Discuss the view that the presidency is not a powerful office

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Discuss the view that the presidency is not a powerful office

The president of the USA has, on paper at least, numerous powers that he can exploit to his benefit. These powers have then been classified as those constitutional powers and those inherent powers, those not in the constitution. Anyone looking at a glance, would probably presume that the presidency is an extremely powerful office with powers such as ; chief of the executive, commander in chief, pardoning criminals and national leader of arguably the world’s largest power. However in reality there are equal amounts of checks and balances designed by the founding fathers to ‘frustrate’ the president to essentially prevent a dictatorship. Thus there are a wide variety of aspects to be explored when discussing whether the presidency is a powerful office or not.

There is much evidence to suggest that despite the many limits on the constitutional powers of the presidency, there remain numerous examples to say that the presidency is a powerful office through the use of his constitutional powers. One major constitutional power of the presidency is that of being the commander in chief, usually falling within the realm of foreign policy. This effectively allows the president to have supreme authority over the nations military. Obama effectively used this power to withdraw some US troops from Iraq whilst with the same power he extended the war on terror into Yemen and Pakistan. In fact Obama used this constitutional power that he increased dramatically the number of drone attacks, in 2010 he commanded six times the amount of drone attacks that Bush did from 2004 – 2007. It is perhaps not the numbers which are important but seeing this as Obama using a constitutional power, and demonstrates how the president may be considered a powerful office. Not only this but Congress’ checks on this constitutional power are perhaps more questionable than in other areas, reinforcing the view point that this contributes to the president being a powerful office. The constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, however this has not been used since 1941, but there have been numerous wars since then. This is because presidents can command the military to invade a country such as with the Iraq war but claim it under different titles, such as peace keeping missions, or more famously, searches for WOMD, and the way in which the president can ‘bypass’ Congress on this power could suggest this constitutional power makes the presidency a very powerful office. Furthermore after the 2010 mid term elections Obama uses constitutional means via the use of signing statements and to achieve his agenda. For instance when the $447 billion Jobs Act stalled in Congress, Obama signed five executive statements to get the measures completed. Notable executive orders used by presidents showing power through powers given by the constitution are G.W. Bush’s order to create military tribunals for terrorist suspects and blocking several pieces of legislation, whilst Reagan directive that federal money should not be used to advocate abortions. Eisenhower’s use of constitutional powers to desegregate schools is also an example of the impact, thus arguably the importance and power of these constitutional powers.

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The power to pardon is another constitutional power where presidents may pardon those charged with crimes. For instance, very famously Clinton pardoned 140 people on his last day in office and Bush over eight years pardoned 189 people. However in analysis despite the next to no checks apart from public opinion or restrictions on this power which some would therefore say makes the presidency a powerful office, the breadth of the impact is very small, impacting really on only those who are pardoned. Compare this with the power of commander in chief, and it then seems fairly insignificant. Lastly, vetoing ...

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