1.1. Describe the process by which a bill becomes law as it passes through both, the House of Representatives and the Senate, until it is passed or defeated. (10-15 sentences).
All bills originate in the committees and subcommittees of the House of Representatives and Senate before than can ever be voted on by the full body on the floor. There are many of these committees covering various areas of law and public policy, from foreign affairs to agriculture, healthcare, science and technology and oversight of the executive branch. Chairs of these committees have the real power in Congress, which is generally based on their seniority. This can be a very lengthy process lasting months or even years, give the various amendments that are added to the bills in committee, the public hearings, and the influence of various lobbyists. Once the bills reach the floor, the process of debate and amendment will continue and at times they are referred back to the committees, which indeed do all the real legislative work in Congress. In the House of Representatives, any bill that passes out of the committees and is approved by the leadership is almost certain to pass during the floor vote. Indeed, no bills even come to the floor unless the House leadership knows that they already have the votes lined up, and the minority party cannot block them. In the Senate, though, the minority party can block any legislation with a filibuster of forty votes, and the Republicans have used this more in the past two years than it has ever been used before. Finally, once the bills have passed both the House and Senate, then then go to a Conference Committee that will reconcile the difference between the two versions, and then they are returned for a final vote. Only then can the bill be sent to the president, whose signature is required to make it law.
1.2. What can happen to the bill when it reaches the President's desk? (5-7 sentences)
According to the Constitution, no bill from Congress can become law without the approval of the president. This is simply part of the system of checks and balances created by the framers of the Constitution, with its built-in tension between the executive and legislative branches. They did not really expect that the system of political parties would become permanent, of course, and many of them disliked factions and interest groups, but these were a fact of life in politics almost from the beginning. If different parties control Congress and the White House, a situation known today as ‘gridlock’, then presidential vetoes are far more likely. Indeed, even the threat of a veto is sufficient to prevent many bills from being passed in Congress, since months or even years of work would be lost for nothing. Congress can override a presidential veto with a super-majority of two-thirds, but in practice it is rare for either party to be able to command that many votes. Almost always the presidential veto means the death of any bill, except perhaps in a very compromised and watered-down form.
2.1. Who is the best president in your opinion? Defend your opinion (8-10 sentences)
Abraham Lincoln was the greatest president in U.S. history because of the extreme severity of the crisis he faced over slavery and the near-destruction of the country. It was a political, economic, military and moral crisis that had already existed at the time the country was first established, but it was on Lincoln’s watch that the Civil War first predicted by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson finally occurred. After Lincoln was elected in 1860, the Deep South states seceded from the Union, starting with South Carolina, and four more Upper South states also departed when Lincoln called for troops to suppress the rebellion. In the early years of the war, the Border States of Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland were also wavering in their loyalty and Lincoln did everything possible to placate them on the issue of slavery for fear that the war would be lost if they joined the Confederacy. Lincoln had been elected on a platform that did not call for the immediate abolition of slavery but only to confine it where it already existed and to prevent any new slave states from being admitted. This was enough to cause the leaders of the South to secede, despite Lincoln’s reassurances that he was not an abolitionist. He certainly became one as the war dragged on and it became clear that the federal government truly needed the support of the freed slaves and their white allies, while Border State slave owners would not even agree to gradual and compensated emancipation. For this reason, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and then used all his influence in Congress to obtain passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, which would abolish slavery forever. Because of this action, he will be remembered throughout history as the nation’s greatest president, except of course for those who still support the Confederacy and its ideas of state’s rights. Before his death, he was even beginning to move toward granting the freed slaves equal citizenship rights and the last speech he ever made in 1865 suggested that blacks should be given the right to vote. His future assassin John Wilkes Booth was in the audience that night and said it would be the last speech he ever gave.
2.2. Who is the worst president in your opinion? Defend your opinion (8-10 sentences)
As with the question on the greatest president, this one is difficult because there are so many possible choices, but in the end I would have to select Richard Nixon as the worst president in U.S. history. Of course he has his defenders even today who will say that he was no worse than other presidents and that he opened up relations with China, but the negative things that Nixon did completely outweighed the positive ones. To be sure he was a deeply flawed personality, a paranoid, insecure, alcoholic type, with string racist and anti-Semitic views, all of which came out on the White House tapes. He was personally corrupt throughout his entire career, going back to his days in Congress and as vice president, when he took money from Howard Hughes and other wealthy businessmen for his personal use. This was also going on during the 1972 Watergate scandal, when millions of dollars from various corporate and lobbying interests would arrive at the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), but Nixon had been exchanging favors for money since the 1940s. He became wealthy during his time as president but somehow managed to avoid paying any income taxes, and in 1968 even took money from Jimmy Hoffa in return for a promise to let the corrupt Teamster boss out of prison. That same year, he and Henry Kissinger were also involved in some secret, backchannel diplomacy with South Vietnam to stall any peace talks that might end the war since they did not wish the Democrats to get credit for it. Even someone as corrupt and manipulative as Lyndon Johnson privately called this treason but Nixon got away with it. Basically, his whole history was one of lies, deceit and corruption, and he never should have been president at all. In the end, his own paranoia destroyed him, because his ‘Plumbers’ got caught bugging and wiretapping the Democratic Party headquarters instead of the usual FBI and CIA targets in the civil rights and antiwar movements, and Nixon’s attempts to cover it all up finally destroyed him when they were revealed on tape.
