Chapter 5: The President and the Presidency Election and Powers

 

Part 2: Thinking about Actions

"To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported. . . ."

P. J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century

Chapter 5: The President and the Presidency
Election and Powers

Chapter Objectives

After reading the present chapter you should be able to:

• 1. Explain the difference between the president and the presidency, and know several reasons why this is an important distinction.

• 2. State the formal (Constitutional) and informal requirements governing eligibility to become president.

• 3. Tell what the Electoral College is, why it now seems to be a formality, why it is important even so, and how a president is selected when nobody gets the required vote in the Electoral College.

• 4. List the key regulations applying to presidential primaries and elections.

• 5. State some basic strategies used to capture a major party nomination and win the presidency.

• 6. Explain the extent to which a president can employ the powers of pen, purse, and sword, and whose cooperation he must secure in order to use each of these powers effectively.

• 7. Describe the process by which a president can be impeached and convicted, and explain the argument according to which he need not have committed an indictable offense in order to be removed from office.

• 8. Understand what is meant by "loyal opposition," and explain why the concept is more confusing in America than it is in England.

• 9. List the main "roles" played by U.S. presidents, and describe the opportunities and limits that affect their power in the various roles.

Key Terms

checks and balances
equal time doctrine
impoundment
closed primaries (as distinguished from open)
executive agreement
loyal opposition
head of state/head of government
mandate
plurality
contractor general
impeachment
serendipate
Electoral College

[W]jithin twenty-five minutes of the first report [of President John F Kennedy's assassination], the television audience had doubled, and by the time the President arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, 70 percent of New York (and presumably America) was at its sets. The next day . . . almost half of all sets in America remained on. . . . [Oln Sunday . . . for the ceremonies in the Capitol Rotunda, 85 percent of all television homes in America became live witnesses. And then, finally, for the funeral and burial ceremonies on Monday . . . audience attention reached . . . 93 percent of all American television sets, the highest total in TV history . . . . *

THE HIERARCHY OF GOVERNMENTAL POWER

Walter Bagehot's classic study, The English Constitution, noted that the English Queen no longer exercised the powers legally residing in her office. By the nineteenth century, the monarchy had evolved into a "dignified" institution enjoying great prestige and ceremonial acclaim; governing power was actually exercised by an "efficient" institution, the Cabinet. Nevertheless, Bagehot found the Queen a very important person. She provided a symbol comprehensible even to the politically naive, while only the sophisticated few grasped how the Cabinet worked. Footnote 1

The American presidency is not merely ceremonial, but it does provide a simple concept of government for the politically naive, including small children. [Footnote 2] According to this simple concept, the president is the government, and what he says, goes.

Theoretical Hierarchy

The simple view that the president is the government and that his wish is its command is, of course, a great distortion of an actual truth. President Harry Truman expressed a more sophisticated view of his office after General Dwight D. Eisenhower had been elected but before he was inaugurated: "He'll sit here, and he'll say, 'Do this! Do that!' And nothing will happen. Poor Ike--it won't be a bit like the Army. He'll find it very frustrating." Footnote 3

There are many limits on what presidents can do. However the presidency is still the most powerful single office in the United States. It may well be more powerful than the nine Supreme Court justices combined, or than all 535 members of Congress. In recent decades, the apparent pecking order among these three institutions has been:

1. the presidency (most powerful)
2. the Supreme Court
3. Congress (least powerful)

Thus, there is a reciprocal relationship between the size of the institution and its present power: The smaller the institution, the greater the power. It would be tempting to generalize that this reciprocal relationship is inherent. The president, a single person, always has a quorum and speaks with one voice. The "nine old men" on the Supreme Court, while less powerful than the president because of their divisions, can cooperate more easily than congressmen can. But the present arrangements are not inherent. For long periods before and after the Civil War, the presidency may have been the weakest of the three institutions. How many people have ever heard of President Fillmore?

Actual Hierarchy

Powerful as the modern presidency is, it still clearly packs less clout than the combined Congress and Supreme Court. The Watergate affair proved this abundantly. If the Supreme Court had not ordered President Nixon to provide the incriminating tape recordings, Congress might never have decided to impeach him. If Congress had been pro-Nixon, there was little the Supreme Court acting alone could have done to bring him down. But together, Congress and the Court created a situation leaving the President only two choices--resign or be impeached.

During the Watergate crisis American institutions worked exactly as the founding fathers intended. The "checks and balances" among top institutions were intended to assure that if one branch got out of line, the other two would have enough power jointly to slap it down. Powers allocated to the president themselves resulted from a balance of conflicting considerations: the desire to avoid executive dominance like that of the hated pre-revolutionary royal governors, and the desire to avoid the disorganization resulting from the complete absence of a chief executive under the Articles of Confederation. Emergence of the presidency as our most powerful institution would have surprised the founders, but it was the inevitable result of the increasing importance of foreign relations, in turn the result of technological developments the founders of the nation had no way of anticipating. Logically, President Nixon invoked "national security" in trying to hold back his tape-recordings, for his office was most powerful in that arena.

The distinction between individual and office is always fundamental in human organizations, and our discussion will examine both the presidency as an office and the presidents as men occupying that office. A third level of analysis, with which we will commence, examines how a particular person enters the office at a given time. The relationship of individual to office is, of course, a compound-voluntary association with government as one party and the individual as the other. The "government" decides who will occupy the office by applying certain rules to an election in which nearly all interested adult citizens can participate. But nobody can be compelled to serve as president; mutual consent is required, and our top leader is free to resign at any time.

ELECTING A PRESIDENT: FORMAL AND INFORMAL REQUIREMENTS

Eligibility

Only individuals with certain characteristics are eligible to become president. These requirements are learned in elementary high school civics, but have important implications that are rarely discussed. To qualify, one must be at least 35 years old, a natural-born citizen, and have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years. Otherwise eligible people can be disqualified by impeachment from the presidency or other federal office or by having been elected president two times previously (Twenty- second Amendment). A person serving more than two years of someone else's term is only eligible to be elected once in his own right.

The age requirement alone disqualifies 40% of the population. The natural-born citizenship requirement makes distinguished naturalized Americans like Dr. Henry Kissinger (born a German) and Senator S. 1. Hayakawa (born a Canadian of Japanese ancestry) ineligible. The Twenty-second Amendment was not passed until the Truman administration. President Eisenhower was the first person affected by it, and was barred from seeking a third term in 1960. Although Richard Nixon was never impeached and did not finish his second term, he became ineligible to be elected again because elected twice already. Since Gerald Ford served more than two years of Nixon's second term, he would have been eligible to be elected in his own right only once. It is ironic that the Twenty-second Amendment, passed with Republican support as a reaction to Franklin Roosevelt's unprecedented election to third and fourth terms, has so far affected only Republicans.

Clearly, the age and natural-born citizenship requirements are not general rules of action. A person's age and original citizenship do not result from his actions and are not actions. Are not these requirements therefore highly discriminatory? Are they not imperfections in our Constitution when evaluated by an ideal or metaconstitution along lines suggested in an earlier chapter?

These requirements may be unwise, but they do not conflict with the principles expressed in Chapter 4. The principle that government should impose sanctions only on people who violate general rules of action simply does not apply here. The association between president and government is compound- voluntary. It thus involves only inducements. A person denied the presidency for any reason suffers, not a sanction, but a denied inducement. Since the general rules of action requirement applies only to sanctions, it has no bearing on the many voluntary associations to which government is a party.

Of course, age and citizenship requirements are discriminatory. But the whole process of electing any public official is inherently discriminatory. To make the validity of an election depend on the motives of the voters in casting their ballots would destroy democracy, placing real power to choose officials in the hands of those empowered to examine voters' motives. Suppose the Constitution stated no age requirement. You are less than 35 and a candidate for president. Voters are free to vote for or against you for any reason, including your age. But their freedom need not be expressed only at the retail level, so to speak. A constitutional requirement is merely a wholesale way to express prejudice against younger candidates.

The age requirement can finally be satisfied by living long enough, but the natural born citizenship requirement cannot. Oddly enough, the person who is permanently disqualified may have an immense political asset: he can serve in subordinate capacities without having to take the flack always directed against potential presidents by their rivals for that office. Perhaps this was one reason Dr. Kissinger was so effective as Secretary of State.

The Electoral College

After eligibility, the Electoral College is a second important formality on the road to the White House. Fearing a strong executive directly elected by the people, the founding fathers established an indirect election, with each state getting one vote for each of its senators and representatives in Congress. After George Washington, the founders did not expect anybody to get the required absolute majority in the Electoral College. The Constitution provided that in this event the election would be completed in the House of Representatives. This was expected to be the normal procedure, with the Electoral College in effect nominating the candidates among whom the House would choose.

How It Functions. The Electoral College never functioned as intended. Originally, each elector was to cast two votes, both for president. The vice president was to be the candidate for president who came in second. In 1800 "Republican" [Footnote 4] party discipline produced equal College votes for Thomas Jefferson and for vice presidential candidate Aaron Burr. The election went into the House, where the Federalists nearly put Burr into the top office in order to keep it from Jefferson. The Twelfth Amendment separating voting in the College for the two offices was then introduced to avoid similar fiascos in the future.

The unanticipated development of organized political parties prevented the Electoral College from functioning independently. Occasionally, an elector votes for someone he was not supposed to, and legally all are free to do likewise. Yet, except under conditions that appear unlikely to occur, the Electoral College remains an important formality. It is a formality because members simply reflect the plurality vote in their home states. It is important for three reasons:

1. It distorts the popular vote. The candidate receiving a bare plurality of the popular vote in a state receives all of that state's electoral votes. Usually this distortion gives the national winner a higher percentage of electoral votes than of popular votes. In 1972, an extreme example, Richard Nixon received 47,169,911 out of 77,718,554 popular votes, but 520 out of 537 electoral votes. George McGovern received the electoral votes of only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
2. Although the electoral college normally awards victory to the leading popular vote-getter, it can distort in the other direction. In 1888 Benjamin Harrison unseated the incumbent Grover Cleveland even though Cleveland had nearly 100,000 more popular votes (out of eleven million).
3. In any one state, a landslide victory does a candidate no more good than a bare plurality of the popular vote--the electoral vote is the same either way. Likewise, popular votes short of a plurality in any state are worthless, producing no electoral votes. Candidates therefore tend to campaign in large states where the race appears close rather than wasting time in small states, in states where they are going to win anyway, or in states where they are sure to lose.

Campaign Regulations

Campaign regulations are a third important formality affecting presidential elections. Three prime examples are laws regulating primary elections, the Federal Communications Commission's equal time doctrine, and the campaign finance legislation enacted after the Watergate scandals.

Within certain Constitutional limits, primary elections are a state responsibility. State governments determine if there will be presidential primaries, when they will be held, how candidates get on the ballot, and who may vote in a party's primary.

Campaigners must take the nature of a state's primary into consideration when devising strategies. In "closed" primaries in which only people registered as party members can vote, support need not be sought among members of the other party. Nor need one worry about avoiding "raids" in which members of one party vote in the other's primary, supporting candidates with the worst chances of prevailing in the general elections. If the state's primary is "open," and people can se party's election to vote in when they arrive at the polls, both possibilities must be considered, offensively as well as defensively.

The major federal intervention in primaries has been to forbid discrimination against black voters in southern Democratic primaries. The Supreme Court first declared that state laws (pseudo -laws) requiring the white primary violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The states than repealed their legal requirements, and the Democratic Party--as a private- voluntary association to which the Amendments do not apply-- tried to continue excluding blacks. The Supreme Court struck this practice down too, although unable to give convincing constitutional justification for its action. Footnote 5

The Federal Communications Commission's fairness or equal time doctrine has inhibited media coverage of presidential campaigns for some years. The FCC's rules have made it almost impossible to televise debates between leading contenders for the office. There are always several minor party candidates in addition to the Democratic and Republican nominees. The networks are faced with offering equal time to all other candidates, most of whom few people are interested in watching, or not giving debate time to the major parties. The rules were temporarily suppressed or bent, by mutual consent of the leading candidates, only in 1960 and in 1976. The results of the 1960 debates between the relatively unknown John Kennedy and Vice President Nixon made debating unattractive to the leading candidate. Perhaps this explains why there were no more debates until 1976.

Campaign Finance Reforms. The latest legal regulations of presidential campaigns are the campaign finance reforms of 1974. Basic features of this legislation were:

• 1. Limits on the money that can be donated to presidential candidates by anybody except government

• 2. Limits on the money that can be spent by any candidate for the presidency

• 3. A commission established to enforce the new legislation

• 4. A requirement that all presidential candidates register with the commission and file detailed reports of campaign income and expenditures

• 5. Government payments to qualified candidates

The donation limits, upheld upon challenge in the Supreme Court, are clearly pseudo-laws, for they impose sanctions upon violators but are not general rules of action. Private individuals and associations are prohibited from doing what government-as-contractor I is allowed to do. Expenditure limits, on the other hand, were originally both laws and bodres. They were laws because they imposed sanctions on any presidential candidate exceeding the expenditure limit. They were bodres because violators also lost eligibility for federal campaign money, a withdrawn inducement. The Supreme Court struck down the law as a violation of the First Amendment. But it upheld the bodre. A candidate who spends more than existing rulers decree thus cannot be jailed or fined but can lose his federal matching funds.

The Supreme Court found that appointment of some commission members by Congress violated the separation of powers. However the commission was then duly reestablished in more conventional form with all of its members appointed by the president. Requiring all candidates to register with the commission and disclose their finances is law. These general rules applying to "anybody who" were duly upheld by the Supreme Court, as was expenditure of government funds to support the campaigns of eligible candidates.

Government financing of campaigns had two basic purposes: to equalize opportunity to run for the presidency by reducing dependency on private donations or resources; and to reduce corruption resulting when candidates "sell out" in return for private donations. Both purposes are commendable. But noble objectives (X) do not justify all actions (A) taken in their pursuit. Two questions always remain once the nobility of the goal is established: Will the action (A) deliver the goods (X)? What side effects (Y) will the action produce, and are the benefits, if any, worth this cost? Partial federal financing of presidential campaigns can do little to equalize opportunities or reduce corruption. For practical purposes only a few dozen people are in a position to make a serious run for the presidency (as we will see in the next section), and no government program can change this fact except perhaps for the worse. Corruption, inevitable when government officials have great discretionary power to do or not to do nice things for particular people, can hardly be reduced by increasing the goods available for the existing rulers to give away.

Informal Requirements

Besides the formal prerequisites for the presidency, there have traditionally been several informal requirements. First and foremost, the candidate must not have a solid bloc of devout enemies, even a relatively small one. American elections are often close, allowing a few voters to swing the election if they vote as a cohesive group. A striking example was the presidential election of 1916. Incumbent Woodrow Wilson (whose campaign stressed his activities that kept us out of war) was pitted against resigned Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, and the election was a cliffhanger:

Mr. Hughes went to bed that night believing he had been elected President. . . . But California, with 13 electoral votes . . . finally went to Wilson. Thus the score ended at 277 for Wilson to 254 for Hughes. If California had gone to Hughes, he would have become President by 267 to 264 votes in the Electoral College. In California, Wilson had won by a majority of 3,733 votes. Total votes cast were 928,805. There were 5,917 precincts in the state of California. Less than one voter per precinct in California decided the presidential election of 1916. Footnote 6

No would-be president can adopt an overtly anti-Israel stance in foreign policy. New York state, with its large bloc of electoral votes, has a substantial Jewish population, many with family or emotional ties to Israel. Although black people are only about 10% of the total population, no one seriously wanting the presidency will run on an anti-black platform.

Other, perhaps less eternal, informal eligibility requirements have included:
1. The candidate must be male 3. The candidate must be Protestant
The third rule was smashed by the election of Catholic John F. Kennedy in 1960. By 1964 William Miller, Republican candidate for vice president, was able to joke about the religion issue. Claiming that the Republican ticket was as ecumenical as you could get, he pointed out that he was a Catholic, while Barry Goldwater was both a Protestant and a Jew. Presumably, the informal requirements that a president be a white male will also go, in due course, when party leaders decide that public opinion is no longer hopelessly prejudiced against black and/or female candidates.

Four Hurdles to the Presidency

Some of you might want to become president someday. Even if you have no such interest at present, pretending that you do can help you understand campaign strategies. If you want to become president, there are only four things you have to do in order to accomplish your goal:

1. Capture a strategic position from which to run
2. Achieve nomination by a major political party
3. Successfully campaign for the support of potential voters
4. Win the election

Strategic Positions. There are only a few strategic positions from which a successful presidential campaign can be launched, if American history is any guide: 1. the governorship (current or recent) of a large state (Franklin Roosevelt, New York; Jimmy Carter, Georgia)
2. the U.S. Senate (John F. Kennedy)
3. a distinguished military career culminating in a successful war (Dwight D. Eisenhower)
4. the Cabinet (Herbert Hoover)
5. the vice presidency (current or recent) (Richard Nixon)
6. the presidency itself (Harry Truman, Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon)

These positions bring their occupants to public attention and (except for the vice presidency) allow accomplishments to which they can "point with pride." No twentieth-century president has captured the White House without first occupying one of the five other positions.

Winning the Nomination. The second hurdle is more of an obstacle than the first, There are 100 senators, more than a dozen states large enough for their governors to be in the running, and several possible cabinet positions. But only two or three people can receive the nomination of a major political party. Capturing a minor party's nomination is easy but worthless if your objective is to become president. [Footnote 7] Getting the nomination of a major party is worthwhile but difficult.

In presidential politics there is no draft. Widespread "name- recognition," popularity, and ability may be yours, but the nomination will never be handed to you on a platter. The major party nomination must literally be captured And it must be captured in a highly competitive "market" populated by other bright, industrious, and attractive individuals.

Primary Election. Whether and when to enter presidential primary elections is a major strategic decision. "Peaking" a campaign too early can be fatal, but it is also necessary to avoid starting too late. California governor Jerry Brown won all the Democratic primaries he entered in 1976, but by the time he threw his hat in the ring Jimmy Carter had locked up too many convention delegates to be defeated.

Voter appeal is absolutely essential in courting convention delegates even from states with no primary. No matter how much party leaders like a candidate personally, they usually understand that winning requires the votes that can only result from grass-roots appeal. However, mass appeal alone also counts for little; even the popular candidate must make himself personally known to state party activists if he wants to get anywhere.

Campaigning. The third hurdle en route to the White House is the campaign itself. Sometimes the campaign may not make much difference. In 1964 Barry Goldwater, although undoubtedly the great favorite of Republican Party activists, would never have been nominated if delegates had given due weight to his chances of winning. To win the White House, Republicans must nominate a candidate who is less conservative than party leadership finds ideal. Conversely, Democratic presidential candidates can win only if more conservative than most party leaders. Thus George McGovern in 1972 probably came closer to being the honest choice of Democratic activists than any recent candidate, but the very qualities endearing him to party leaders repelled many voters. The Republicans returned to normal tactics in 1968, nominated Richard Nixon, and won. The Democrats returned to their usual strategy in 1976, and they also won.

Campaigning in the Election. Political scientists explain the fiascos of 1964 and 1972 in the following terms: Most voters are in the "middle of the road," neither very conservative nor very liberal. Graphing political orientation against numbers of people, we get something of a "standard distribution," with smaller numbers of people as we move to the extreme left or right and larger numbers in the middle. The constituencies appealed to by the Republican and Democratic parties overlap greatly because both are bidding for largely the same voters. When a rare candidate, such as Goldwater or McGovern, writes off everybody on the other side of the hump, he may gain a few votes on his own side of the hump which would normally go to a fringe party, but he will also lose millions of votes normally going to his party. The net results are catastrophic.

Strategies in Campaigning. A candidate with the good fortune to run against a Goldwater or a McGovern need not wage much of a campaign. He may do best to avoid saying or doing anything. He who does nothing can make few mistakes! But presidential contenders must normally do everything possible to gain support. The ideal strategy is one that:

1. projects a congenial image of the candidate as a person to as many people as possible ("I like Ike")
2. reinforces the tendency of loyal members of one's own party to keep the faith ("now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party")
3. encourages members of the other party to defect ("Democrats for Nixon")
4. takes a stand on issues that attracts the largest possible number of voters and alienates the fewest ("Motherhood, flag and country!").

Choosing a Running Mate. The first critical decision facing a nominee is to pick a running mate. Although nominating conventions technically are free to pick the vice presidential candidate, in fact the choice has usually been made by the presidential nominee himself, then automatically approved by the delegates. Generally the ticket is "balanced" with someone from the other wing of the party and from a different part of the country.

Choosing the issues. The candidate must also choose which values to emphasize, which issues to talk about and which to ignore. Putting together a campaign organization may require large sums of money, but the ultimate objective of the campaign is to wield the power of the pen. Buying the majority of the voters is difficult, so they must be convinced instead. Candidates must try to maximize their combined promises of satisfaction plus credibility. Obviously there must be trade-offs between these two objectives. Credibility is assured for the candidate who promises nothing, but he will get few votes. As the candidate makes more promises, his stock with the public will tend to rise but his credibility will start to decline' Beyond a certain point, additional promises will produce more losses from decreasing credibility than gains from increasing popularity.

Generally, though, it appears safer to make too many promises rather than too few; it will probably enhance chances of winning, and electoral memories are short. Thus Woodrow Wilson's implied promise to keep out of World War I ("He kept us out of war" was his reelection campaign slogan) in 1916 did not prevent him from plunging us in early in 1917. Franklin Roosevelt, in his unprecedented campaign for a third term in 1940 said: "I repeat again that I stand on the platform of our party: 'We will not participate in foreign wars and we will not send our army, naval or air force to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas. . . . ' " President Lyndon Johnson implied a promise not to escalate the Vietnamese involvement when he attacked candidate Goldwater as a dangerous maniac in foreign relations. Candidate Jimmy Carter promised to end unemployment and inflation, balance the budget, and cut military spending while keeping a strong defense, but as president he was soon cautioning people not to expect miracles.

Good Timing. Candidates must also decide how to allocate scarce time among various possible campaign activities and parts of the country and how to spend available campaign funds. Should more reliance be placed on personal appearances and "barnstorming," or on the electronic media? Which states can be written off as hopeless and which are solid enough for a minimal holding operation to avoid charges of neglect? Candidates have man y opportunities to lose votes by making bad decisions, by being disorganized, by offending influential people. In many respects the campaign is an ordeal, a test of the candidate's personal and organizational abilities.

Winning the Election. The fourth hurdle on the road to the White House is winning popular votes in the actual elections distributed to produce a majority in the Electoral College. For nearly 100 years now, the Electoral College vote has gone to the candidate with the popular majority or plurality, though this correspondence between the two elections is not inevitable. But even without the element of uncertainty introduced by the Electoral College, a candidate leading the public opinion polls the day before the election is not assured of winning. Polls may be wrong. Sampling errors, although improbable, are possible when only several thousand people are questioned in order to predict how millions will vote. People continue changing their minds right up to election day. And although pollsters try to allow for this in their predictions, some kinds of people (Democrats, less well educated, poorer) are less likely to vote than others (Republicans, better educated, more prosperous). To the extent that polls are based on the views of those people who do not vote, they may therefore not reflect the actual behavior of those who do vote.

After the election the victor must recuperate from campaigning and begin getting organized to assume office two months later. Traditionally, the loser concedes defeat and urges his supporters to help the new Administration. The winner must try to capitalize on this courtesy and help the country "pull back together" from the divisiveness of the campaign. He must try to take advantage of the "honeymoon" period during which even those who voted against him may be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt--maybe he is even the better man. Honeymoon or no, however, he cannot count on automatic support for his decisions from anyone. Before and after inauguration, he must still marshal support for his decisions one by one. And he cannot get far by arguing that voters have given him a "mandate" to do particular things.

Many people tend to vote "for the man" or for the party rather than on the basis of a candidate's stance on "the issues." Even when they favor some of his ideas about issues, they are unlikely to agree with all of them. And a voter may not even like a candidate or his policies at all, but vote for him because "the other guy is even worse." Did a vote for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 indicate support for his "Great Society" programs, or did it merely mean many people were frightened by Goldwater? Did Richard Nixon's landslide victory in 1972 mean that the vast majority liked his approach to issues, or merely that people regarded Nixon as a lesser evil than McGovern? Did Jimmy Carter win in 1976 because people were sick and tired of hearing about the Watergate mess, or because people wanted a national health insurance ("socialized medicine") program? Of course it is good tactics for the victor to claim a mandate, and he usually does. However such claims may not carry much weight in Congress, most of whose members are painfully aware of the ambiguity of the "message" that is sent by the voters.

POWERS OF THE PRESIDENCY: THE OFFICE

Expressly Delegated Powers

The Constitution expressly assigns only a few powers to the presidential office. The presidency heads both the civilian and military sectors of the executive branch, commissioning military officers and appointing top executive and judicial officials with the consent of the Senate. Congress can and does enact bodres expanding presidential authority and allowing appointment of subordinate officials without senatorial consent (Article 11, 2, 2).

Domestic and Foreign Powers. The presidency enjoys sole constitutional power to send and receive ambassadors, thus expressing official U.S. recognition of particular foreign regimes, and to negotiate treaties. Domestically, the Constitution mandates the president to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" (Article 11, 3). Perhaps somewhat contradictorily, the president is also authorized to "grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment" (Article 11, 2, 1). To a limited extent the president is also empowered to participate in the legislative process: he can convene and adjourn Congress and must inform it periodically of the "state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient" (Article 11, 3). Enjoying thus the right to propose legislation, the president is also given power to veto bills that cannot command a two-thirds vote in each house of Congress.

The Constitution thus formally endows the presidency with power to use the sword against foreigners (as commander-in- chief) and against people within the country who have been duly convicted of an appropriate crime (as officer responsible for executing the laws). The occupant of this office can also prevent the power of the sword from being applied domestically, using the powers to grant reprieves and pardons. He also wields considerable inducements by virtue of his power to appoint top government officers and make treaties. And power to recommend measures to Congress is a power of the pen. Of course, every person has the same right as the president to recommend legislation to Congress. The First Amendment protects "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." However the president's high status and other powers make it likely, to say the least, that his pen will get more attention than that of the average citizen.

Constitutional Checks on the Presidency

Most things presidents are formally authorized to do require Congressional cooperation. Appointments of military officers, judges, and many other civilian officials require majority consent of the Senate. Before ratifying a treaty he has negotiated, the president must get the consent of two-thirds of the Senate.

Power of the Senate. As Woodrow Wilson learned after World War I, the President cannot take senatorial cooperation for granted. The Senate refused to approve the Charter of the League of Nations, a multilateral treaty dear to Wilson's heart. More recently, President Carter's Panama Canal and SALT II treaties drew renewed attention to the role of senators in U.S. foreign policy.

Only eight Cabinet appointees have been rejected by the Senate. Senators have been inclined to give Cabinet appointees the benefit of the doubt. However more than 20 appointees to the Supreme Court have been rejected by one technique or another, including two during the Nixon Administration.

Powers of Congress. Both houses of Congress must consent before the President can wage a declared war, spend money from the public treasury, or make basic changes in programs established by act of Congress. Bills can be enacted over presidential veto if they secure a two-thirds vote in Senate and House.

Impeachment. The President is also limited by constitutional provisions for impeachment. Although no president has ever been removed from office by this means, impeachment must surely be one of the possible congressional reactions that the president must anticipate when deciding what to do. There have been some close calls. President Andrew Johnson was actually "impeached" (technically equivalent to being indicted) by the House, but at his trial in the Senate the vote fell one short of the two- thirds majority necessary to convict. President Nixon was about to be impeached when he resigned in 1974.

Impeachments are an interesting example of the checks and balances with which the Constitution qualifies any literal "separation" of powers. In impeachments, powers somewhat like those of courts are exercised by Congress. And when it is the president who is being impeached, the Senate "trial" is presided over, not by the vice president, but by the chief justice. (The vice president may be a political ally of the president, but also stands to gain the vacant position if the president is found guilty.) Thus, all three branches are drawn into the act. The impeachment provisions of the Constitution are not entirely clear, and during Watergate there was considerable argument over what kinds of actions are impeachable offenses. Lawyers for President Nixon, hoping to make impeachment difficult or impossible, argued that only an indictable offense--violations of specific laws for which one could be indicted and tried in the courts--could be a basis for impeachment. Others urged that misbehavior short of illegality was enough and that Congress is sole judge of what is impeachable.

In terms of association theory, it appears that the founders intended to distinguish impeachment sharply from conviction for a crime. The Constitution limits punishments imposed upon conviction in the Senate to removal from office and disqualification for future government offices. These are withdrawn inducements, not sanctions. But the Constitution goes on to say that "the party convicted [in an impeachment] shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment according to law" (Article 1, 3). Thus sanctions can be imposed too, but only after a separate trial in the ordinary courts. If impeachment itself requires an indictable offense, requiring a separate trial before sanctions can be added to withdrawn inducements would be redundant.

Powers of the Courts. The presidency is also limited by the courts, although the Constitution does not specifically mention this. If a president acts ultra vires (beyond the powers granted to him by Constitution or act of Congress), the courts clearly must put a stop to it. Thus when President Harry Truman seized the nation s steel mills during the Korean War to prevent them from being closed by a strike, the Supreme Court, ruling that neither Constitution nor act of Congress authorized him to do this, ordered the mills returned to their private owners. Footnote 8

Power of the Public. Finally, a most important constitutional limit on t he presidency is that its occupant must submit to reelection at the end of his first term. Thus, general public reactions as well as those of Congress and the courts must be considered among the side effects of every presidential decision. And the president has no control over the timing of his reelection. Unlike the British prime minister, who can call an election almost anytime, the American president must live with an inflexible calendar. He cannot wait until polls indicate his popularity is high, then get himself reelected before making necessary but unpopular decisions that will take his stock down.

Presidential Roles

Just as governments display many faces--government-as- legislator, government-as-trustee, and so forth--so too do presidents play many different roles, "wear many hats." Conventional listings of these presidential roles include:

Head of State. The president is our symbolic and ceremonial leader. He personifies the government. His role as head of state is very similar to that of the British monarch. The principal difference is that the American president combines this role with others that are placed in separate hands in England.

"State" in this sense is a higher-level abstraction than "government." Government refers to the present Administration, to people presently occupying key offices of power, to present policies. State refers to the ongoing system of which the current government is only a temporary manifestation. In England, the distinction is easier to see. "State" is not used there for the more specific purpose of referring to political subdivisions of the larger country. And in England the Queen is head of state, while the prime minister--leader of the majority party in the House of Commons--is head of government. This helps avoid confusion between their roles. The "loyal opposition" concept, absolutely essential for democracy, developed first in England because separation of the two roles made it easy to say (in effect): "Long live the Queen, but down with the prime minister!"

Loyal opposition is loyal to the Queen, as symbol of the system, but opposed to the prime minister, as head of the current government. Opposition to both would be revolution, or treason. In countries like the U.S.S.R. where no distinction is made between state and government, all opposition is regarded as treason. In the United States, the distinction is clear enough for democracy to function but confused by the combination of both roles in one person. Hence during the Watergate crisis some defenders of President Nixon regarded attacks on him as practically treasonous (he was head of state, after all) even though they were directed against his leadership of government rather than against the system of which he was ceremonial head.

Chief Executive. The president heads the "executive" branch of government, appoints its top administrators, approves or disapproves of programs not requiring congressional action. He issues many rules or "executive orders" which are binding on the conduct of executive agencies.

Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. The president appoints and removes top military officers, resolves conflicts between the different services, orders the use or show of force in domestic or foreign emergencies. Although only Congress has constitutional authority to appropriate money for the military, the president can sometimes create circumstances where Congress has little choice. Thus Theodore Roosevelt sent the naval fleet on a cruise around the world, forcing Congress to appropriate additional funds to get the ships back home. And many foreign military operations have been conducted without any declaration of war at all, including the Korean and Vietnamese wars. In both of these cases, though, Congress implicitly supported the president by continuing to appropriate money and renewing military conscription.

Chief Diplomat. The president plays this role when he attends conferences with top leaders of other countries, makes state visits abroad, or entertains foreign dignitaries making official visits to the United States. Although the dangers of summit conferences that attempt to accomplish more than dignifying agreements worked out in detailed preliminary negotiations are well-known, few recent presidents have been able to resist taking the plunge into personal diplomacy.

Chief Legislator. The main reason for this presidential role is that Congress is unable to take a coherent approach to major legislative and budgetary issues. While Congress has a large and growing staff, it cannot begin to duplicate the time and talent available to the president through his staff and that of the executive bureaucracy. While major presidential proposals are often defeated or amended beyond all recognition, they do provide a working agenda for Congress.

A second reason the president can be regarded as chief legislator is that Congress generally leaves it to the executive branch to fill in the details when it enacts laws. In terms of sheer words, much more law is written by the executive branch than by Congress. Thousands of pages of new rules having the force of law (or pseudolaw or bodre) are printed each year in the Federal Register.

Informal Presidential Roles

There are several additional, less orthodox, ways we can view presidential roles:

Contractor General. What does it mean to be an "executive"? What is the "executive function"? Conventional separation of powers theory has only vague answers for these questions. The chief legislative functions have been to enact laws (general rules of action enforceable by sanctions) and bodres (statements regarding the terms on which, and with whom, the government is willing to enter into voluntary associations). Likewise, the primary judicial function is obviously to decide specific cases on the basis of general rules. The "executive" function has never been so clearly conceived.

In terms of association theory the basic function of a chief executive is to make contracts on behalf of the government. Domestically, the president heads the agencies purchasing goods and services from private corporations. And he is ultimately responsible for hiring (and, most of the time, firing) government employees. In foreign affairs, presidential agents negotiate treaties and executive agreements with other governments. The president, in other words, is the day-to-day head of government-as-contractor. Hence, it is highly appropriate to call him the contractor general.

Chief Administrative Judge. Much of a president's actual leverage over executive agencies derives from his ability to resolve conflicts that arise among them. When interagency conflicts over jurisdiction or policies do not arise, the president is unlikely to find out what is going on. Things will be brought to his attention only if somebody wants him to do something about them. Presidents, aware of this fact, may encourage conflict among subordinates to ensure keeping themselves informed.

As chief administrative judge, the president can maximize his impact within the limited time and attention he can give to any one problem. He can remain generally above the battle but reach down occasionally to give things a little push in the direction he regards as right. His subordinates, to avoid the loss of face (or job!) that might result from getting reversed too often, will tend to anticipate his reactions and do what they think he wants. Eager subordinates may even land their chief in serious trouble, as Richard Nixon discovered. Nixon's outrage when he first heard about the bugging of Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate apartment building was quite apparently genuine. Nobody who understands how large organizations work thinks that Nixon had a personal hand in authorizing the break-in; rather, the charges were that he had tried to cover up his subordinates' involvement after the break- in was discovered.

Chief Teacher. Perhaps the most important presidential role is that of chief teacher. Not all presidents have played this role successfully, but since the development of electronic media all have played it for better or for worse. They have taught whether they intended to or not, for actions may indeed speak louder than words.

In a democracy, elected officials work within circumstances that narrowly constrain their activities. That is the whole purpose of having a democracy! But the system can have certain defects that grow out of its virtues. Public ignorance or prejudice may make it impossible for an elected official, better informed than his constituents, to do the best thing without suffering unpleasant side effects at the next election. We cannot rely on public officials to do the right thing when it will harm them personally. Indeed, the Federalist assumes that good government requires arranging things so the selfish interests of leaders will impel them to govern well. Since we cannot expect all leaders to do the right things for the right reasons, we must create circumstances--institutions, in this case--within which they will do the fight things for the wrong reasons, or serendipate.

Walter Lippmann once distinguished a politician from a statesman as follows: A politician promises to give people what they want, whether it is possible or not. If the electorate wants to have its cake and eat it too, that is exactly what he will promise. If the electorate wants increased government spending, reduced taxes, and no inflation, that is what the "politician" will promise, even though the combination is an impossible one. The "statesman," on the other hand, will frankly tell people that they cannot have everything they want, explain why this is so, and show how they can get as much as possible of what they want. The politician caters to wishful thinking; the statesman tries to reeducate people to think realistically.

The president's power of the pen represents leadership at its most basic level. The president does not just follow public opinion, but must try to mold it so as to give both himself and the Congress more scope to do the right thing. If to remain president one must do only things that he regards as idiotic, there can be no policy reasons for wanting the office. Of course, life is complex and things never are this simple. Most presidents can correctly regard occasional compromises with public opinion as a price that is worth paying. Paying a price merely recognizes that you cannot win them all, that if winning isn't everything, losing isn't anything.

However even when the price of retaining office is tolerable, a leader naturally prefers to reduce that price, and this he may be able to do by successfully playing the role of chief teacher. One immense advantage in wielding the pen does come with the job. It was summarized by President Theodore Roosevelt, who was once accused of wanting to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral: The White House is a "bully pulpit."

Extraconstitutional Powers

While the Supreme Court's reversal of Truman's steel seizure indicates that the presidential military role has never been unlimited, this role has been a rich source of powers going beyond if not against the Constitution. Abraham Lincoln set the basic precedents when he suspended the right of habeas corpus, emancipated the slaves, and spent money Congress had never appropriated during the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt ordered Japanese Americans put into "relocation" camps (concentration camps without the usual cruelty and gas chambers) during World War II and was actually upheld by the Supreme Court in one of its more dubious decisions. [Footnote 9] As commander-in- chief, presidents have sent troops into many foreign engagements without previous congressional authorization.

Presidents have also by-passed the constitutional requirement that treaties be supported by two-thirds of the Senate. "Executive agreements" have frequently been made with foreign governments on the sole authority of the president.

Unilateral efforts by presidents to expand their domestic powers have been somewhat less successful. Presidential refusals to spend money appropriated for particular purposes generally produced congressional grumbling but little action until Richard Nixon pushed his luck too far and "impounded" money on a large scale. Congress then responded with legislation explicitly limiting the executive impounding power. We might note here that impounding appropriated money is quite compatible with the president's role as contractor general. And principled arguments against impoundment are hard to come by. Claims that impoundment violates the constitutional requirement that the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed" (Article 11, 3) are farfetched, since appropriations hardly resemble laws in their more conventional sense. A constitutional mandate that presidents deliberately waste money would be hard to justify. It is doubtful whether the founders intended any such requirement to be deduced from their use of the term law in connection with appropriations: "No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law" (Article 1, 9, 7). Law here seems to be used in the procedural sense; appropriations are enacted by Congress in exactly the same way as laws. In any event, many of the people who became indignant when President Nixon impounded "social" appropriations had cheered when previous presidents impounded money appropriated to finance a new jet bomber. Attachment to political principles often seems to wax and wane depending on the issue involved.

Another mixed success has been the President's claim to an "executive privilege" against having to reveal the contents of discussions with his advisors. President Nixon's claims that he did not have to produce the Watergate tape recordings were rejected by the Supreme Court. But the Court did recognize the legitimacy of the claimed privilege under certain circumstances, and it required special lower court procedures to prevent sensitive material from being made public.

Most of the President's extraconstitutional powers, however, have been given to him quite deliberately by the Congress. Congress has created the various executive agencies that are subject, more or less, to presidential control. Congress has delegated vast legislative powers to the executive branch. And Congress appropriates the money on which executive power is based.

THE POWER OF THE PRESIDENT

The office of the presidency is invested with great formal "powers." Previous occupants have often been very powerful. However, the powers of the office are not translated automatically into real power for the person currently occupying it. The Queen of England, after all, has more legal powers than the American president yet functions almost entirely as a figurehead. It has been said that she could not refuse to sign her own death warrant if it were duly presented to her with the prime minister's countersignature. Likewise, if the person in the White House does not know how to wield his power, he may function in fact as a mere "clerk." [Footnote 10] The actual power exerted by a president, his ability to get other people to do what he wants, therefore depends not only on his considerable assets but also on how well he manages to use them.

Sources and Resources

Presidents have three chief power resources: a strategic position; vast inducements; and the weaknesses of others.

Strategic Position. The presidency places its occupant in a strong position. Elected by and responsible for the country as a whole' he can see the larger picture better than anyone else in the national government. Members of the House or Senate cannot always afford to see, or to act as if they see, where the general interest of the country lies. A president may determine that a particular military base does not benefit national defense enough to justify its costs. He may therefore try to close that base down. The senators from that state and the representative from that area, however, will invariably fight to keep it open. Their primary concern is not with the efficiency of national defense but with the local economic consequences-- loss of payrolls, decline in real estate prices--if the base is closed. Here, general awareness of the fact that the president has no local interests can be an asset, increasing his credibility relative to that of the senator or representative. The president is not always successful in these actions, but his position probably helps him quite often.

The president's general perspective can also be advantageous in dealing with the bureaucracy. Bureaucrats may be more willing to accept presidential resolutions of departmental conflicts if they are aware that the president not only has formal authority but may even be right from some larger point of view. The president's ability to see the broad picture is strengthened by the advice he can receive from top experts in any specialty. If he calls, they will come. They will often come even when no invitation has been extended. Everyone would like to improve the world by advising the president.

The president is potentially the best-informed person in the country. But he is also more than this. He is formally located on top of a vast bureaucratic machine" or collection of such machines, and works in the glare of instant publicity whenever he cares to do so. The president and his staff know, perhaps better than anybody else, which person in which organization is responsible for what, who to contact for action or information in order to avoid the "bureaucratic run-around."

The "bully pulpit" is an excellent place from which to wield the power of the pen. Virtually at will, the president can address the nation on television or call press conferences attended by hundreds of reporters. The information at his disposal gives his statements the ring of authority, and his ghostwriters can help him to express things forcefully and clearly. Best of all, when the president speaks he can do so with a single voice. The courts are afflicted with dissenting opinions. One congressman's statements are likely to be challenged by another. But the president's words stand out above the din and can be an influential and educational source of power over public opinion, over the climate within which day- to-day government decisions must be made.

Inducements. A second presidential resource is the purse placed at his disposal by the Constitution and by acts of Congress. Several thousand top executive and judicial jobs are direct presidential appointments. People wanting such jobs may be willing to pay a price-they may be willing to do what the president wants if he will do what they want. In many cases, the president can also withdraw the inducement. Judges, of course, can be removed only by impeachment proceedings in Congress. The Supreme Court has ruled that members of independent regulatory commissions, who serve for fixed terms, cannot be removed by the president merely for policy or personality reasons. [Footnote 11] Still, even commissioners and most judges may covet promotion to higher office, giving the president some leverage over them.

Although final responsibility for the budget rests with Congress, the president has great influence. Initial requests for money prepared by the various government agencies are scrutinized and pruned by the Office of Management and Budget, part of the Executive Office of the President. Decisions of the OMB can be appealed to the president in person and the final budget proposed to Congress reflects presidential adjustments of the OMB recommendations. Naturally, Congress does not go along blindly with these recommendations--if it did, the impoundment issue could arise only during presidential transitions. Still, the president's support can be worth money in the bank for an agency and he is therefore not lightly to be crossed in any overt way. Both in personnel and program decisions, therefore, the president's power of the purse is an important weapon in his struggle to get subordinates in the executive branch to follow his lead.

As head of government-as-contractor, the president also can grant or withhold favors for individuals and groups outside government. "Illegal" campaign contributions to Richard Nixon's CREEP (Committee to Reelect the President) were rewarded with increased government support prices (subsidies) to milk producers. When organizations are willing to violate pseudo- laws, perhaps even laws, to secure preferential treatment, surely they will be even more willing to cooperate with the president in legal ways.

The Weakness of Others. A third presidential power resource is the weakness and disorganization of others. Interest groups tend to balance each other's power in the long run and can form, at best, only temporary alliances on specific issues. The United Auto Workers union and the three big automobile manufacturers may cooperate against antipollution laws that will harm their industry, but they will go their own separate ways when it comes to labor legislation. Congress tends to be incoherent, finding it hard to do anything new on its own initiative. Its sheer size creates difficulties when members try to communicate with each other, and congressmen tend to cancel out each other's individual efforts. While the Supreme Court's smaller size, complete secrecy of deliberations, and freedom from periodic reelection give more actual power than Congress, it still is constrained by the need to appear, at least, to be interpreting rules rather than making them. Oddly enough, therefore, one of the most effective ways for Congress and the courts to employ their power has been to increase that of the president in areas where they expect him to use it as they wish.

Limits on the President's Power

Personal Conflicts. A president's power is effectively, if informally, limited by his own conflicting desires. Like all other mortals, he must make trade-offs among his various goals. To be sure, he may have goal X by taking action A, which he has the authority to do. But conflicting considerations, or side effects Y, may make him refrain from taking action A. President Nixon made a career of denouncing government regulation of wages and other prices. His every economic instinct must have told him to refrain from imposing wage-price controls during the high inflation of 1971. Undeniably, he had the right not to impose such controls; Congress had only authorized him to impose controls, not required it. However Nixon apparently believed that public opinion-not economically sophisticated-would welcome controls. And there was a reelection campaign coming up in a year. Nixon imposed the controls. As he presumably expected, the results were economically harmful. But as he also expected, the move was extremely popular and probably contributed to his landslide reelection in 1972. If Nixon had had fewer desires, specifically if he had not cared so much about being reelected, he would have been freer to use his power in ways that he thought correct.

Personal Ignorance. Another limit on the president's power is ignorance. As Will Rogers said once, we are all ignorant, just on different subjects. Presidents are no exception. They can master only so many facts, be aware of only so many perspectives, be acquainted with only a limited number of the fields of human knowledge. Specialization, so immensely productive in manufacturing pins, is equally indispensable for chief executives. To some extent, a president's ignorance can be overcome by consulting experts, but as Machiavelli wrote, "a prince who is without any wisdom himself, cannot be well advised." [Footnote 12] C. P. Snow, the British physicist- turned-novelist, describes in Science and Government the predicament of a technologically ignorant prime minister who gets conflicting advice from his scientists. Presidents face the same problems. Even when a president is equipped to understand certain kinds of information, he will not necessarily receive it. People occupying high positions are difficult to get through to, and their subordinates have many reasons for not bringing certain information to them.

Experience can be a great asset, but unfortunately presidents must always spend much of their first term learning their office. The job is so unique that even the other high responsibilities which all presidents have had do not provide adequate preparation. Unlike the British system, in which all new prime ministers have had many years of top level experience in the cabinet or shadow cabinet, American presidents tend to be complete novices and to surround themselves with equally inexperienced advisers. Ignorance limits what a president can do with the vast powers formally at his disposal.

Habituation. A third limit on a president's power is the diminishing returns produced by exercising powers too often. Any president calling daily press conferences would soon find the power of his pen had vanished as people began reacting with boredom to the undigestible barrage of pronouncements. French President Charles de Gaulle, a keen student of political psychology and perhaps the greatest western leader since World War II, deliberately held only two press conferences a year so they would remain real occasions.

Likewise, the powers of the purse can backfire if overemployed. Legally, the president is free to fire thousands of top officials if he dislikes them. Actually, any effort to increase his leverage by firing more than a few people would create a bad image of the president. Even removing one man, the popular General Douglas MacArthur, cost President Truman a great deal, although he may have lost less in the long run in so doing: Leaving the openly insubordinate general in his Korean command might have completely destroyed Truman's reputation among his subordinates.

Time. A fourth limit on presidential power is time. Sometimes, more elegantly, organizational theorists call this the "span of control." Like everybody else, presidents only have 24 hours a day. They can do and say just so much in this time and supervise the activities of just so many people. A president who tries to deal directly with more than the number of people who are within his span of control will spread himself too thin and lack adequate time to keep real track of any actions or subordinates. Under these circumstances the normal tendency of subordinates and organizations to go their own way is reinforced and encouraged. An aid to Franklin Roosevelt wrote:

Half of a President's suggestions, which theoretically carry the weight of orders, can be safely forgotten by a Cabinet member. And if the President asks about a suggestion a second time,.he can be told that it is being investigated. If he asks a third time, a wise cabinet officer will give him at least part of what he suggests. But only occasionally, except about the most important matters, do Presidents ever get around to asking three times. Footnote 14

A president can reduce his span of control problems by reducing the number of people with whom he deals directly. He can organize a staff, deal mainly with its members, and leave external dealings primarily to the staff. However this is a strategy that definitely has its own limits. It is all too easy for the president to become a "prisoner of the White House," a "clerk" whose staff really runs the show.

Time is also a limit on a president's power in the sense that his tenure is strictly limited. Franklin Roosevelt, who served longer than any other president, lasted only 13 years. The twenty-second Amendment, largely a reaction to Roosevelt's departure from the two-term tradition established by George Washington, now limits tenure to two terms or 10 years. This means that by the middle of a second term, people may begin discounting a president's anticipated reactions more and more. He will not be in a position to retaliate against actions he dislikes for much longer.

Finally, and perhaps most basically, a president's power is limited by the fact that his subordinates, and their subordinates, do not always see things as he does and do not want exactly the same things. They will therefore quite naturally take advantage of their many opportunities for creative insubordination or benign neglect of presidential orders.

SUMMARY

The American presidency is the most powerful single office in the country. It combines the English monarch's role as head of state with the prime minister's role as head of government. But presidents do not always get what they want. And in an extreme case Congress, via the impeachment process, can completely remove the president from office.

Although the office wields formidable formal powers, a president's actual power depends upon his skills. He may be a mere "clerk," unable to make effective use of the powers which have been given him. Always, he must keep an eye on the political side effects of his decisions. Until the beginning of his second term, the president may be greatly influenced by the peculiar electoral system by which he wishes to be reelected. Even during his second term, he can never take for granted the needed cooperation of the courts or of Congress. Perhaps more surprisingly, he cannot even count on cooperation from the bureaucrats who staff the executive departments.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. After examining the presidency, but before looking at Congress and the Supreme Court, which of these offices do you think you would prefer to occupy if you could take your pick and if you were interested in wielding maximum power over developments in the U.S.? Why?

2. To what extent was the situation described by Theodore Whyte, quoted in this chapter on page 108, due to the death of a man, and to what extent was it due to the office he happened to occupy?

3. Before President Carter was inaugurated James Reston commented approvingly that he was "clearly not going to swallow his own campaign baloney." (Toledo Blade, December 12, 1976). What does this mean, and why is it good?

4. If you were drawing up a constitution for a newly independent country (let us say for the Ukraine, which is presently part of the U.S.S.R.), would you recommend a chief executive along present American lines? Why or why not?

5. Joseph Kraft referred once to "leaders who can rally the country in times-not of danger, which is relatively easy-but of confusion." (Detroit Free Press, November 2, 1977). Which of the presidential roles might be well served by this ability, and how? Give examples. How well is the present president doing at this part of his job?

6. What arguments can you propose for and against electing the president for a single six-year term instead of two possible four-year terms?

7. Which of the formal and informal requirements to become president do you think should be retained, and which discarded? Why?

8. What do you suppose would happen if somebody like Barry Goldwater were to run against somebody like George McGovern?

9. What would be some of the advantages and disadvantages of having a hereditary monarch as chief of state in the U.S., separating that role from those of active leadership of government? How feasible might such a reform be, politically?

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Footnotes

*Theodore Whyte, The Making of the President 1964 (New York: New American Library, 1965), pp. 24-25f.

1. Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution, London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., 1888.

2. See David Easton and Robert D. Hess, "The Child's Political World," 6 Midwest Journal of Political Science (1962), pp. 229-246.

3. Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power, New York: Wiley, 1960, p. 9.

4. The Jeffersonians, enthusiastic over revolutionary France, were originally called "Republicans." Lat,", they became "Democratic Republicans" and still later "Democrats." Today's Republicans emerged as the leading rival to the Democrats in the decade prior to the Civil War.

5. Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944).

6. Don Pirie Cass, How To Win Votes and Influence Elections, Chicago: Public Administration Service, 1962, p. 2.

7. If your objective is to articulate new ideas and try to convince people to accept them, over the longer haul a third- party nomination can be an effective way of pursuing your goals.

8. Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952).

9. Korematsu v. U.S., 323 U.S. 214 (1944).

10. Neustadt, p. 6.

11. Humphrey's Executor v. US., 295 U.S. 602 (1935).

12. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, New York: Appleton-Century- Crofts, 1947, p. 70.

13. [No footnote 13]

14. Neustadt, p. 41.