[Institution Title]
Abstract
For the United States of America, the President is the highest public office that a native born citizen can hold in office. Institutionalized by the United States’ Constitution, the President has a term of four years to represent and lead the country to success. Article II, Section 1-3 highlights the specifications and duties of the President who represents the Executive Branch of the government. However, sometime during the 1960’s the power of the President was assumed to be extended even beyond the scope provided by the US Constitution. In an online article published by The New York Times, it critical presented how the imperial presidency took its roots from US political history. Acclaimed New York Times’ columnist Gary Wills tried to dissect the rise of the imperial presidency in US history from the presentation provided by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., which later graced the book The Imperial Presidency in 2004. Wills assert that the first rise of the imperial presidency lasted for 76 years from 1789 to 1865, followed by a decline that lasted for 75 years until 1940 (Wills, 1973). However, Wills suggested that after the decline came a period marked by short-lived but more intense manifestations of the imperial presidency (1973).
The Constitutionality of the Presidency
The United States Constitution stipulates the duties, powers, tools, and limits of the President. This is presented under Article II, Section 1 to 3 of the US Constitution . According to the said provision, the President shall stand to represent the executive branch of the government shall be awarded the executive power. Unlike other different forms of government, the President under the US law is duly elected by the College of Electorate. The President has a term of four years along with his running mate for the Vice President. This means that both the President and the Vice President would be coming from the same political party. The purpose of this is to ensure that both will be working on the same advocacy as presented during the campaign and to ensure that there will be a complimentary relationship existing between the nation’s two highest leaders of the land.
On the other hand, among the duties of the President as the head of the executive branch, is to serve as the Army and the Navy’s Commander in Chief. The President has the capacity to extend and grant pardons and reprieves for any crimes or wrongdoings conducted or directed against the United States. This power, however, is suspended in the case when the President is subject for impeachment. Nevertheless, the power of the President being the chief executive officer is not absolute. This is because the President is being governed by stipulations and limitation stated under Article II, Sec.2 of the US Constitution. There are certain capacities and duties by which the president is being required by law to seek the written approval and consent of the House of Senate or the House of Representatives. Included in this limited power of the Chief Executive Officer is associated in the capacity to make Treaties. According to US law, the President would require the consensus approval and consent of the House of Senate. That means the President would need at least two-thirds vote from the representatives of the House of Senate present during the concurrence. Likewise, the President would also be required the earn the consent and approval of Senate in nominating and appointing people in certain positions like ambassadors, ministers, consuls, Supreme Court judges as well as other officers of the United States. However, a temporary appointment may be permitted only during periods when the Senate is in Recess. The President also has the privilege to veto a rule passed by the Congress. The privilege of a veto asserts that the President can reject a law passed by either House provided that the President sees merits that would not be of sound judgment. However, the vetoed bill may still be passed in case the House override the President’s veto. The overriding of the President’s veto would require the combined vote of both Houses—the Senate and the House of Representatives, of at least two-thirds. Finally, the president can also declare the state of emergencies, regulations, and executive orders.
In 2004, author and historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. published a book entitled The Imperial President. In the book, it discloses extended powers accorded to the United States President. It was believed that the social, political and economic conditions at that time gave rise to the so-called extra powers accorded to the President. Schlesinger furthered that there is a test to know whether the Imperial Presidency has been restored. These threefold test include the war-making power of the president, the birth of the secrecy system and finally, the engagement of emergency authorities to be utilized against foreign enemies which is however against the American people (Schlesinger, 2004, p. 441).
According to Schlesinger, the US has been creating a very weak President, given its weak domestic powers. He argues Wyatt’s point of view of the “conspiracy of common interest” of a strong executive and a weak legislature (Schlesinger, 2004, p.469). Instead the author of the book The Imperial President encourages the people not to create “a generation of weak President in an age when the turbulence of race, poverty, inflation, crime and urban decay [is] straining the delicate bonds of national cohesion and demanding, quite as much as in the 1930's, a strong domestic Presidency to hold the country together” (Wills, 1973). The president should be given enough capacity to make decisions as much as the House should also give courtesy to honor the veto that was exercised by the President instead of overriding it .
Timeline of Contemporary Imperial Presidency
As author Schlesinger said, after 1940 the manifestations of the imperial presidency has been short-lived. Beginning from Kennedy until Obama, the table below highlights the manifestations of imperial presidency in the contemporary history of the US government.
References
Cornell University Law School. (2014, December 2). US Constitution: Article 2. Retrieved from Cornell University Law School Website: http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii
Hamilton, J. (2005). Branches of Government. Minnesota: ABDO Publishing Company.
Schlesinger, A. J. (2004). The Imperial Presidency. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Wills, G. (1973, November 18). Books: A Pattern of Rising Power. Retrieved from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/26/specials/schlesinger-imperial.html
