited by the specific grants of of executive power listed in the Constitution.

 

  • The Modern Presidency

    1. FDR and the New Deal- Crisis Government- “War on Depression”

    2. Progressive Theory- Administrative Science- Rule by Experts

      1. Creation of a “Great Bureaucracy” in a centralized Administrative State

        • Alphabet Agencies delegated legislative powers to make “rules.”

        • Creation of the Welfare State

          • Patronage State

            • Money to states and programs

          • Regulatory State

            • Economic Control of the nation

          • Redistributive State or Welfare State

            • Redistribution of wealth

  1. White House placed at the center of government

    1. Congress and Supreme Court should “Defer” their authority to the Executive.

    2. Cooperative Federalism, Doctrine of Implied Powers, Doctrine of National Supremacy Clause.

  • Personal or Plebistary Presidency- Direct Relationship between the President and the People.

  1. Active role in the formulation of domestic and foreign policy

    • Legislative Presidency

      • Establish Rule through enacting legislation

        • FDR

      • Administrative Presidency

        • Establish rule through control over Administrative State

          • Reagan, Bush II

        • Judicial Presidency

          • Establish rule through control over Law

            • Reagan, Bush II

 

  • Institutional Presidency

    1. President’s Cabinet [External]

      1. Areas of National Interest

        • Cabinet Agencies (Departments)

          • Homeland Security-

          • Executive Agencies

            • NASA

          • Regulatory Commissions

            • FDA, OSHA

  1. White House Staff- “West Wing” [Internal]

    1. President’s personal advisors- political and loyal

      • Chief of Staff

        • The “Hatchet Man”

      • Special Council to the President

      • National Security Advisor- Foreign Policy Advisor

        • National Security Council, Dept. State, Defense, CIA

      • Domestic Policy Advisor

    2. White House Liaison- External Affairs

      1. Press Secretary

      2. Communications Director- Communications Office

    3. Personnel Office

 

  • Executive Office of the President (EOP) [Chief of Staff]

    1. Executive Reorganization Act 1939- FDR

      1. “Created to advise the president and help manage the growing bureaucracy.”

        • This “establishment” has grown with the size and power of the presidency.

      2. *Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

        • Operations management

        • Financial Analysis of ALL budgetary proposals and proposed rules

        • Runs the Domestic State

  • *National Security Council (NSC)

    • The NSC is chaired by the President. Its regular attendees (both statutory and non-statutory) are the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the statutory military advisor to the Council, and the Director of National Intelligence is the intelligence advisor. The Chief of Staff to the President, Counsel to the President, and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy are invited to attend any NSC meeting.

  1. *Office of Policy Development

  2. Council of Economic Advisors

    • Economic Policy advice

  3. White House Office

  • Office of the U.S. Trade Representative

  • Office of Science and Technology Policy

  1. Council on Environmental Quality

  2. Office of National Drug Control Policy- “Drug Tsar”

  3. Office of the Vice President

 

  • Legislative President

    1. FDR’s First 100 Days

    2. State of the Union Address- Domestic Policy Agenda?

    3. Presidentialist View Democrats

      1. “expansive view of powers and believe that presidents should take an active role in policy making

      2. Office of Policy Development in EOP

    4. Congresionalist View- Republicans

      1. Executive should take a more limited role in lawmaking

      2. Budget Process

        • Executive agencies proposals to OMB

        • President establishes priorites in ruling agenda

          • Assinges money to priorities

          • Money IS policy

        • OMB prepares budget and submits it to Congress

        • Congress and Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reiview budget and make changes according to THEIR priorites

        • Deal-making begins.

        • Divided government

        • See Federal Budget flowchart

 

  • Administrative President

    1. Policy Implementation and Rule through the Administrative State and Rule-Making Process

    2. Control over the implementation of Law and Regulations

    3. Power of Appointment

      1. Cabinet Secretaries, Independent Agencies, Government Corporations and Commissions

        • Appointment of Fed Chairman to implement Economic Policy

      2. Executive Orders

        1. Order by the President with the force of law within the powers of the Executive Branch

        2. Future President’s may recind the orders of former presidents

          • Truman- Desegregation of the Military

          • Johnson- Affirmative Action

          • Clinton- “Midnight Orders” Vast amount of executive orders issued upon his exit from office.

 

  • Judicial President- How to contol law in America

    1. Single Party wins White House and Senate.

    2. Appoint ideological judges appointed to the federal bench. (court packing)

      1. Supreme Court

      2. C. Circuit Court- appeals from Federal Agencies

  • Target Circuit Courts

    • Senate Judiciary Committee approves appointments.

  1. Solicitor General “selects” agenda cases to be brought before the Supreme Court.

    1. File amicus curaie briefs in agenda cases

  2. Executive Branch issues new “rules” in Administrative agencies

    • Ideological Court rules favorably in these cases.

  3. New policy is implemented

 

  • The Ultimate Power of the President

“This list of powers is not very impressive except possibly his role as commander in chief. Rather the greatest source of presidential power is to be found in politics and public opinion (Nuestadt).”

 

  1. Paradoxes of the Presidency

    1. “The modern presidency is always too powerful and yet is always inadequate. All powerful because possesses the capacity to wage nuclear war (w/o checks and balances) Always too powerful because it is contrary to our ideals of a "government by the people" yet always inadequate because it seldom achieves our highest hopes for it, not to mention its own stated intentions.”

    2. Thomas Cronin: This paradox of presidential power stems from conflicting expectations of the American public. We want a savior-hero and when this savior fails to deliver we blame him and throw him out of office. But the president must work within the confines of the constitution. The constitution created a government of separate institutions with shared The American Presidency has both great strengths and profound weaknesses built into it.

  2. Imperial Presidency- Arthur Schlesinger “The President is a King”

“If the President does it, then it is not against the law.” Richard Nixon

  1. Imperial Presidency results from:

    • The swelling of the presidential bureaucracy

    • the pressures of the cold war and demands for secrecy in the name of national security have produced a president who is increasingly ISOLATED and UNACCOUNTABLE.

    • Centralization of decisions of war and peace into the presidency -- due to cold war, prolonged war in Vietnam.

    • Decay of the traditional party structure led to the presidency as "the central focus of political emotion." Nixon tried to isolate himself from challenge.

    • Examples:

      • Kennedy and Johnson sent troops to Vietnam,

      • President Reagan sent troops to Grenada and Lebanon.

        • All without war being declared by Congress.

      • Iran-Contra - the Reagan administration conducting secret foreign policy, funding Contra against the wishes of Congress and the public.

      • Nixon – Watergate

        • Executive Privilege-

          1. V. Nixon (1974)

 

  • Sources of Presidential Power

    1. Presidents differ in terms of their ability to influence the conduct of the men who make up government. Influence then becomes the mark of leadership.

    2. Richard Neustadt, “the power of the president is the power to persuade.”

      1. "The essense of a president's persuasive task with congressmen and everybody else, is to induce them to believe that what he wants of them is what their own appraisal of their own responsibilities requires them to do in their interest, not his."

      2. The power to persuade amounts to bargaining.

        • Status and power yield bargaining advantages; consider foreign policy (i.e. establishing liberal trade laws and reducing tariffs).

        • President's can gain advantages in bargaining by using three (3)resourses:

          • Constitutional Powers--formal powers

          • Delegated powers (vs. implied powers)

          • Presidential popularity

        • Presidents who have to resort to their constitutional powers are said to be "weak" presidents.

          • a presidential veto represents a presidents failure to persuade members of congress to pass a bill he wants.

          • The same logic can be applied to the Persian Gulf crisis.(1991) The United States would have been perceived as more powerful if it had persuaded Iraq to get out of Kuwait without resorting to force. In short, a strong president should use his force sparingly.

  1. Why the Power to Persuade

    • power is dispersed, president cannot just command

    • other levels of government have different constituencies, different sources of power

    • president needs others to get things done

    • must bargain, persuade others that what he wants is in their best interests

    • sources of persuasion/bargaining power (tools)

      • create sense of good will

      • popularity

      • skill and willingness to use the tools

 

  • Presidential Popularity- Going Public

    1. Public prestige (Neustadt) is similiar to presidential popularity.

      • Presidents can translate their own popularity into success in congress. Bush's main failure after the Gulf War was not to take advantage of his extremely high popularity to get his domestic agenda passed through congress.

      • Determinants of Presidential Popularity:

        1. Economy, Foreign Affairs, Events Effects on Congress

 

Presidential Leadership and the Political Environment

Previously

Established

Commitments

 

 

Presidents Political Identity

 

Political Environment

Opposed

Affiliated

Vulnerable

RECONSTRUCTION

Thomas Jefferson

Andrew Jackson

Abraham Lincoln

FDR

Ronald Reagan

 

DISJUNCTION

John Adams

John Quincy Adams

Franklin Pierce

James Buchanan

Herbert Hoover

Jimmy Carter

Resilient

PRE-EMPTION

John Tyler

Andrew Johnson

Woodrow Wilson

Richard Nixon

Bill Clinton

 

ARTICULATION

James Monroe

James Polk

Theodore Roosevelt

Lyndon Johnson

George Bush (I)

 

The Politics Presidents Make, Stephen Skowronek

 

“The power to recreate order hinges on the authority to repudiate it.” The recurrent patterns of presidential politics are anchored in this paradox.

 

Reconstructive Presidents

These president herald from the opposition of the previous administration and establish their agenda based upon the destruction of their predecessor.

 

Disjunctive Presidents

“The impossible leadership situation.” These presidents are harnessed with an agenda (commitments) from the previous administration and are doomed to fail.

 

Articulation Presidents

These presidents inherit a set of commitments that are accepted by the people and cannot divert from them. They attempt to re-order the current situation in a “new or interesting way.”

 

Pre-emptive Presidents

“Opposition Leaders in Resilient Times.” A man before his time. These presidents are free from current commitments, but are harnessed by the “political, institutional, and ideological supports that the old administration maintains.”

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