government outlines

8/8/2019 Government Outlines

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Bryce Griffith

Period 3

11/30/10

Federalist 70 (Alexander Hamilton)

y forceful president is essential to good government.y National defense, sound administration of the law, and the protection of property rights all depend upon the vitality of

the Presidency.

y an energetic president best protects liberty when faction, anarchy, and the excessive ambitions of others threaten ity energetic Executive branch: unity, sufficient powers, and a certain degree of secrecy.y one Chief Executive: Two people, granted equal power and authority, are bound to differ.y Personal ambition can never be totally subdued, and a dual Presidency would be marked by dissension, weakened

authority, and the growth of conflicting factions.

y It is unnecessary and unwise to establish an Executive branch that would make this form of divisiveness possible.y Conflict and argument are dangerous in the Executive branch where decisions must be prompt--- vs. Congress:

differences of opinion force discussion and deliberation. --helps to prevent coercion by majority.

y Legislative passes laws Executive branch executes laws; a law once passed should be executed promptly. Furthermore,in case of war, when so much depends upon a strong Presidency, divisiveness could destroy the national security.

y The same arguments against having two presidents can be made in opposition to an Executive council. In either a pluralor council form of Executive faults and defects are more easily concealed, and no person can be held responsible.

y matter of expensey people who want council think it should be large - their salaries would be too great an expense for the nation to

tolerate.

y Second, before the Constitution was written, intelligent men agreed that New York's single Executive was one of themost admirable features of state government.

The PresidencyFocus Of Leadership (Clinton Rossiter)I. For what men and groups does the president provide leadership?A. Leader of Executive Branch.1. Has twin powers of appointment and removal.

2. Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 and succession of Reorganization Acts have given the president more of arole of administrative leadership.3. Most important task is to set a high personal example of integrity and industry.

B. Leader of the forces of peace and war.1. Dominant leader in diplomacy and foreign affairs.

2. In peacetime he raises, trains, supervises, and deploys forces that Congress is willing to maintain.3. All major strategic decisions are his to make in times of war.

C. Considered to be the leader of Congress (through intimate association).

1. Acts as a kind of prime minister.2. Must be able to contribute his thoughts to and get along with Congress.D. Leader of his party.1. Is the ultimate facilitator of loyalty and cohesion in his party.E. Leader of public opinion.1. Serves as the nations moral spokesman.

2. In Wilsons words, he is the spokesman for the real sentiment and purpose of the country.F. Leader of the rituals of American democracy.

1. His powers are given a new dimension of authority, because he is the symbol of our sovereignty, continuity,and grandeur as a people.

G. Leader of the free nations.


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1. So long as America remains rich and powerful, the president will have a direct effect on the freedom and stability ofother countries.

Presidential Power (Richard E. Neustadt)Presidential Power

In America a presidents leadership is how weak or strong he is.We also base judgments upon images of office that re far removed from the reality.

Choose presidents based on image along with their party.Influence on GovernmentPresidency includes 2,000 men and women.Presidents job is also to sharpen the spirit and values of people.Power means his influence: how to get a bill through Congress, how to settle strikes, how to quiet Cabinetfeuds or how to stop Suez.

LeadershipEveryone expects the President to do something about everything. President is like a clerk.Executive officials need decisions, and political protection, and a referee for fights, which is where the Presidentcomes in.President faces demands for aid and service from five or more or less distinguishable sources: The Executiveofficialdom, from congress, from his partisans, from citizens at large, and from abroad.

Power Problems

Presidential power problems will undoubtedly continue like they have in the previous decades.

The President has a lot of people to please and especially keep organized.There is never assured support from any quarter for the next president in term.Presidential PoliticsOur founding fathers did not foresee the deep involvement of the presidency in partisan politics.Presidential parties help to identify and translate the political demands of popular majorities into governmentaction. Presidents should be able to use their role as party chief to bridge the constitutional gap between thepresidency and congress that the separation of powers created.

Before becoming party chief, politicians must capture their partys presidential nomination.

The Presidential Character (James David Barber)I. Presidential Character and Styley The total character of the person who occupies the White House that is the determinant of presidential performance.y The presidency is much more than an institution. It is a focus of feelings.y In general, popular feelings about politics are low-key, shallow, casual.y For example, the vast majority of Americans knows virtually nothing of what Congress is doing and cares less. Thepresidency is different.y The presidency is the focus for the most intense and persistent emotions in the American polity.y The president is a symbolic leader, the one figure who draws together the peoples hopes and fears for the political

future. On top of all his routine duties, he has to carry that off--or fail.I. Personality Shapes Performancey First, a presidents personality is an important shaper of his presidential behavior on nontrivial matters.y Second, presidential personality is patterned. His character, world view, and style fit together in a dynamic package

understandable in psychological terms.

y Third, a presidents personality interacts with the power situation he faces and the national "climate of expectationsdominant at the time he serves.

y The tuning, the resonance-or lack of it-between these external factors and his personality sets in motion the dynamicsof his presidency. Fourth, the best way to predict a presidents character, world view, and style is to see how they wereput together in the first place. That happened in his early life, culminating in his first independent political success.

I. The Pattern of Character, World View, and Styley Style is the president's habitual way of performing his three political roles: rhetoric, personal relations, and homework.

A president's world view consists of his primary, politically relevant beliefs, particularly his conceptions of socialcausality, human nature, and the central moral conflicts of the time

A. Character is the way the president orients himself toward life-not for the moment, but enduringly. Character is theperson's stance as he confronts experience. And at the core of character, a man confronts himself. The presidentsfundamental self-esteem is his prime personal resource.

B. The first baseline in defining presidential types is activity-passivity. How much energy does the man invest in hispresidency? Lyndon Johnson went at his day like a human cyclone, coming to rest long after the sun went down.Calvin Coolidge often slept eleven hours a night and still needed a nap in the middle of the day.


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I. Four Types of Presidential CharacterA. Active- Postive:

ADAPTIVE: self-confident; flexible; creates opportunities for action; enjoys the exercise of power, does not take himself tooseriously; optimistic; emphasizes the "rational mastery" of his environment; power used as a means to achieve beneficial results.

Thomas Jefferson,F. D. Roosevelt,H. Truman,

J. F. Kennedy,G. Ford,

G. W. Bush(?)A. Active- Negative:

COMPULSIVE: power as a means to self-realization; expends great energy on tasks but derives little joy; preoccupied withwhether he is failing or succeeding; low self-esteem; inclined to rigidity and pessimism; highly driven; problem managingaggression.

John Adams,W. Wilson,H. Hoover,A. Lincoln,L. B. Johnson,R. Nixon

A. Passive- Positive:COMPLIANT: seek to be loved; easily manipulated; low self-esteem is overcome by ingratiating personality; reacts rather than

initiates; superficially optimistic. James Madison,

W. H. Taft,W. Harding,R. Reagan,Bill Clinton

A. Passive- Negative:WITHDRAWN: responds to a sense of duty; avoid power; low self-esteem compensated by service to others; responds ratherthan initiates; avoids conflict and uncertainty. emphasizes principles and procedures and an aversion to politicking.

George Washington,C. Coolidge,D. Eisenhower

The Presidency and Political Parties (Sidney M. Milkis)

1. Presidenta. Non-partisan

b. Checking and controlling violence of factionc. Not elected by party, however nominated

2. New Deal Party Politicsa. Reordering of the political process

b. Changing party system to a national level3. Presidential Reform

a. Presidential leadership to help parties4. Decline of the American Party System

a. Civil service reform set out by FDR as an effort to replace partisan politics with executive administrationb. Presidency developed into an elaborate means of stimulating political parties

5. Lyndon Johnsons Great Society and the Transcendence of Partisan Politicsa. Extension of the problematic liberalism set forth by FDR

6. Richard Nixon, Nonpartisanship, and the Demise of the Modern Presidency


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a. Until 1960s, opponents of welfare were against modern presidencyb. Nixon viewed party system as an obstacle to effective governancec. 1970s led to scholars speaking of the demise of the presidency as well as the party system

7. The Reagan Presidency and the Revitalization if Party Politicsa. Reagan broke with the traditional modern president and identified closely with his party

b. Party and president can have a beneficial relationshipc. Party programs come into play

8. Reagans Legacy and the Accession of George Busha. Persistence of divided government itself retarded the restoration of partisanship to the presidency

9. Bill Clinton and the Politics of Divided Democracya. Forging new and sometimes bipartisan coalitions around an agenda the moves beyond the polarized left-right debate

by appealing to independents

Ex Parte MilliganI. Issue

a.Does an armed conflict within the United States justify imposing military law? b. Court had to decide whetherLincoln hadfollowed the law and the Constitution when heauthorized martial lawII. Basic Understandinga.For five men, this case literally meant life or death. b. In constitutional law, it provides guidance about the extent of legalguarantees in

wartime.III. Backgrounda.In 1864, during the Civil War, the Union Army arrested Lambdin Milligan and four other men in Indiana.b.Charged with plotting to steal weapons and free Confederate soldiers held in prisonerof war camps.c.Pleaded under habeas corpusd. President Lincoln issued a number of orders putting certain civilian areas in the Northunder military control and imposing military lawe.Enabled the military to arrest and try civilians whom they suspected of being disloyal.

f.Constitution explicitly guarantees people the right to go to court and have a judgedetermine if it is legal for them to be held, habeas corpusIV. Decision

a.Supreme Court held that the President had gone too farb.The Court stressed:i. Indiana was not under attack ii. Milligan was not connected with Confederate military service, nor was he a prisonerof war.iii. He was arrested at home, not on a military maneuver.iv. The courts in Indiana were open and functioning normally during the war. Thegovernment could have charged him with treason and tried him in the courts, where he would have had the right to a jury and theright to a fair trial, under the Constitution.

I. Resulta.Milligan was released from prison and never convicted by a civilian court

Constitutional Democracy and Bureaucratic Power (Peter Woll)I. The bureaucracy reflects the fragmentation of our political system; it is often the battleground for the three branches ofgovernment as well as for outside interests.

A. The Constitution does not mention the bureaucracy, which has become a pawn in a power struggle between Congress and thePresident, as well as the courts and other interests.B. Review of Hamilton's argument for executive control of administration, from Federalist 72:C. Administrators should be assistants to the President; therefore chosen at President's appointment and subject to President'ssuperintendence.D. President thus should control, and be responsible for, administrative action.E. In actuality, both Congress and the President have constitutional responsibilities for the bureaucracy:II. Congress: retains primary control; creates and destroys agencies; controls appropriations; defines agencies' jurisdictions;

approves high level appointments; places them within or outside of executive branch.


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A. The incentive is to make agencies independent, and thus beyond control of the President.III. President: appoints officials (with Senate advice and consent); attempts to control and coordinate (because President is onlyofficial elected nationally) control through patronage has declined.IV. Courts: Judicial review of administrative decisions, based on the rule of law, limits legislative and executive control over thebureaucracy.

A.This prevents over-control by either branch.B. It also acts as a check on the agencies themselves, which often combine various functions of government in the same

(unelected) hands.

The Rise of the Bureaucratic State (James Q. Wilson)

I. The bureaucracy has been created as a response to private-sector demands.A. It is thus not a conspiracy by government officials to increase their power (this argues against part of

Fiorina's argument, selection 49).

B. Pluralism in the U.S. has affected the bureaucracy by dividing it into clientele sectors.II. Wilson's Reasoning: History of bureaucracy; absence of its mention in Constitution

A. original bureaucracy was small and had limited dutiesB. growth comes in 20th century

III. Ways in which political power may be gathered undesirably into bureaucratic hands:A. growth of an administrative apparatus so large that it becomes immune from popular control;

1. 19th century growth due to demands for service;2. After 1861, agencies were created to respond to demands from specific interests: Depts. of

Agriculture, Labor, Commerce.

3. These agencies were not to subsidize or regulate these areas, but to promote their interests.B. by placing power over the bureaucracy in private hands

1. examples are local licensing boards2. New Deal is the high water mark of bureaucratic clientelism3. The principal client group remains the states and cities4. Recently (since the 1960s), Federal monies have been spent less in response to the claims of

distinct and organized clients, and more in ways that create clients.

5. The Madisonian system makes it easy for delegation of public power to private interests to gounchallenged, and then bureaucratic clientelism becomes self-perpetuating. - Bureaucracies andbenefits are hard to stop once they're in place.

C. By allowing bureaucracies discretionary authority that can be exercised independent of the public good;1. Agencies are granted authority to make binding decisions without any clear standards of choice.

IV. Wilson on Regulatory Politics:A. The Madisonian system can be temporarily suspended due to a crisis, scandal, etc.: -- "Exceptional majorities

[rather than Madisonian coalitions of interests] propelled by a public mood and led by a skillful policyentrepreneur take action that might not be possible under ordinary circumstances."

B. Consequences:1. Agencies are created with broad mandates of power, exacting standards, or both;2. The agency will then seek to expand its authority further, from a variety of motives: to satisfy

demands of the regulated industry to be protected; to attend to unanticipated side effects of initialregulatory action; to discover the meaning of vague statutory language; or to respond to new

constituencies.

3. Regulatory agencies are slow to respond to change: they lack incentive.

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