On The American Presidency

Hi all --

Lots going on. Earlier this month I lost my father. He was 95 and is definitely in a better place. Still. When I got calls about the inheritance, it felt like a chapter of life had closed, that things will never be the same.

Also, my car got broken into. You can imagine what thoughts have been racing through my mind.

Below I've posted a lecture for my online Federal Government class about why we should even study the Presidency. I hope you enjoy reading it. I think it's really important because some people are going to say that nothing could possibly change and the government is always the same no matter who is in charge. And I think that has to be met with a forceful reaction. Ignorance is not bliss. It has consequences for those who cannot afford to be ignorant. We need people to be attentive to power.

If you like what you read and want to help me out, I would love more subscribers and more shares. I'm far from a perfect writer, but I know my contribution has value. I'd like more readers. Thank you in advance.

On the American Presidency

So this week is dedicated to understanding the Presidency of the United States. And I think we need to stop and reflect on why we need to cover this topic. We can start with a more radical question: Why even bother with civics courses like this one? It's a free country and that freedom should be felt, no? When we sign up for an education, we're signing up for a path to a career. We get the training, the knowledge, and then we can make money and do what we like. If government is running well enough, it runs in the background and we don't have to think about it. Our primary responsibility is to ourselves, since we have to survive. Why should we waste time exploring laws, rights, and history when we need to feed ourselves?

There are many answers to these questions, but the one I wanted you to focus on the first week is crucial. The thinking, planning, and power government has for the sake of "We the People" are unlike anything else. If you want to fight poverty in this country, you absolutely depend on government. Where are you going to get the data you need? How do you get support for improving the lives of hundreds, if not thousands? Can you construct public-private partnerships that identify problems before they even manifest? You watched and read about the California wildfires. How were pilots and helicopters specialized for firefighting available? How much could proper zoning and regulation have prevented? What entities specifically can be entrusted with the water supply?

People will say you don't need government. I urge them to look carefully at any given issue and think about the work done on it. Where did that work come from? How do we even know of that work? When it comes to accurate health information, the National Institutes of Health has published scientific papers on their site, free to all to access and read. Many who work for the government have a deep desire to serve this country, including those they disagree with. Libraries and schools do a lot for people who would rather be anywhere else. And then there's roads, hospitals, deposit insurance, mail service, air traffic control, water and sewage, cybersecurity, firefighting, park rangers, museums and so much more. I grew up with a lot of people who said "I can survive" and conveniently forgot how many things helped them. I also grew up with people who thought their technical expertise meant they didn't have to know how government or society worked. While I certainly believe we can debate the size and scope of government, and while there are interesting ideas in political theory that deny the need for it at all, I don't think we should take what we have for granted. And what we have is much deeper than firefighting equipment or mail service. It's the capacity to see what we need and the means to act accordingly.

With that in mind, why talk about the Presidency? It isn't immediately intuitive; I myself am partial to activists who emphasize that the best sort of political activity is not electoral. So much change can happen from building networks which bring people together in unexpected ways. So much change can happen from things like mutual aid. You may not know anything about the Presidency, but you know election season. Endless polls, endless hype, media everywhere consumed by what we call "horse race" journalism, as if candidates are racing each other instead of the country making a decision. Candidates may not say much, but messianic expectations are placed on them. One may solve all social problems, another may lead us into a golden age of prosperity. People become fanatical over who wins and loses, and while they may be correct in their reasoning, it is hard to separate their fear and anger from the content they consume.

In short: the Presidency does not seem like a serious institution. Elections do matter, and the how of elections matters considerably. Since the how is an absolute mess–can you really base your vote on a commercial claiming someone "wasted taxpayer dollars?"–we need to think through why we should talk about the Presidency at all. The rough outline of my answer parallels what I said about government in general. It isn't about what government or the Presidency actually do. It's about the thinking, planning, and means they (but not only they!) possess. If we don't reflect on these things, we are in danger of not understanding what power we do or don't have.

Let's go back in time a bit. Back to Patrick Henry, who famously said "Give me liberty or give me death." He wasn't thrilled with the proposed Constitution creating a President. After all, the colonies had just liberated themselves from a king. Here he complains that the President, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, has far too much power. The writers of the Constitution, according to Henry, place too much faith in the President being good:

"Shew me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty? I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt. If your American chief, be a man of ambition, and abilities, how easy is it for him to render himself absolute! The army is in his hands, and, if he be a man of address, it will be attached to him; and it will be the subject of long meditation with him to seize the first auspicious moment to accomplish his design..."

Against Henry, one can say the United States went centuries without a President trying to take control of the army and eliminate his opposition. But the problem was real in the early republic, and some might say the problem is all too real either now or in our near future.

The reason for giving the President the ability to marshal the armed forces was Shays' Rebellion. People rose up against the government and the states were barely able to put the insurrection down. This made it seem necessary to put executive power–the power to execute the laws–in a solitary figure. The Framers argued whether the executive power should be vested in several persons, but the notion that one person alone should have to bear responsibility won. Hamilton noted that they could act with "secrecy" and "dispatch," able to quickly and effectively deal with emergencies.

But the early republic was also obsessed with the Roman Republic, and the prospect of Caesar was on their minds in a way that can inform us today. A President who commands the military does have a lot of power, but it did not end the republic then. Caesar, though, was not simply a popular former general. The Roman Senate refused to share the wealth and land the army got from conquering the known world. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Caesar stepped into a situation where there was extreme discontent with the ruling classes. It wasn't hard to make himself more popular, a so-called champion of the people, and essentially make the institutions of the Roman Republic useless.

So I think it's important to think about Henry's comment about depending on good men. Someone like Caesar shows how duplicitous one can be when given enormous power. They can lie to the masses and exploit the weaknesses of other politicians. It isn't as simple as control over the army. There are other levers of power, most of them not exactly formal, which they can use to their advantage.

This isn't to say that the formal powers of the President aren't a big deal. The ability to veto legislation can make a divided Congress absolutely useless. Nominating judges and Cabinet officials obviously has huge consequences for the law and the way government runs. How the President conducts diplomacy determines where we as Americans can travel. And the ability to order troops where they want them, practically speaking, is the ability to declare war.

But it is the informal powers of the Presidency which speak volumes nowadays. By "informal," I also mean the power which comes from being the country that has run the post-WWII order to its benefit. The country that is by far and away the most powerful on Earth. The President has a nuclear arsenal which can annihilate all life on earth. The President has incredible power over the media, and some Presidents are particularly expert at manipulating it. Simply by declaring an interest in something, a President can get attention to it, and if that President owns a company or their own cryptocurrency, they can reap financial rewards. The President is the leader of their party, and how they shape the party has cultural and political ramifications. It practically determines what we can and can't vote for. The industries a President favors will flourish, and the ones they don't like may disappear entirely. And how the federal workforce responds to the President is no small deal. Whether or not federal agencies identify threats or treat people with dignity depends in large part on the tone the White House gives. When President Obama called ISIL "the JV team," a signal was given to those working on the problem to ignore it. They ignored it to the point that ISIL controlled much of Iraq and Syria.

This is incredible power. Too much power, you might think. It really requires someone who strives to be good to be trusted with it. If a President wants to lie or be reckless, the frightening thing is how many people will side with them in the hopes of being their army. People don't want to be on the losing side. So while Henry may not have been quite correct in the year 1788, he did articulate something we have to know now. The Presidency is a lot of power–its almost like the President always has their own army–and we do ourselves no favors by pretending we can ignore it.