THE PLANK JUNE 15, 2009
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Matthew Yglesias, in a nice post exploring the nature of presidential political capital, writes:
The American presidency is a weird institution. If Barack Obama
wants to start a war with North Korea and jeopardize the lives of
hundreds of thousands of people, it’s not clear that anyone could stop
him. If he wants to let cold-blooded murderers out of prison, it’s
completely clear that nobody can stop him. But if he wants to implement
the agenda he was elected on just a few months ago, he needs to obtain
a supermajority in the United States Senate.
I don't really see how this makes the presidency a weird institution--what it means is that presidential campaigns are very strange creatures. The reality is that we have a system of government in which domestic policy is by and large set by Congress. You might think this is a good thing or a bad thing--I tend to think it's a good thing--but it certainly isn't a new thing; it's the way the system has always worked. In a more rational world, presidential campaigns would focus exclusively on questions of foreign affairs, judicial appointments, how to run the administrative state, and so forth. Voters would laugh off the stage any presidential candidate pledging to reform entitlement programs or labeling herself the "commander in chief of the economy," and no campaign would bother putting out, say, detailed proposals for health care reform. It would be almost as ridiculous as a candidate running for the House of Representatives on a platform of overturning Roe v. Wade (though, come to think of it, I guess that happens a fair amount too).
I don't have any terrific explanation for why campaigns focus so intently on issues the victor will have minimal say over, except to observe that civic education in America isn't too great. Maybe policy proposals just end up being proxies for deeper political values--that's the role health policy white papers seemed to play in last year's Democratic primaries. Maybe the concept of separation of powers doesn't come too naturally to the human psyche; we simply assume anyone we elect is supposed to have some influence over whatever problems happen to be salient at the moment. But that doesn't strike me as a very strong normative argument against the separation of powers in the first place. If anything, it's the opposite--if your electorate can't even tell the difference between legislative and executive power, it's probably a good idea not to vest too much power in the victor of a single election for a single office.
--Josh Patashnik
7 comments
The presidency doesn't have to be weird. Besides, the presidents themselves more than make up for it.
Facetiously though, if you want to understand how [and why] the White House functions as it does there are only two things you must never forget:
1]
Domestic economic policy is a stacked deck shufled over and again to reflect the economic interests of the Bilderbergers
2]
Foreign policy is a staked deck shuffled over and again to reflect the foreign policy interests of the Bilderbergers
Everything flows from that.
In fact, henseforth, why don't you follow both the domestic and foreign agenda coming out of the White House. Then you can point out to me how the Bilderbergers of this world do not steer the ship of state to and from Wall Street. Then I'll have to eat crow. I will be too embarrassed to ever coming in here again.
That's got to be worth something, right?
george
- iambiguous
June 16, 2009 at 12:36am
Patashnik makes Yglesias' case better then Yglesias does by arguing effectively that the President of the United States has minimal influence on domestic policy of the United States of America. That may be as designed, but that's no argument that it isn't odd. It certainly is not odd for the people to expect the President to be effective in domestic affairs - after all, the first sentence in the Constitution describing presidential powers says "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. " Sounds to me like he should not be impotent on domestic concerns.
- sdemuth
June 16, 2009 at 8:25am
Presidents have a lot of influence over domestic affairs, if for no other reason than the veto pen.
- DC Spence
June 16, 2009 at 9:54am
yeah, I agree with Spence, etc. Bush managed to screw up the economy big time with less of a majority than Obama has, and Clinton passed his budget (you know the one that set up one of the greatest runs of domestic prosperity ever). He failed on health care but to blame Congress is silly, it was perceived as being a mess.
And what is this nonsense about the supermajority? one vote in the house and cobbling enough votes in the Senate to vote for cloture is not an impossible task. Many Senators vote for cloture and then vote no on the final vote, that only needs to win by 0 votes (with the VP breaking a tie)
supermajority is more accurately describing overturning a veto.
- blackton
June 16, 2009 at 10:55am
Josh's last paragraph needs more consideration. It's kind of an all-of-the-above thing, and the important point is that it has always been thus. As long as we've had political parties, the presidential campaign has largely been a proxy for a debate between the parties and their overall platforms. Given that the federal government of the United States has considerably more power over domestic, rather than foreign, events, these contests are mostly domestic. Always have been, always will be, regardless of the limitations of the executive branch's authority.
I mean, the southern states staged a rebellion because they feared that a newly elected president would abolish slavery, even though they and he agreed that the president had not the authority to do so. So a somewhat irrational focus on a presidential candidate's thoughts about matters over which the president has little or no power is nothing new.
- rhubarbs
June 16, 2009 at 11:12am
It is indeed part and parcel of a great majority of Americans' intuitions about government that the president (or governor, at the state level, or mayor at the civic level, etc.) is the boss, and the appropriate legislative body works for him or her. When a program designed by the legislature works, the executive feels free to (and is generally allowed to) take credit for the success. When it doesn't, the executive will be asked to take (and thus feels obligated to shift) the blame for the failure.
These are the wages of the bully pulpit and our collective disinterest in the machinery of government. Even after close to 250 years of republican government and a (national?) requirement to pass a test on our Constitution to advance to 9th grade, Americans are still not really wired for "co-equal" at an intuitive level. The president is the most powerful person in the most powerful country the world has ever seen -- what do you mean he can't fix health care?
- austinexpat
June 16, 2009 at 11:42am
Campaigns focus on what matters most to the voters, which are often domestic issues. This is hardly surprising. No, the president's influence is not confined to foreign affairs -- not by a long shot. He more-or-less controls the vast federal bureaucracy, the arms of which have policy-making power within their broad statutory mandates. I seem to recall something about the Treasury Department having some influence on the economy of late. He proposes the federal budget. He is his party's chief legislative representative and advocate, and, as mentioned before, his assent is required for seriously contested legislation. Depending on the issue, he may seek to take control of a legislative debate or essentially propose the legislation to be voted upon. Thus, he can set the domestic policy agenda. In Obama's case, this means stimulus, health care, energy, education, and financial regulation. (Yes, we might be worried that he's too willing to compromise on all of these, but we're not quite at that point yet.) For FDR, that meant the New Deal. For LBJ, that meant the Great Society. For Republicans like Reagan or Bush, it often means tax cuts. Yes, the president can't do whatever he wants, but it seems clear that he's got a great deal of influence over domestic policy, so it's not mysterious or strange that campaigns would focus on it. (And, yes, appointments to the federal judiciary are important and influential!)
- jhildner
June 16, 2009 at 3:14pm