George W. Bush’s War Presidency

The Bush administration began under a cloud of illegitimacy, and with no mandate

For first 7 months, very low popularity ratings • unpopular policies• verbal bungling• Jeffords defection

Dramatic change post 9/11/01

The Expanding Presidency Presidential responsibilities, burdens, power,

and impact have increased dramatically since the nation’s founding.

The Founders’ conception of the office of President was much more limited than what we see in the modern Presidency.

The vague language of the Constitution has been flexible enough to include the great expansion of the Presidency that has occurred.

The Dormant Presidency

Until the end of the 19th century, the Presidency conformed basically to the designs and intentions of the Founders.

The nation did not often require a very strong Presidency prior to the 20th century.

Structural changes since the end of the nineteenth century: America becomes a world power with a corporate-dominated economy

Important early Presidents•Washington•Jefferson•Jackson•Polk•Lincoln

Twentieth-Century Transformation

In the 20th century, new structural conditions made an expanded Presidency both possible and necessary.• Theodore Roosevelt• Woodrow Wilson• Franklin Roosevelt

– World War II – Since FDR’s time, all U.S. Presidents have

administered a huge national state with large standing armed forces, nuclear weapons, and bases all around the world.

• John F. Kennedy• Ronald Reagan

How important are individual Presidents?

We cannot be sure to what extent Presidents themselves caused the great expansion of the scope of their office.

The great upsurges in Presidential power and activity were at least partially the results of forces at the structural level.

The Many Roles of the President

Clinton Rossiter introduced the image of the many “hats” that presidents wear simultaneously.• Chief of State• Commander in Chief• Joint Chief Legislator• Manager of the Economy• Chief Diplomat• Head of the Political Party

Each of the Presidential functions or “hats” is demanding; together, they are overwhelming.

Before and After

The President’s Staff and Cabinet

White House staff • Key aides who are the President’s

closest and most trusted advisors– Chief of Staff– National Security Adviser

• The exact shape of the White House staff changes from one Presidency to another and is used by different presidents in various ways.

Chief of Staff, Joshua Bolten Joshua Bolten was sworn in as White House Chief of Staff on April 14, 2006. Mr. Bolten first joined President George W. Bush's Cabinet on June 30, 2003, when he

was sworn in as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. From January 2001 through June of 2003, Mr. Bolten was Assistant to the President and

Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy at the White House. From March 1999 through November 2000, Mr. Bolten was Policy Director of the Bush-

Cheney presidential campaign. From 1994 to 1999, Mr. Bolten was Executive Director, Legal & Government Affairs,

for Goldman Sachs International in London. During the Administration of President George H.W. Bush, Mr. Bolten served for three

years as General Counsel to the US Trade Representative and one year in the White House as Deputy Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. Previously, from 1985 to 1989, he was International Trade Counsel to the US Senate Finance Committee. Earlier, Mr. Bolten was in a private law practice with O'Melveny & Myers, and worked in the legal office of the US State Department. He also served as Executive Assistant to the Director of the Kissinger Commission on Central America.

Mr. Bolten received his AB with distinction from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (1976) and his JD from Stanford Law School (1980), where he was an editor of the Stanford Law Review. Immediately after law school, he served as a law clerk at the US District Court in San Francisco. During the fall semester of 1993, Mr. Bolten taught international trade at Yale Law School.

National Security Council’s Function

The National Security Council is the President's principal forum for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and cabinet officials. Since its inception under President Truman, the function of the Council has been to advise and assist the President on national security and foreign policies. The Council also serves as the President's principal arm for coordinating these policies among various government agencies.

Executive Office of the President (EOP) —a group of permanent Presidential staff organizations that perform specialized functions• Office of Management and Budget• Council of Economic Advisers• National Security Council

Vice-Presidency• no constitutional powers or duties except to

serve as President of the Senate, a ceremonial function of no real power

• recent increase in importance• Presidential succession

The Cabinet —not mentioned in the Constitution, but all Presidents have had one; the cabinet is a highly visible symbol of the executive branch, but Presidents have usually not relied upon it as a decision-making body

The President and the Bureaucracy

Presidents have significant controls with regard to the bureaucracy, but the President’s ability to give orders and to gain bureaucratic acquiescence is limited.

Many people erroneously assume that the President has firm control over the executive branch of government.

To a large extent, Presidents must persuade other executive branch officials to take certain actions.

Richard Neustadt said that “Presidential power is the power to persuade.”

The President and Congress: Perpetual Tug-of-War

Conflict by constitutional design•Shared powers•Separate elections•Potential for divided government

and “gridlock”

What makes a President successful with Congress?•Party and ideology•Foreign policy and national security

issues•Presidential vetoes•Presidential popularity•Legislative skills

The President and the People: An Evolving Relationship

Early Presidents: seen as an elite leader, relatively distant from the public

Quickly evolved into a more democratic system, in which the people played a more direct role.

By 1880, the two-party system had begun to develop.

Early in the 19th century, state legislatures began to turn the power to choose Presidential electors over to the people through direct election.

The base of suffrage broadened.

Going Public By the beginning of the twentieth century, the

presidency had undergone a basic transformation: presidents began to speak directly to the public.

Woodrow Wilson created a new constitutional theory advocating close connections between the president and the public.

All presidents now attempt to respond to public opinion, and all try to speak directly to the people about policy.

Contemporary presidents frequently go public by using television to bypass Congress and the press.

Using the Media Modern Presidents have used

television to enhance their power to shape public opinion.

Leading public opinion Responding to the public Quiet influence Listening to the public

The Making of the President—of Sixth Grade Just how smart are American voters? If the way politicians address the

electorate is any measure, about as sharp as a middle school student. Taking into account factors including grammar, word choice, and sentence length, the language Web site yourDictionary.com found that during the 2000 debates George W. Bush and Al Gore spoke, respectively, at a sixth- and a high seventh-grade level. (The Lincoln- Douglas debates were carried out at about a twelfth-grade level.) And the Bush-Gore contest actually marked a slight uptick after almost two decades of decline. As disheartening as this sounds (it's safe to say that most Americans would prefer leaders with post-pubescent rhetorical skills), the voters themselves inspire more confidence. At the third debate in 2000, in a "town meeting" setting where Bush and Gore responded to questions from the audience, the candidates logged their lowest scores of the campaign (low sixth grade for Bush, high seventh grade for Gore). The audience's questions, in contrast, were at the ninth-grade level on average.

—"Presidential Debates Mirror Long-term School Decline," Robert Beard and Paul JJ Payack, yourDictionary.com

The Role of Presidential Popularity

The public’s influence works through Presidential popularity or unpopularity.

Presidents have strong incentives to anticipate public reactions and to do things that will please the public.

Determinants of Presidential popularity• Time• The economy• War

Interest Groups, Political Parties, and Social Movements

Interest groups• Organized groups exert important

kinds of influence on Presidential policy.

• The question of which interest groups have a greater influence on policy depends partly upon which party controls the Presidency.

Political parties•Changes in party control of the

presidency produce significant changes in policy.

•One result of party influence is that there are partisan cycles of Presidential action, with different policies depending upon which party holds office.

Social movements• Social movements occasionally provide

other political-level influences on Presidents.

• Mass demonstrations and protests may cause disruption that lead Presidents to take actions in order to defuse them.

• Mass movements may produce changes in general public opinion that, in turn, affect Presidents.

How Democratic Is the Presidency?

Determining how democratic the Presidency is becomes an extremely difficult task.

However, the office is considerably more democratic than envisioned by the authors of the Constitution.