Limitations on President Essay Example

Limitations on President Essay Among the specific factors which Newsstands work highlighted are Congress, the Supreme Court, the Constitution and its amendments, the federal system, mass media, pressure groups and the federal bureaucracy. Imperial presidency The term the imperial presidency gained popularity in the early sass as a consequence of Arthur Schlesinger book in 1973. Schlesinger charts the abuse of power by successive twentieth-century presidents, in particular Lyndon Johnson (1963-69) and Richard Nixon (1969-74), which was due to the growth of the US presidency since the sass. In 1964, during the Vietnam War, Congress passed an authorization, the Tonic Gulf Resolution which states that Congress approves and purports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression. This wasnt so much a power grab by Lyndon Johnson as an abdication of the power of Congress as it was a blank queue which President Johnson took as the moral and equal equivalent of a declaration of war. The president is as imperial as the Congress, the press and the public allow him to be therefore there are effective limitations on the presidents power. In the President f the united States (1990), British academic David Mervin states his belief that the concept of the imperial presidency was always something of a click as it up images of the president as an emperor, a supreme sovereign authority, a master of all he survey which is clearly not the case. We will write a custom essay sample on Limitations on President specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Limitations on President specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Limitations on President specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer In that sense the debate about the imperial presidency in US politics parallels closely the debate in the I-J about the position of the prime minister as an elective dictatorship a term coined by Lord Hails in the same decade. In Sam Athenians article in the Wall Street Journey of 27th December 2002, he illustrates some of the problems associated tit the imperial presidency debate. Athenians concludes the imperial president not a useful idea. It is an epithet, dredged up whenever a president combines strength with imagination. Presidents are, in sum, leaders not rulers which means of course, they are not imperial at all. Offices of persuasion Professor Richard Nauseated writes presidential power is he power to persuade. Where the I-J prime minister can wield real power, the US president must usually persuade: the prime minister commands; the president influences. In 2003, George W Bush proposed a $726 billion tax cut to Congress, one in which his Republicans had a charity in both Houses but the President headed out of Washington on a tour of targeted states to rally support for his proposal. The president uses formal and informal management techniques in an attempt to give their priorities an advantage in the Washington policy process. The Executive Office of the President has grown substantially since it was established in 1939, and now includes dozen separate units, including such important elements as the National Security Council, the Council of Economic Advisors and the Office of Management and Budget. These units have a role in bringing together expertise to help and support efficient administration-led policy making and implementation making it an ineffective limitation on presidential power. Tim Homes (2000) points out that the different political context within which presidential administrations operate and the electorate advantages with which an administration starts provide an individual framework of constraint on the presidential ability to persuade. Supreme Court The Supreme Court plays a vital role in checking and controlling the powers of the presidency. The court can damage a president and negate a particular activity. An example of this is shown with Roosevelt over his Court packing scheme which would eave enlarged its and curtailed the power of older members. The Supreme Court has power to argue against a bill if it is against the US Constitution. In the case of Ursula v Bush (2004), the Supreme Court ruled that the detainees at Augmentation Bay did have access to the US federal courts to challenge their detention, thereby striking down an important part of the Bush administrations legal policy regarding the war on terror. In 2005, when Bush approved unauthorized spying on US citizens after 9/1 1, the Supreme Court challenged this bill as it violated the Constitution. Charles Evans Hughes, the 1 lath Chief Justice of the Supreme Court once said, We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the Judges say it is. Since Mammary v Madison 1803 established the doctrine of Judicial review, the Supreme Court has been able to limit presidential powers by shaping the parameters of the Constitution to bring about social and legal change. The Supreme Court is effective in limiting the presidents powers as it is expected to be a Judicial body which is politically impartial and which must attempt to transcend passing political passions an uphold the eternal values of the Constitution. In the spirit of the British constitution, the premiership is undergoing change through the force of practice and convention. The result is of pure derivative of institutional authority or established arrangements of power so much as a qualitative shift in form and interior substance that transcends the formal infrastructure of Britains political system. In the I-J, the Courts are able to limit the powers of the prime minister through Judicial review. However the absence of a codified constitution makes Judicial review not so far-reaching. In particular, edges cannot overturn Acts of Parliament because of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. Nevertheless they can determine the lawfulness of actions that are carries out on the basis of delegated legislation. This can be seen as an ineffective limitation on the presidency as some Presidents have the opportunity to elect new judges if a vacancy arises. Although the Supreme Court was able to limit Bushs power with regards to spying on US citizens, he was given the opportunity to elect 2 Republican Justices. Congress The president needs congressional support, and in the more assertive mood of Congress in recent years incumbents have found this difficult to achieve even with their own party in Control. Faced by hostility from Congress, Bush and Clinton in his last 6 years had difficulties in carrying out aspects of their programmer, resulting in gridlock, a situation in which the two branches of government were locked inch conflict. The tendency of Congress to appoint special prosecutors to probe every aspect of a presidents affairs, and the relentless media interest which this creates, have paralyzing impact on presidential policy. Investigations drag on, seemingly for artisan reasons, and there is always the ultimate borrow of the threat of impeachment. Although the case against Clinton originated in a sexual harassment case concerning Paula Jones, he east impeached as Silicons answers regarding his relationship with Monica Leninism, a former White House intern, were untruthful and the perjury involved enabled the Republican persecutor, Kenneth Starr, to recommend that President Clinton should be impeached in 1999. Four articles of impeachment were laid down before the House Judiciary Committee which in December 1998 voted to approve further action on all of them namely; Article 1 hearing perjury before Ken Stars federal grand Jury, Article 2 charging perjury in the Paula Jones deposition, Article 3 charging obstruction of Justice in the Paula Jones case and article 4 charging failure to respond to the 81 questions posed by the House Judicial Committee during the impeachment inquiry. Congress is an effective limitation on the presidency and powers vested within it as Congress function of oversight of the executive branch and has powers to subpoena documents and testimony, hold individuals in contempt if they fail to comply with Congresss demands. However unlike in the British Parliament, the executive is not present so there is no opportunity for Question Time in Congress. It is only in the committee rooms where members of the executive branch can be questioned so despite the whole of the executive branch being limited by Congress, limitations on the resident himself and his powers. The US Congress has more of difficult role in limiting the powers of the president and calling him to account than Parliament has simply because the executive branch arent members of the legislature as seen in the I-J. Federal bureaucracy Although the president has plenty of constitutional authority, he is limited by the federal bureaucracy. The federal bureaucracy has three principle functions, executing laws, creating rules and adjudication. The constitution states in Article 2 section that the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed and is the main reason why the president needs the federal bureaucracy. No modern president seems to have been able to stop and tame the bureaucracy, as a result the majority of the agencies created since the sass have survived intact into the twenty- first century. American writers burns et al make a series of fair observations when they write of one of the persisting paradoxes of the American presidency On the one hand, the institution is too powerful, and on the other, it is always too weak. It is too strong because in many ways it is contrary to the ideals of government by the people and decentralization of power. It is too weak because presidents seldom are able to keep the promises they make. The president is limited by the federal bureaucracy as it is the federal bureaucracy who are required to write the specific rules that decide how the laws will be executed. When compared to the I-J, the civil servants are in control, serving any government impartially, whatever its political complexion. They must carry out decision with which they personally may disagree and not involve themselves in any partisan activity. The issue regarding the federal bureaucracy is problematic as the problem of management and control of bureaucracies has become a central issue of modern democratic government. In addition, the federal bureaucracy is said to be insufficient especially due to the response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to hurricanes Strain and Rata in 2005. Pressure groups Presidency groups can mobiles public opinion either for or against the president himself or his policies. President Clinton experience this in 1993-93 over his proposed healthcare reforms. The Health Insurance Association of American that aired the highly effective series of Harry and Louise commercials which went a long way to skippering the Presidents proposals by turning public opinion against them. Edward Achebe and Engel Seafood (1999) identified another close link between producer groups and the executive branch. Pressure groups are an effective limit n the presidents powers as they are able to use their representative function to ensure the president doesnt abuse his powers. Interest groups remain a powerful force in American politics as they continue to organize and represent significant sections of the community. As a result, they will continue to have a privileged claim on the attention of the executive branch and the president himself. In the I-J, pressure groups seek to influence and limit the power of the prime minister as they are the heart of the core executive which develop and make government policy. However pressure groups are ineffective as they priorities the need to shape the content of public policy. This was demonstrated with the National Farmers Union which works with the Department for Rural Affairs in implementing policies related to farm subsidies, disease control and animal welfare. Problems arise with pressure groups as they can be seen as being incompatible with a pluralist society where political resources and access to government are spread widely in the hands of many diverse groups. Pressure groups are fostering an elitist view of society in which lattice resources are in the hands of few not many. Media Administrations have taken media relations seriously for many years. Before the advent of the electronic media, successive presidential administrations had on occasion suffered from adversarial press coverage, and benefited from supportive reporting. What the media reports and say can have a profound limit to what presidents can do. President Theodore Roosevelt was an active campaigner for his policies, and believed that press dissemination of his energetic and well-structured speeches could act to maintain his proposals high on the public agenda, even to the extent of appealing directly to the public in an attempt to influence the congressional receptiveness to presidential initiatives. Newsstands analysis is central to the scholarship of the presidency, but it is not universally accepted. Among the dissenters, Charles O. Jones 1994, similarly accepts that the presidents authority is limited but Jones is not convinced by Newsstands argument that the resources exist whereby the system can in practice be adapted to become presidency-centered. This alternative to the Nauseated view points out the presidents media centrality is a result f recent developments in the communications industry, rather than the consequence of presidential actions, and argues that focusing in the president as the pivot of American government ignores the more complex reality of how American government operates. This indicates an individual level of constraint on the presidents powers. The media is an effective limit on presidential power as it assists with the success of a policy campaign. Success of this kind has proved a valuable asset in the longer term by enhancing an administrations reputation for influencing public opinion and political outcomes. In comparison, the media in the UK is becoming more critical of politicians. This was evident in battles between the Blair government and the BBC over allegations that, in the run-up to the Iraq War, the government had sexed up a dossier emphasizing the military threat posed by Iraq to the I-J. The medias coverage of politics has become more difficult for prime ministers to manage due to a tendency to hype, blurring if facts and interpretation and television increasingly following print media in its style of political and current affairs coverage. In British politics, Estelle Morris seemed like a misfit because she acted as a normal human being. When eccentrics are put in charge of a set of institutions, they will obviously modify their behavior to some extent; but they are likely to cause far more modification to the institution they inherit. Robbers arise as the presidency has not only an advantage in attracting media attention but that it also applies considerable resources to spin that attention to its greatest advantage. For all the work that goes into maintaining and developing the presidents media centrality this cannot be counted on always to offer the same potential and there are indications that media coverage of hard news, political news and the presidency itself has declined in recent years. Conclusion To conclude, there are very effective limitations on the presidents powers as the Founding Fathers intended whilst writing the US Constitution. Effective limitations include the other branches of government, Judiciary and legislature, due to their effective checks and balances on the executive branch in avoiding a tyrannical government. In addition, the media has proven an effective limitation s their role in providing vital information does influence public opinion and affect political outcomes as well as the presidents reputation. Other constraints include pressure groups and offices of persuasion however due to their person agendas limiting presidential power is not a priority resulting in effective constraints by these administrations. Lastly, the idea of an imperial president can be disregarded as the president is as imperial as his constraints allow him to be. Mark Garnett argues in comparison that the unconfined I-J constitution gives too much power to the Prime Minister and that the 2003 reshuffle underlined this problem rather than tackle it.