PS 201 Introduction to US Politics
Joseph Boland Fall, 1998


The Presidency Lecture Notes

 

  1. The Presidency as an institution; the President as symbol, moral leader and historical actor
    1. The Presidency is an institution grounded in the sparse language of the Constitution that war and industrialization have transformed into a vast bureaucracy and and what has often been, in the 20th century, the most powerful branch of national government. But the President is also a symbol of the nation itself, representative of the whole because the only person elected by the whole of the citizenry. And the President is frequently looked to for-and frequently asserts-moral leadership. Finally, the President is a human being, often one of extraordinary ambition, sometimes also of extraordinary vision and ability, who may occasionally transform the nation while serving it.
    2. Understanding the Presidency thus requires us to explore how its different dimensions are interrelated, and how each figures in the President's relations with the other branches of government and with the nation.
  2. Can the Presidency be a popular democratic institution, and if so how?
    1. As the text points-out, the idea of a strong president was a fixture of Federalist thought. The Federalists wanted a strong national government to overcome the tendencies toward fragmentation in the Confederacy. Executive power was, for them, both an essential limitation of the powers of the legislative branch and a requirement for both national defense and sound administration. Some, such as Hamilton, looked upon the President not only as the ultimate embodiment of the unity of the nation but as the ultimate defense against factional divisions within it:
      1. "Energy in the executive ... is essential ... to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy" (Hamilton [1788] 1993, 346).
    2. The Anti-Federalists, in contrast, were wary of the powers vested in the executive, with its monarchical overtones. Fearful of tyranny, they wished to keep government close to the people rather than invest power in an office distant from them. "In America," said Tom Paine, "the law is king."
    3. Thus at the inception of the republic, the lines seemed clearly drawn between elite democratic supporters of the Presidency and popular democratic opponents.
    4. Yet in the intervening two centuries those lines blurred. Two examples of how:
      1. Lincoln, the greatest and most powerful president of the 19th century, earned his greatness by his refusal to abandon either liberty or union. If he was slow to abolish slavery, this reflected the tension between his long held conviction that slavery was immoral and his reluctance to overstep what he saw as the democratic bounds of his authority. As the great black leader Frederick Douglass put it in a eulogy to Lincoln:
        1. "Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined" (quoted in Miroff 1993, 120).
        2. At the same time, Lincoln was reviled by some as a dictator. He acted upon a personal interpretation of the "broader powers conferred by the Constitution in cases of insurrection" to conscript an army without Congressional authorization; suppress opposition newspapers; and suspend the writ of habeas corpus and supervise the arrests, without due process of law, of thousands of opponents of the war. Lincoln confronted a genuine national crisis, and his violations of civil liberties were aimed at real threats of disloyal action rather than expressions of political dissent. Nevertheless, it established a precedent that later presidents used with far less justification, often for more politically repressive ends (e.g., Wilson's persecution of radicals during and after World War I; Roosevelt's internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II) (Rogin 1987, 82-83; Miroff 1993, 112-113).
      2. And in the 20th century some presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt foremost among them, became agents of social reform, sometimes in the face of determined opposition by powerful elite economic and political interests.
        1. Roosevelt resurrected a language of neighborliness, mutual care and interdependence that the self-seeking materialism of the twenties had half-buried. In doing so he appealed to both the Christian and pioneer roots of the country. Yet in trying to solve the problems of the Great Depression, and later in prosecuting the war, he helped create those elements of the modern presidency that often seem inimical to democracy:
          1. the intermarriage of an expanded federal bureaucracy and interest groups;
          2. the national security state;
          3. and the concentration of economic power, which was given a huge boost by World War II.
      3. We are led to ask, then, not whether the Presidency is inherently democratic or elitist, but how has it sometimes, and how might it again, serve democratic ends.
  3. Constitutional foundations and contemporary realities
    1. None of the framers of the Constitution, even those who might approve of the modern presidency, could have foreseen the form it takes today.
      1. They made the president "commander in chief", though the framers anticipated neither the existence of a large standing army nor the practice of using it without a formal declaration of war.
        1. Yet in 1994, President Clinton commanded armed forces consisting of 1.8 million men and women in uniform, 909 domestic and 309 foreign military bases, and about 20,000 deliverable nuclear weapons.
        2. And he has used armed force, as in the recent attack on sites in the Sudan and Afghanistan reputedly used by terrorists, without a declaration of war or any other Congressional authorization.
      2. They empowered the president to "require the opinion in writing" of department heads, but said nothing about the huge federal bureaucracy that has evolved;
        1. Now, the President presides over a budget of over $1.5 trillion in annual expenditures;
        2. Manages a federal establishment that employes approximately 3 million civilians; and
        3. directly oversees over 1600 individuals employed in the Executive Office of the President.
          1. See table, "Executive Office of the President".
      3. They allowed the president to "recommend ... such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient" to Congress, without anticipating that these proposals would come to dominate the legislative agenda.
      4. Nor might they have expected the great increase in the use of the veto power:
        1. See chart, "Growth in Presidential Use of the Veto Power".
      5. Or the growing role of the President as mobilizer of public opinion, educator of the public, and 'preacher' of the sacred value of America's civil religion.
        1. See chart, "Growth in Presidential Speech-Making" (not available online).
    2. In contrast, when George Washington took office:
      1. The budget for his entire first term was $4 million;
      2. There were only a handful of federal employees (and only 300 even by 1801);
        1. For example, the Department of State consisted of 8 individuals.
      3. The armed forces numbered 700.
    3. Despite this, the Constitution's sparse language on the presidency has proven malleable enough to authorize the powers of the modern president.
  4. The modern presidency as a 20th century institution
    1. The presidency familiar to us did not exist before the 20th century. With a few exceptions, the most important of them being Lincoln, 19th century presidents did not dominate the political life of the nation. Indeed, the national government as a whole was far less powerful and pervasive than it is now. One historian summed up the post-Civil War national government as follows:
      1. "The government in Washington was responsible for delivering the mails, for maintaining a national military, for conducting foreign policy, and for collecting tariffs and taxes. It had few other responsibilities and few institutions with which it could have undertaken additional responsibilities even if it had chosen to do so" (Brinkley 1997, 538).
      2. There were two compelling reasons for this.
        1. Before the Civil War the volatile nature of North-South differences over slavery made it necessary for President's, as symbols of national unity, to avoid speaking publicly about the most important issue facing the nation.
        2. After the Civil War industrialization and its social effects became the overriding issue. Yet the laissez-faire orthodoxy of the time said that economic and social regulation was a violation of the private nature of the economy and would be ineffectual to boot.
      3. Nevertheless, this minimalist view of the 19th century presidency requires qualification:
        1. Presidents throughout the 19th century were actively involved in expanding the American empire. Jefferson acquired the Louisiana Purchase from France. The Monroe Doctrine proclaimed the U.S. protector of the "American continents"-and thus also the predominant power. Andrew Jackson expelled the Cherokees from Georgia. James Polk started a war with Mexico in 1946 in order to seize land stretching from Texas to California. William McKinley launched a war with Spain in 1898 that led to the annexation of Puerto Rico and the Philipines (followed by a brutal and now little-known war against an indigenous independence movement). McKinley also approved the annexation of Hawaii, which had earlier been seized by a cabal of sugar plantation owners. And throughout most of the century, American presidents were in charge of the military campaigns against Native Americans in the west.
        2. Reconstruction in the post-Civil War South was a presidential responsibility both militarily and administratively, although the first president to bear this responsibility, Andrew Johnson, opposed it.
    2. The 20th century transformation
      1. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1908), the institution of the presidency was transformed:
        1. He began the construction of regulatory government with the Pure Food and Drug Act, the Meat Inspection Act, and the Hepburn Railroad Regulation Act.
        2. He used his executive powers aggressively to establish the national forests and a network of national parks. He also initiated the practice of federal water projects in the West-dams, reservoirs, irrigation districts, and later hydroelectric development.
      2. Woodrow Wilson expanded the national government's role in economic regulation with the Federal Reserve Act and the first serious attempts to deal with monopolies: the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act. He also supported laws designed to end child labor.
        1. Wilson also oversaw the enormous increase in the federal budget during WWI. Annual budgets before the war seldom exceeded $1 billion; the total cost of the war was at least $32 billion. In addition, the executive branch conducted a massive effort to rationalize the economy through the War Industries Board (WIB).
      3. FDR and the New Deal. During the monumental presidency of FDR the social welfare state and the national security state were born. Some highlights:
        1. Social welfare and economic regulation:
          1. Agricultural Adjustment Act-price controls on agricultural commodities via regulation of acreage planted.
          2. Rural Electrification Administration-utility cooperatives to bring electricity to rural areas.
          3. Tennessee Valley Authority-development of the region through dams for flood control, navigation, and electric power.
          4. Works programs: Civil Works Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, Works Progress Administration.
          5. Farm and homeowner relief: Farm Credit Administration, Homeowners Loan Corporation, Federal Housing Administration.
          6. Labor: Wagner Act.
          7. Social Security, which included
            1. the old age pension system
            2. unemployment insurance
            3. aid to the disabled
            4. aid to dependent children - the precursor of AFDC.
        2. National security:
          1. The Manhattan Project
          2. Internment of Japanese-Americans
          3. Huge military-induced expansion of the federal budget-from $9 billion in 1939 to $100 billion in 1945 (GNP increased from $91 billion to $166 billion in the same period-roughly 13% annual growth).
            1. Tremendous boost to economic concentration, as military contracts were heavily tilted in favor of large corporations.
  5. The contemporary Presidency-imperial, imprisoned, or both?
    1. Every president inherits a set of problems and possibilities born of the nation's past development. Recent presidents have had to grapple with: the aftershocks of America's defeat in the Vietnam War, increasing social polarization, the emergence of a post-Cold War multipolar world, a deepening global environmental crisis, and multifaceted processes of globalization.
    2. One view of the presidency from Reagan to Clinton is that it is both imperial and imprisoned.
      1. It is imperial insofar as each administration has demonstrated its commitment to continuing the very high levels of military expenditure of the Cold War and to the use of military force, often unilaterally, throughout the world in defense of what are claimed to be American interests and values. Military might continues to be a lynchpin of American global power and sets it apart from all potential rivals.
      2. But presidential power is imprisoned because the latitude available to presidents has shrunk, for at least three reasons:
        1. economic globalization has made the president-and the national government in general-even more vulnerable to the "privileged position of business", a point made about Clinton in the text p316.
        2. The power of the military-industrial makes it difficult, if not impossible, for a president to promote reduced military expenditures as a means to cut taxes, reduce deficits, or fund social and environmental programs. This power is economic (based on the role of military expenditures in stabilizing the economy), political (based on a loose alliance or convergence of interests among the Pentagon, military contractors, and conservative politicians); and ideological (based on the idea of America as global defender of freedom, on a long tradition of militarism, and on a fear of "demonic" forces in the world-once communism, now terrorism).
        3. Declining voter turnout has denied all recent presidents, whatever they may wish to claim or believe, the kind of broad popular mandate that might allow them to promote democratic policies in the face of entrenched private interests.

References

Hamilton, Alexander. [1788] 1993. The Federalist LXX. In The Debate on the Constitution, Part Two, edited by Bernard Bailyn. New York: The Library of America.

Miroff, Bruce. 1993. Icons of Democracy: American Leaders as Heroes, Aristocrats, Dissenters, and Democrats. New York: Basic Books.

Rogin, Ronald. 1987. Ronald Reagan, the movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology. Berkeley: University of California Press.