The Presidency

Who Can Become President? Article 2, section 1
Most presidents have been much older than that when they assumed office.
John F. Kennedy, at the age of forty-three, was the youngest elected president,
the oldest was Ronald Reagan, at age sixty-nine.
The average age at inauguration has been fifty-four.
In elections when more than two candidates were running for office, many presidential candidates have won with less than 50 percent of the total popular votes cast for all candidates
There has clearly been a demographic bias in the selection of presidents.

The Many Roles of the President
chief of state
chief executive
commander in chief
chief diplomat
chief legislator

Chief of State
Every nation has at least one person who is the ceremonial head of state.
In France, the prime minister is the chief executive, and the chief of state is the president.
According to William Howard Taft, as chief of state the president symbolizes the "dignity and majesty" of the American people.
Advantages to being chief of state
tremendous public exposure
important asset in a campaign for reelection.

Chief Executive
"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. . . .
[H]e may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices . . . and
he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . Officers of the United States. . . .
[H]e shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." constitutionally bound to enforce the acts of Congress, the judgments of federal courts, and treaties signed by the United States.

The Powers of Appointment and Removal
To assist in the various tasks of the chief executive, the president has a federal bureaucracy
currently consists of about 2.8 million federal civilian employees.
most government positions are filled by civil service employees.
president has appointment power ,
most of the 2.8 million federal employees owe no political allegiance to the president.
The president's power to remove from office officials is not explicitly granted by the Constitution and has been limited.

The Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons
the president the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States
except in cases of impeachment.
pardons are granted to remedy a mistake made in a conviction.

Commander in Chief
The president, according to the Constitution, "shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States."
the armed forces are under civilian, rather than military, control.
The President has the "football"—a briefcase filled with all the codes necessary to order a nuclear attack. Only the president has the power to order the use of nuclear force.
As commander in chief, the president has probably exercised more authority than in any other role.

1973 Congress passed the War Powers Resolution
Overruled President Nixon's veto, requiring that the president consult with Congress when sending American forces into action.
Once troops are sent, the president must report to Congress within forty-eight hours.
Unless Congress approves the use of troops within sixty days or extends the sixty-day time limit, the forces must be withdrawn
These powers are linked closely to the president's powers as chief diplomat, or chief crafter of foreign policy.

Near Treaties
Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, of the Constitution requires that any treaty signed by the president be ratified by a two-thirds favorable vote in the Senate to become effective.
President Clinton found a way around this constitutional requirement, according to his critics, by calling what are essentially treaties by some other name.
For example, an agreement signed by the president that gives Russia a voice in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) decisions whenever such decisions bear on the national security of Russia was called a "founding act" instead of a treaty.
Other agreements were titled "political agreements" or "memorandums of understanding."
By not calling these agreements treaties, the president was able to avoid the necessity of asking the Senate for its advice and consent.

Chief Diplomat
An important power of the president as chief diplomat is that of diplomatic recognition, or the power to recognize—or refuse to recognize—foreign governments.
In modern times, the simple act of receiving a foreign diplomat has been equivalent to accrediting the diplomat and officially recognizing his or her government.
The president has the sole power to negotiate treaties with other nations.
These treaties must be presented to the Senate, where they may be modified and must be approved by a two-thirds vote.
After ratification, the president can approve the senatorial version of the treaty.
Approval poses a problem when the Senate has tacked on substantive amendments or reservations to a treaty, particularly when such changes may require reopening negotiations with the other signatory governments.
Sometimes a president may decide to withdraw a treaty if the senatorial changes are too extensive
as Woodrow Wilson did with the Versailles Treaty in 1919.

Executive Agreements.
Presidential power in foreign affairs is enhanced greatly by the use of executive agreements made between the president and other heads of state
A binding international agreement made between chiefs of state that does not require legislative sanction.
Such agreements do not require Senate approval, although the House and Senate may refuse to appropriate the funds necessary to implement them.
Whereas treaties are binding on all succeeding administrations, executive agreements are not binding without each new president's consent.
There have been far more executive agreements (about 9,000) than treaties (about 1,300).
Many executive agreements contain secret provisions calling for American military assistance or other support.

Chief Legislator
Constitutionally, presidents must recommend to Congress legislation that they judge necessary and expedient.
Not all presidents have wielded their powers as chief legislator in the same manner.
In the president's annual State of the Union message, which is required by the Constitution (Article II, Section 3) and is usually given in late January shortly after Congress reconvenes, the president as chief legislator presents his program

Getting Legislation Passed.
The president can propose legislation. Congress, however, is not required to pass any of the administration's bills.
With power of persuasion, the president writes to, telephones, and meets with various congressional leaders; makes public announcements to force the weight of public opinion onto Congress in favor of a legislative program;
To be sure, a president whose party represents a majority in both chambers of Congress may have an easier time getting legislation passed than does a president who faces a hostile Congress.
But one of the ways in which a president who faces a hostile Congress still can wield power is through the ability to veto legislation.
Every bill passed by the House and the Senate be sent to the president before it becomes law, the president must act on each bill:
If the bill is signed, it becomes law.
If the bill is not signed
It is sent back to Congress after ten congressional working days, it becomes law without the president's signature.
The president can reject the bill and send it back to Congress with a veto message setting forth objections.
Congress then can change the bill, hoping to secure presidential approval and repass it.
Or it can simply reject the president's objections by overriding the veto with a two-thirds roll-call vote of the members present in each house.
If the president refuses to sign the bill and Congress adjourns within ten working days after the bill has been submitted to the president, the bill is killed for that session of Congress. This is called a pocket veto.
If Congress wishes the bill to be reconsidered, the bill must be reintroduced during the following session.
The total number of vetoes from George Washington through Bill Clinton's eighth year in office was 2,513,
Two-thirds of those vetoes being exercised by Grover Cleveland, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower.

Line-Item Veto
Ronald Reagan lobbied strenuously for Congress to give another tool to the president
the line-item veto, the ability to veto specific spending provisions of legislation
In 1996, Congress passed a law providing for the line-item veto.
President Clinton used the line-item veto on several occasions
The act also was challenged in court as an unconstitutional delegation of legislative powers to the executive branch.
In 1998, by a six-to-three vote, the United States Supreme Court agreed and overturned the act.
The Court stated, "there is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the president to enact, to amend or to repeal statutes."

Other Presidential Powers
Expressed Powers and inherent powers
Statutory and Constitutional powers
Congress has established by law, or statute, numerous other presidential powers—such as the ability to declare national emergencies. These are called statutory powers.
Presidents also have what have come to be known as inherent powers.
These depend on the loosely worded statement in the Constitution that "the executive Power shall be vested in a President" and that the president should "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."
The most common example of inherent powers are those emergency powers invoked by the president during wartime.
Franklin Roosevelt used his inherent powers to move the Japanese living in the United States into internment camps for the duration of World War II.

The President as Party Chief
Presidents are by no means above political partisanship, and one of their many roles is that of chief of party.
Although the Constitution says nothing about the function of the president within a political party
As party leader, the president
chooses the national committee chairperson and
can try to discipline party members who fail to support presidential policies.
One way of exerting political power within the party is by patronage , appointing individuals to government or public jobs.
Perhaps the most important role that the president played for his party in the late 1990s and early 2000s was that of fund-raiser.
The president may agree to campaign for a particular program or for a particular candidate.

Special Uses of Presidential Power
Presidents have at their disposal a variety of special powers and privileges not available in other branches of the U.S. government.
These include
(1) emergency powers
(2) executive orders
(3) executive privilege
(4) signing statements and, until relatively recently
(5) impoundment of funds.

Emergency Powers
The emergency powers of the president were first enunciated in the Supreme Court's decision
In that case, President Franklin Roosevelt, without authorization by Congress, ordered an embargo on the shipment of weapons to two warring South American countries.
Abraham Lincoln's suspension of civil liberties at the beginning of the Civil War (1861 - 1865),
President Harry Truman authorized the federal seizure of steel plants and their operation by the national government in 1952 during the Korean War
The Supreme Court did not agree, holding that the president had no authority under the Constitution to seize private property or to legislate such action.

Executive Orders
Congress allows the president (as well as administrative agencies) to issue executive orders that have the force of law.
These executive orders can do the following:
(1) enforce legislative statutes,
(2) enforce the Constitution or treaties with foreign nations, and
(3) establish or modify rules and practices of executive administrative agencies.
The only apparent requirement is that under the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, all executive orders must be published in the Federal Register, a daily publication of the U.S. government.
Executive orders have been used to establish some procedures for appointing non-career administrators,
to implement national affirmative action regulations,
to restructure the White House bureaucracy, to ration consumer goods and
to administer wage and price controls under emergency conditions,
to classify government information as secret, and
to regulate the export of restricted items.
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/

Executive Privilege
Another inherent executive power that has been claimed by presidents concerns the ability of the president and the president's executive officials to refuse to appear before, or to withhold information from, Congress or the courts.
This is called executive privilege, and it relies on the constitutional separation of powers for its basis.
Limits to executive privilege went untested until the Watergate affair in the early 1970s.
In 1974, in one of the Supreme Court's most famous cases, United States v. Nixon, (Note 16) the justices unanimously ruled that Nixon had to hand over the tapes to the Court

Impoundment of Funds
There is no provision in the Constitution that requires the president, as chief executive, to spend all of the funds appropriated by Congress, and many presidents prior to the 1970s did not do so.
As part of its Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Congress required that the president spend all appropriated funds, although Congress gave the president some leeway.
The Supreme Court in 1975 unanimously ruled that the president had to spend money appropriated by Congress because of his constitutional obligation to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

Abuses of Executive Power and Impeachment
Articles I and II of the Constitution authorize the House and Senate to remove the president, the vice president, or other civil officers of the United States for crimes of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
The impeachment process
Begins in the House, which impeaches (accuses) the federal officer involved.
If the House votes to impeach the officer, it draws up articles of impeachment and submits them to the Senate.
Senate conducts the actual trial.

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The Presidency

by David Osman on Nov 17, 2009

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The Presidency — Presentation Transcript