The most important change in the presidency in recent decades is the increasing White House control of domestic rulemaking activity by administrative agencies.
If you asked Americans how the institutional Presidency has changed most in the last 30 years, the overwhelming majority would probably be clueless. This has less to do with Americans’ low levels of civic knowledge generally than the obscurity of this particular development and its seeming lack of drama.
Delegated powers: powers granted by Congress to help the president fulfill his duties Inherent powers: powers inherent in the president’s power as chief of the executive branch Constitutional and delegated powers make up the expressed powers because these powers are clearly outlined in the Constitution.
And, of course, the President is the President. By virtue of his office and his personal influence, what he says always carries great weight. But that lawyer would have added a crucial final point: The President cannot actually order administrative agencies to issue the precise rules and regulations he wants.
Our Republican Presidents – President Reagan to some degree and, most especially, both Presidents Bush – regarded the system as a logical outgrowth of the theory of the “unitary executive.”. Under this theory, the conventional legal understanding just described is wrong.
The Clinton Administration did not adhere to this constitutional theory, but it embraced its operational equivalent. It interpreted all of Congress’s regulatory statutes, except those directed at independent agencies, as approving the presidential direction of rulemaking activity.
But that lawyer would have added a crucial final point: The President cannot actually order administrative agencies to issue the precise rules and regulations he wants.
In exercising discretion, no sensible agency will be oblivious to the President’s policy agenda. But the decision of how best to exercise agency judgment remains with the head of the agency, not the President. That means the President may fire an agency head if he is disappointed too often, but he cannot insist beforehand ...
To be successful, a president must be a strong leader, someone who successfully engages in statecraft, the combination of power and wisdom in service of the public good. Scholars have long studied the art of statecraft and have debated what it takes for a president to be successful. Stagecraft always includes the following traits: 1 Political skill: the ability to persuade, cajole, or coerce people 2 Prudence: the ability to apply general principles to specific situations in a successful manner 3 Opportunity: the ability to behave in decisive and meaningful ways
Constitutional and delegated powers make up the expressed powers because these powers are clearly outlined in the Constitution. Presidents have interpreted inherent powers differently, sometimes in ways that grant the president great power.
Emergency Powers . The most common inherent powers are emergency powers , exercised only in times of great need. Some emergency powers are limited in scope. The president can declare a place devastated by a storm a federal disaster area, making it eligible for federal aid. Other emergency powers are much vaster in scope.
Other emergency powers are much vaster in scope. During the Civil War, for example, President Abraham Lincoln spent money without congressional approval, and he also suspended a number of civil liberties, including the writ of habeas corpus.
Executive privilege is an inherent power that is not clearly defined, and the courts have had to set limitations on the use of the privilege. In 1974, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that executive privilege could not be invoked to prevent evidence from being used in criminal proceedings against the president.
If the president abuses power, the House of Representatives can impeach him, or formally charge him of committing crimes severe enough to call for removal from office. The Senate then tries the impeached president to determine whether he is innocent or guilty of the charges. If convicted, the president is removed from office.
Portraying strength and confidence can be a successful strategy, but it can also backfire because a president who appears too successful may get blamed later for anything that goes wrong. Previous section The President’s Roles Next section The President and the Public.
If the Presidency has changed in a fundamental way, it has been because of Congressional decisions to shift legislative power to the executive branch. Given the shift of legislative power to the executive branch, the Presidential appointment process becomes a crucial instrument for policy making.
If there is such a thing as a “modern Presidency”– a Presidency that is, as a political institution, fundamentally different from the Presidency created by the Constitution — it is rooted in a change in the form of law, at both the Constitutional and statutory level.
According to the first perspective– probably the dominant perspective in political science– the Constitution explains relatively little about the Presidency today, because the Presidency has changed over time.
The Presidency of today is a consequence of institutional development from a Congress-centered form of government to an executive-centered form of government. In contrast, the theory of the “energetic executive” suggests that executive power must be left undefined, because to a great extent it cannot be defined.
“Presidential” or “executive” discretion refers to the idea that Presidents must, in some circumstances and in some ways, choose not to enforce laws as part of their executive duties. We now turn to an issue even more controversial: the question of whether executive power includes the power to go “beyond the law,” to violate the statutes created by Congress or even the Constitution itself, in situations of dire emergency. This power is sometime referred to as “prerogative power.”
The most significant quantitative change relevant to the Presidency is the expansion of federal jurisdiction (e.g.the view that the commerce clause encompasses “the economy” and anything that affects “the economy”) and thus the expansion of federal law, which creates an unavoidable problem for the President.
Executive power involves aspects of politics that cannot always be reduced to the creation or enforcement of general rules. Executive power addresses the extraordinary, the unexpected, and the unforeseeable, and as a consequence, the executive power of the Presidency cannot be constrained by precise legal definitions.