Could someone please help me understand

[keptwoman]

We are visiting the USA soon and before we arrive I thought we'd do some US history. We've just spent more time than we should have on the Pilgrims and Wampanoags at Plimoth. Now we are heading into all the different wars and the Revolution etc.

 

Now for the question on the role of your President:

 

I was reading today from SoTW. In it it said that the President is there not to make laws but to pass or veto the laws made by Congress.

 

My logic would say that that is an overseer role with no direct power to make or influence policy. A bit like a Queen or King who are a figure head. Or in countries of the Commonweath that role is fulfilled by the Governor General as the Queens representative. Except obviously voted in rather than given that position by birthright/royal appointment.

 

Obviously that isn't the case because your presidential candidates campaign very strongly on policy. So I'd love to understand how the President (present and past) is able to influence policy as he/they seem to be able to do. Bolded as that's the crux of my wonderings.

Thanks in advance :)

[hsmamainva]

I'm by no means an expert...but my original thought was this:

 

Take our current President....when he was elected, numerous other Democrats won their respective offices in the House and Senate. That tipped the scales in his favor. (I think that when the opposite is the case...say that despite having a Democratic President, we had a Republican majority in the House and Senate, then you'd have a 'lame duck'...meaning whatever bills and policy changes he would want to make wouldn't likely be passed because they wouldn't have any congressional support).

 

So he influences policy in the bills and legislation he signs.

 

If he were a Republican with a Democratic majority in Congress (as happened with President Bush many times), then what he wanted wouldn't make it out of Congress). If he were a Democrat with a Republican majority in Congress, then he'd likely refuse to sign anything they sent to his desk with a veto.

 

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong ... but that's the way I understand it. My oldest son is the political junkie / expert in our house, but he's asleep! I'll have to ask him his opinion in the morning and see what he says! :D

Edited July 31, 2009 by hsmamainva
rewording

[Linda1951]

when there is a Democratic President , they would like to have a Democratic Congress because they would get more bills passed, than with the other opposing party in there.

Plus We have what you call Line Item Veto in any bill that comes out. Meaning the President can veto one thing only on the bill and the rest can go through.

I do not care for that Idea.

I believe I am right. correct me if I am wrong.

[keptwoman]

Right. So really the policy of the presidential candidates is the policy of their party? Who decides the policy? The candidate or the party as a whole?

 

Is the incumbent President the leader of his party? So is Obama the current Democrat leader? Yes?? No?? But who leads the other one?

 

And obviously way back in the beginning the President was not party affiliated. When did that change?

[LaxMom]

It works the same way as in a parliamentary system, except the President is both head of government and head of state. He (only because we have never had a "she") sets the agenda for legislative discussion and approves/vetoes legislation, appoints federal officers and judges, and runs the executive branch of the government which includes all of our federal bureaus (CIA, Departments of Justice, Defense, Agriculture, education, public health, etc.).

 

Our "checks and balances" system is slightly different. Taking the mention of line-item veto as an example:

 

(Line item veto was on the table long before President Clinton took office, but for the sake of streamlining illustration, I will give him the credit for the idea below.)

 

President Clinton proposes shaping legislation allowing Presidents to veto individual line items in legislation, rather than the whole package, to Congress. The House and Senate (because we have a bicameral Congress) both address the idea, bang around verbiage, vote on their own versions, then get together and pass a single version of the bill. Clinton then approves/signs the bill and it becomes law.

 

Under our system, laws are also up for challenge and this one was, in federal court. Lower courts and, ultimately, the Supreme Court, ruled that the law was unconstitutional as passed.

 

So, no, we do not have line-item veto.

 

And, yes, because our legislators are individually elected, rather than as a party, it can lead to an amazing amount of dithering, particularly when the Congressional majority is of a different political party than the President.

 

That doesn't make it clearer, does it?

[keptwoman]

Do you think the original drafting of the constitution foresaw a President being involved in party politics?

[LaxMom]

Right. So really the policy of the presidential candidates is the policy of their party? Who decides the policy? The candidate or the party as a whole?

 

Is the incumbent President the leader of his party? So is Obama the current Democrat leader? Yes?? No?? But who leads the other one?

 

And obviously way back in the beginning the President was not party affiliated. When did that change?

No, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine is the head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Former Maryland Lt. Governor, Michael Steele, is the RNC chair.

 

I think presidential policy is both personal and party-driven. There could be some disconnect there, but I think they generally align just as a matter of the President being a member of one party or the other - his ideology would fall in line, largely, with the party of which he is a member, otherwise he would be a member of another party. The RNC/DNC work both to promote the party policies (through lobbying, elections, etc) to the President and Congress, and to promote the agenda of the President/Congress to the "lower" party members and the public.

Do you think the original drafting of the constitution foresaw a President being involved in party politics?

 

I cannot even begin to guess what particular nuances were in the minds of the original drafters of the Constitution. Nor, I believe, would you get consensus on this or any other point from constitutional scholars.

Edited July 31, 2009 by MyCrazyHouse

[keptwoman]

Thanks you guys. You've been great. I've learnt lots :)

[OHGrandma]

Do you think the original drafting of the constitution foresaw a President being involved in party politics?

 

No, but I had to google to find a better answer than I could give from memory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_President_of_the_United_States

 

Original Constitution and reform

Under the original terms of the Constitution, the electors of the Electoral College voted only for office of President rather than for both President and Vice President. Each elector was allowed to vote for two people for the top office. The person receiving the greatest number of votes (provided that such a number was a majority of electors) would be president, while the individual who received the next largest number of votes became Vice President. If no one received a majority of votes, then the House of Representatives would choose among the five highest vote-getters, with each state getting one vote. In such a case, the person who received the highest number of votes but was not chosen president would become Vice President. In the case of a tie for second, then the Senate would choose the Vice president.[6]

The original plan, however, did not foresee the development of political parties and their adversarial role in the government. In the election of 1796, for instance, Federalist John Adams came in first, but because the Federalist electors split their second vote amongst several vice presidential candidates, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson came second. Thus, the president and Vice President were from opposing parties. Predictably, Adams and Jefferson clashed over issues such as states' rights and foreign policy.[10]

A greater problem occurred in the election of 1800, in which the two participating parties each had a secondary candidate they intended to elect as Vice President, but the more popular Democratic-Republican party failed to execute that plan with their electoral votes. Under the system in place at the time (Article II, Section 1, Clause 3), the electors could not differentiate between their two candidates, so the plan had been for one elector to vote for Thomas Jefferson but not for Aaron Burr, thus putting Burr in second place. This plan broke down for reasons that are disputed, and both candidates received the same number of votes. After 35 deadlocked ballots in the House of Representatives, Jefferson finally won on the 36th ballot and Burr became Vice President.[11]

This tumultuous affair led to the adoption of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, which directed the electors to use separate ballots to vote for the president and Vice President.[5] While this solved the problem at hand, it ultimately had the effect of lowering the prestige of the Vice Presidency, as the office was no longer for the leading challenger for the presidency.

The separate ballots for President and Vice President became something of a moot issue later in the 19th century when it became the norm for popular elections to determine a state's Electoral College delegation. Electors chosen this way are pledged to vote for a particular presidential and vice presidential candidate (offered by the same political party). So, while the Constitution says that the president and Vice President are chosen separately, in practice they are chosen together.

If no vice presidential candidate receives an Electoral College majority, then the Senate selects the Vice President, in accordance with the United States Constitution. This could in theory lead to a situation in which the incumbent Vice President - in his role as President of the Senate - would be called upon to give his tie-breaking vote for himself or his successor. The election of 1836 is the only election so far where the office of the Vice President has been decided by the Senate. During the campaign, Martin Van Buren's running mate Richard Mentor Johnson was accused of having lived with a black woman. Virginia's 23 electors, who were pledged to Van Buren and Johnson, refused to vote for Johnson (but still voted for Van Buren). The election went to the Senate, where Johnson was elected 33-17.

[Laura Corin]

It works the same way as in a parliamentary system, except the President is both head of government and head of state. He (only because we have never had a "she") sets the agenda for legislative discussion and approves/vetoes legislation, appoints federal officers and judges, and runs the executive branch of the government which includes all of our federal bureaus (CIA, Departments of Justice, Defense, Agriculture, education, public health, etc.).

 

 

Under the UK parliamentary system, the prime minister is the leader of the party with the most members of parliament. This means that the prime minister can change even when there has been no general election. The changes over from Thatcher to Major (Conservative Party) and Blair to Brown (Labour Party) both happened between elections. This means that electors elect MPs of a particular party and, traditionally, the Prime Minister has to foster a more collegiate atmosphere because there is the (often faint) risk of being unseated by the PM's own party. Both Thatcher and Blair were criticised for running too 'presidential' an administration.

 

A UK prime minister can't veto legislation (as far as I am aware) and the Queen, by custom, never does either. Most government positions are held by civil servants, and ministers (running departments) are members of one of the houses of parliament. The traditional way to drag an unelected person into government is to give them a title and shove them into the House of Lords. Judges are appointed by the Queen, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister with the help of the Lord Chancellor. Parliament is not involved in the approval process.

 

Laura

[Catherine]

Some of the Federalist papers, written to attempt to convince New Yorkers to pass the original Constitution, addressed the existence of political parties, and while I think Washington and some other early elected officials viewed parties as "mob politics", nonetheless they became firmly established during those first elections. How's that for a run on sentence?? Sorry.