Few Formal Executive Powers - Skidmore College

Few Formal Executive Powers

• Administrative head of government

• Commander-in-Chief of military

• Veto (or sign) legislation

• Nominate judges, cabinet secretaries

• Treaties, pardons, convene Congress

Modern Presidency

FDR’s Legacy

– Wins World War II– Ends the Great Depression– Ends economic insecurity with Social Security– Fights for working man (unions, minimum wage)– Reduces agricultural poverty (farm supports)

The Modern PresidencyWWII onward

The FDR Standard (1932-45)

• Emphasis on leadership & bully pulpit• National problems• New role for federal government• President as active leader• Welfare state• Expanded executive branch (budget)

Paradox of the Modern Presidency

• President is #1– Increased expectations of presidency– Increased staff, resources– Shift in quality and quantity of attention paid to

president – Chief policy-maker

• BUT– No change in formal powers!

New American President--Power of Clark Kent

--Expectations of Superman

• “I loved my previous life. I had so many things going,” Trump told Reuters in an interview. “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”

• GOP Sens. Richard Burr (N.C.) and Susan Collins (Maine) joined 48 members of the Democratic caucus in voting against bringing up the bill.

• "My belief ... is that it's the job of Congress to comb through these accounts and that's what we do on the appropriations committee," Collins said.

• A Burr aide said the North Carolina senator voted "no" on moving forward with the package because he couldn't get a promise that his amendment addressing cuts to the Land and Water Conservation Fund would receive a vote.

The Ambitious Trump Education Agenda

• “President Trump is committed to reducing the federal footprint in education, and that is reflected in this budget.” DeVos

• Cut Education Department funding by $9 billion — about 13 percent.

• Eliminate money for after-school programs for needy youth

• Cut Opportunity Program helps low-income students go to college Spend $1 billion to promote charter schools, magnet schools and private school vouchers.

• Major cuts to the Office for Civil Rights.

• As tax cuts create new jobs, let us invest in workforce development and job training. Let us open great vocational schools so our future workers can learn a craft and realize their full potential.”

•• $610 million in new funding for Head

Start.• Eliminate the $732 million Federal

Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant? D + R add $107 million

• Trump halve funding for federal work-study program- Congress increase by $140 million

• Add $106 million for HBUCS • $60 million increase, for programs

that help disadvantaged students enter and complete college.

• $35 million into the Child Care Access Means Parents in School program that assists low-income college students with child-care costs.

Going Public Strategy

• Presidents– Marshall public support for their policies and

actions– Cultivate popular cultural image of themselves

Public Approval of President

• Three general trends– Declines while in office– Economy– Rally events and scandals

• Beyond Presidential Control

The Current Incumbent30

4050

6070

8090

100

June 049/11 Iraq SaddamInaug

George W. Bush Approval Ratings

Bush- Social Security Roadtrip

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling Social Security (USA Today/Gallup)

47

41 43

3540

5248

56

30354045505560

2002 2005/1 2005/2 2005/3

Approve Disapprove

What is George W. Bush’s image?

Macho

“Mission Accomplished”

•

Cowboy (not wimp)

Compassionate Conservative

Education President

====

Likes Children and Baseball

Patriotism

Going Public

Alternative Image?

Obama’s Image

Trump’s Image

Fighter

Ruthless

Winner• “We're going to win so

much. You're going to get tired of winning. you’re going to say, ‘Please Mr. President, I have a headache. Please, don't win so much. This is getting terrible.’ And I'm going to say, ‘No, we have to make America great again.’ You're gonna say, ‘Please.’ I said, ‘Nope, nope. We're gonnakeep winning.’

Businessman

Billionaire

Dealmaker; Negotiator

Trump Image?

Nationalist• On Syrian refugees• "What I won't do is take in

two hundred thousand Syrians who could be ISIS. Number one, why aren't they fighting for their country? And number two, I don't want these people coming over here.“

• "I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall.

Media Savvy• "I have seen him talk

about something that he wants to tweet, ultimately tweeting whatever that thing is, within literally a minute, reporters are now retweeting his tweet with their own comments on top of it."

• Cliff Sims, former director of White House message strategy

An Honest Liar

• "I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I've been challenged by so many people and I don't, frankly, have time for total political correctness."

• Impulsive• Hyperbolic/Dishonest• Insensitive • Erratic• Chaos

Institutional Presidency

• Jefferson in 1900 had 2 assistants• Brownlow Committee

– “The president needs help”

• President not Congress should be in charge of executive branch

Presidency is Many People

EOP: OMB, NSC, CEA, “czars,” VP,and WHO

WHO: close advisors,no Senate approval

Where is the Power?• Cabinet Officials– Department of State– Department of

Defense – Department of

Treasury

• Exec. Office of Pres.– White House Office

(WHO)– NSC– OMB– CEA

Institutional Presidency I: West Wing

Institutional Presidency II: OEOB

Implications of Instit. Pres

• Radical change in system of government?• Increased presidential control of policy

making and centralization of the decision making

• Increases potential for screw ups• Reduced accountability

Transition from Historical to Modern Presidency

• Historic Presidency– President is a clerk– Congress #1

• Modern Presidency– Increased popular expectations– President #1– No change in formal powers

Modern Presidents Response

• Devote tremendous time and resources to manipulating public image – Going public

• Have immense staff of political, policy, and partisan experts– Institutional presidency

• Are presidents stronger– YES, but expectations outstrip capacity

World’s Greatest Clerkship

• Neustadt, Presidential Power (Al’s prof)– power of president do not flow from literary

reading of constitution– Decisions are not self executing JFK, Cuban Missile

Crisis– "The conditions that promote his leadership in

form, preclude a guarantee of leadership in fact." – “presidential power is power to bargain”

Limited formal powers=constant bargaining

President can◦ Nominate judges, but◦ Propose trade treaties, but◦ Propose popular legislation, but◦ Propose spending less on military golf courses,

Will Presidents keep their promises?◦ Constitutional odds are stacked against them!

Presidential power = persuasion

• Formal powers are minimal– Can propose legislation, C in C– Dependent on other institutions

• Informal powers are crucial– Presidential power is power to persuade– Presidents have to bargain

Informal Powers

• Professional reputation• Electoral results• Bargaining

– Carrot and the stick

• Marshalling public opinion (going public)

The Stick and Senator Shelby

• Dem criticizes Clinton’s Budget

• Space Shuttle to TX• No Tickets for

‘Bama Celebration at WH

• Shelby’s response?

Unsuccessful Persuasion

• Clinton Campaign Promise– Allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in military

• Congress– Sam Nunn (D-GA) on the submarine– Don’t ask, don’t tell in Family Medical Leave Act

• C in C of Military– Cruising chat rooms and gay bars

Success of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell

• Source: CNN Special Report

Truman and Marshall Plan

• Truman’s prospects for Aid to Europe– Un-elected president– Very unpopular– Large GOP majorities in Congress– Memory of Great Depression– Increasing Isolationism

Ranking Presidents

• Will history judge Bill Clinton as a great president? George W. Bush?

• Why or why not?

Ranking Post WW II Presidents• Good/Great– Truman– Eisenhower– JFK

»LBJ»Reagan»Clinton

• Why such variety?

• Bad/Failures– Nixon– Ford– Carter– Bush (41)

Greenstein

• Executive branch “reflects the character and personality of the president”

• highly personalized nature of modern American Presidency

• Presidential success = Characteristics of Individual President

Effectiveness as Public Communicator

• Bully Pulpit• “His practice is to

inform the world of whatever crosses his mind.”

• “At least everyone knows his thoughts and obsessions.”

Organizational Capacity• Loyalty• Candid discussion • Prevent group-think• Trump has the

organizational ability of a 6-year-old. And no president can thrive in a helter-skelter environment. Can wise decision-making occur when the Oval Office is a madhouse? No.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/list-officials-left-trump-administration/story?id=49334453

• Bannon, Priebus, Tillerson, Sessions,

Political Skill

Establish reputation as “skilled operator”

Vision Thing

• Possession of a set of overarching goals

• “Trump doesn’t have one. His views on policy tend to come and go.”

“to reject the ideology of globalism and accept the ideology of patriotism. …"We will never surrender America's sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy,"” Trump, UN Speech, 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Cognitive Style• How “a president

processes the Niagara of advice and information that comes his way.”

• rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world.

• Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings. Here

• Gary Cohn writing in an email: “It’s worse than you can imagine … Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”

• Trump- “I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don't need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page. That I can tell you.”

• “The president likes maps,”NYTimes

Emotional Intelligence

• Disturbed– Nixon– LBJ

• Risk-takers– JFK– Clinton

keeping one’s emotions under control and using them for what Greenstein calls “constructive purposes.”

• "Executive Time" in the Oval Office every day from 8am to 11am

Skrownek

• Presidents in Historical Time– Times affects nature of skill

Political time as a resource for or constraint on a president

Regime strength

President’s Party Affiliation

Opposed Affiliated

Vulnerable regime Reconstructive president

Disjunctive president

Resilient regime Preemptive president

Articulator (Faithful Son)

president