Question

When the American system was being created, the office of the President was not the center and most important role (if anything was, on the federal level, it as Congress). Now, however, the POTUS occupies the center of American governance, attention (think about voting behavior), and politics. Why do you think that is? Why do you think the presidency has grown to the role in now plays in American politics?

CLASS- POLI 1

Answer 1

It is fashionable to say that the power of the Presidency has increased,but actually this is not so - it is the power of the Executive Branch that has increased, but that is not really the power of the President. For example, as head of the Executive Branch the Founders assumed that the President would have the power to fire any Federal employer (for any reason - or no reason at all). But since the rise of the Civil Service in the late 19th century, and the unionisation of the Federal government starting in the early 1960s, the President has become more of a figure head with the Federal Bureaucracy being in charge of itself.

The endless laws (regulations) created and imposed by the Federal bureaucracy without the consent of the Congress are most certainly NOT the government the Founders created - indeed the Supreme Court struck down (by nine votes to zero) the power of the Federal bureaucracy to pass its own laws without the explicit consent of Congress, as recently as 1935 (the striking down of the National Recovery Administration of the National Industrial Recovery Act - President Franklin Roosevelt’s effort to copy Fascist Italy). But the power of the Federal Bureaucracy (the Bureaucracy - the President does not write most of this stuff, or even pick the people who do write these regulations) came back with World War II (the Supreme Court rolled over), and has never left then. Now the Executive Branch (not the Congress) writes of the laws (the endless regulations that have turned the United States into a government dominated society like the late Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire). But that is not the personal power of the President - he does not really control the bureaucracy, not since the rise of the Civil Service in the late 19th century and the unionisation of government in the early 1960s.

The personality of the President also matters. President Washington led an army into western Pennsylvania - a conscript army, and without the request of the Governor of Pennsylvania or the formal consent of the Congress of the United States.

The Congress can, by two thirds vote of both houses, override any veto of the President - and pass any Constitutional law it likes (including getting rid of the Federal Bureaucracy), but getting a two thirds vote in both houses is incredibly difficult. But that is not a new thing - that a Presidential veto could only be overridden by a two thirds vote of both Houses of Congress was in the Constitution from the start.