Chapter 7 the Presidency
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Learning Objectives 7-1 Where Do Presidents 7 Come From? Presidential Comings and Goings THE PRESIDENCY • Identify the most common traits of presidents, the constitutional requirements for the position, and the process by which presidents may be removed from office. 7-2 The Evolution of the American Presidency • Trace the evolution of the presidency from “chief clerk” in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to near dominance over the political system. 7-3 Express Powers and Responsibilities of the distributePresident • Define the formal powers vested in the president under Article II of the Constitution, including the veto, orappointments, the pardon, and commander in chief of the armed forces. The Washington Post / Getty Images President Trump delivers his State of the Union Address in February 2019. 7-4 Implied Powers and Responsibilities of the THE WORLD’S OLDEST CONTINUOUS republican chief executive President office remains the U.S. presidency. Whereas most other countries divide political and symbolic functions among different officials,post, the • Discuss those implied powers of the presidency not Constitution combines both sets of functions into just one office: the spelled out in the Constitution, including the issuing of executive orders and agreements. president of the United States is both head of state and chief executive of the federal government. Unfortunately, the Constitution is deliberately 7-5 Presidential Resources vague on the meaning of the chief executive’s primary responsibility under Article II: To “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” • Describe the other individuals and offices in the executive branch that contribute to the modern For more than a century it was the U.S. Congress—disciplined by the presidency. two major political parties—that servedcopy, as the dominant institution of government. It was not until the twentieth century that the presidency 7-6 Important Presidential became the central institution of American political life, with its Relationships executive powers expanded to include vast legislative, judicial, economic, administrative,not and foreign policy responsibilities. Of • Assess how the power of the presidency is enhanced course, with that immense power comes an unprecedented level of by communications with the public, the Congress, and the media. accountability as well, especially in the modern era when the public watches the president’s every move in real time thanks to wall-to- wall televisionDo coverage and the power of the internet. Is presidential government in the early twenty-first century compatible with the Constitution and traditional notions of representative government? This much we know: the individual who occupies the White House will stand at the apex of international attention and power for as long as he or she remains president. 134 Chapter 7: Politics: Who Gets What, and How? Copyright ©2021 by SAGE Publications, Inc. This work may not be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher. 7-1 WHERE DO PRESIDENTS COME FROM? PRESIDENTIAL COMINGS AND GOINGS What career experiences have provided the most effective launching pads for the 44 separate individuals who have attained the presidency? Many vice presidents have gone on to imme- diate election as president, including most recently George H. W. Bush, vice president under Ronald Reagan, who in 1988 won the White House in his own right. Yet that form of promo- tion is actually quite rare. Although 5 of the last 14 vice presidents (up through Joseph Biden) eventually became president, among them only Bush won election as a sitting vice president. In fact, in the 132-year period between Vice President Martin Van Buren’s presidential vic- tory in 1836 and former vice president Richard Nixon’s election in 1968, every vice president who rose to the presidency did so (at least initially) as a direct consequence of the president’s untimely death in office. Although the U.S. Senate has been aptly described as a body of 100 individuals who all think they should be president, only 16 senators have eventually gone on to the White House. (And only three of those individuals—Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama— moved directly from the Senate to the presidency.) By comparison, 19 governors and 19 members of the House of Representatives eventually served as president. Three presidents— William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Andrew Johnson—served in all three of those jobs. Another nine presidents formerly served in another president’s cabinet. The military has also been something of a breeding ground for presidents: 29 had some military experience, and 12 served as generals. Fully 27 of the 45 chief executives have been lawyers, but thedistribute cohort of presidents also includes among its ranks a mining engineer (Herbert Hoover), a peanut farmer (Jimmy Carter), a baseball team executive (George W. Bush), and even a hat salesman (Harry Truman). The current president, Donald Trump, was previously a businessmanor and real estate magnate who built office towers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses, among other properties. And unlike these other businessmen, he held no public office before assuming the presidency. As a formal matter, the adage that “anyone can grow up to be president” is not literally true. Article II of the Constitution imposes three prerequisites on those who aspire to the Oval Office. Every president must be (1) a “natural-born” citizen, (2) 35 years of age or older, and (3) a resident within the United States for at least 14 years. Although the Con- stitution poses no other formal obstacles to the presidency,post, as a practical matter the first 44 individual holders of the office have tended to fall into several clearly identifiable cat- egories. All but one of these chief executives have been white males (Barack Obama is the lone African American president) between the ages of 42 and 77. All were born Christians, and nearly all identified themselves as Protestants at one point or another in their lifetimes. (John Kennedy was Catholic; Lyndon Johnson was mostly nonobservant in his adulthood.) Twenty-four were firstborn children in their families, and all but nine attended college (since 1897, every president except Harry Truman received some type of higher education degree). Some states have served as birthplacescopy, for a disproportionate share of presidents, including Virginia (eight), Ohio (seven), New York (five), and Massachusetts (four). Birthright has also played a role in helping an individual reach the Oval Office. Twenty-six presidents have been related to other presidents by blood; these relationships encompass two father–son com- binations (Johnnot and John Quincy Adams; George H. W. and George W. Bush), a grandfa- ther–grandson combination (William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison), and cousins (James Madison and Zachary Taylor were second cousins; Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt were fifth cousins). When George Washington, after serving two terms as the nation’s first president, declined Twenty-second Amendment Passed in toDo run again, he established an unwritten two-term precedent. No president challenged that 1951, this constitutional tradition until Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) sought a third term in 1940. FDR’s suc- amendment restricts any cessful election to four consecutive terms (he won in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944) led to pas- one person from being sage of the Twenty-second Amendment in 1951, which restricts any one person from being elected to the presidency “more than twice,” or elected to the presidency “more than twice,” or from acting as president for longer than two from acting as president and a half terms. Four chief executives were assassinated while in office, and four others died for longer than two and a of natural causes while still serving as president, including FDR, who died in 1945, only a few half terms. months into his unprecedented fourth term. 7-1 Where Do Presidents Come From? Presidential Comings and Goings 135 Copyright ©2021 by SAGE Publications, Inc. This work may not be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher. DEBATES OVER DIVERSITY Public Support for Diverse Presidential Candidates The 2016 presidential campaign was unique in various Gallup poll, among other well-known survey research ways, including its historically diverse pool of candidates companies, continues to ask questions that seek to gauge in both the Republican and the Democratic primary the public’s receptivity to such candidates.1 battles, spanning both genders and a variety of racial, ethnic, and other categories. Doubts still arise as to The public’s willingness to support diverse candidates for whether or not a majority of Americans are ready to president has gradually risen since Gallup began asking support such a diverse set of political candidates. The about these issues in 1937. Gallup started polling the public about its willingness to support a black presidential Gallup Poll Results candidate in 1958; at that time, only 37 percent expressed support for such a candidate. Of course, this type of Percentage of voters that would consider a presidential questioning became much more than just a hypothetical candidate who was: exercise with the election of President Obama in 2008 and Catholic (93%) the subsequent campaigns ofdistribute frontrunner Hillary Clinton in both 2008 and 2016. In June 2015, this same Gallup