Chapter 12 Practice Quiz

1. Presidents, even with great majorities of their own party in Congress, experience difficulty in exercising legislative leadership because a. the president must compete against interest groups for influence. b. the president is unable to control Congress, unlike a prime minister. c. the president's use of the veto is ineffective with Congress. d. members of Congress attract greater publicity when challenging the president. e. members of Congress are able to thwart presidential aspirations through the technicalities of committees and floor rules.

2. When no candidate receives a majority of votes in the electoral college, the House of Representatives decides who will win a presidential election. This circumstance a. has never occurred. b. has occurred only twice. c. occurs once every 28 to 36 years. d. has occurred four times in this century. e. occurs frequently when the country is at war.

3. Presidents have been limited to two terms by the a. Fourteenth Amendment. b. Sixteenth Amendment. c. Nineteenth Amendment. d. Twenty-first Amendment. e. Twenty second Amendment.

4. Prior to the 1850s, the president who made the most vigorous use of the veto power was a. George Washington. b. Alexander Hamilton. c. Andrew Jackson. d. Abraham Lincoln. e. John Adams.

5. Grover Cleveland used federal troops to break a labor strike by invoking his power to a. take care that the laws be faithfully executed. b. prevent riots and insurrections. c. serve as commander-in-chief. d. oversee the executive branch. e. facilitate First Amendment activity.

6. The principal function of the White House Office is to a. oversee the political and policy interests of the president. b. administer federal departments as the president's representative. c. prepare the national budget for the president. d. supervise the national security agencies, such as the CIA and FBI. e. supervise military intelligence agencies. 7. Included in the Executive Office of the President are all of the following except a. the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). b. the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). c. the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). d. the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). e. the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (OUSTR).

8. Which of the following statements about the effect of presidential coattails on congressional elections is true? a. It has increased in recent years. b. It has benefited Democrats, but not Republicans. c. It has been a consistently powerful factor in recent years. d. It has been a consistently negative factor in recent years. e. It has decreased in recent years.

9. More than 2,500 presidential vetoes have been made since 1789. Congress has overridden about what percent of these? a. 4 percent b. 25 percent c. 38 percent d. 45 percent e. 86 percent

10. One of the crises the Clinton administration faced was a. civil war in Nicaragua. b. the dissolution of the Soviet Union. c. continuing war in Bosnia and other parts of Yugoslavia. d. student rebellion in China. e. the Iran-contra crisis.