The Imperial Presidency
Schlesinger – 1973
The abuse of power by successive twentieth
century presidents but especially LBJ and
Nixon and it was all becoming too dangerous
as the presidency itself grew.
What were the bad characteristics
of a modern president?
• Unaccountable power
• Secrecy
• Illegality
All of these were hallmarks of the Imperial
President. Critics likened it to a royal court
and the president as a latter day emperor.
What created the Imperial
President?
• According to Schlesinger – the IP was
essentially a creation of foreign policy – a
continual state of war was deliberate from
the early 1940s to the 1990s and allowed
Presidents to take advantage of the
ambiguities and uncertanties of the
constitution in terms of War Making
Powers.
The Facts on War Making Powers
The intentions of the FFs
• Presidents lack the power to declare war.
• Congress can declare war.
• The use of the word ‘declare’ is significant in this debate and
carefully chosen by Madison in 1789. To ‘make’ war implies to
initiate and seek whereas to ‘declare’ implies to react to a threat of
an invasion froman enemy. The intentions of the FF was that
Congress would be PROACTIVE and initiate whereas the President
would be REACTIVE and just supervise.
• Abraham Lincoln shed more light on this issue in 1848 when spoke
against granting preventative war measures, when he said that if
you allowed a President to invade a neighbouring nation in
defence….. You allow him to make war at his pleasure.
Recent actions which have
thwarted this constitutional directive
• JFK – Cuba 1962
• Truman – South Korean invasion 1951
• FDR - swift reaction (approved) to Pearl
Harbour, full involvement in WWII
• Clinton – Serbia, Bosnia, Iran, Sudan
An age of crisis has altered the balance of
power and the system of checks
LBJ and the Tonkin Resolution
1964
• The unanimous endorsement of the House
to grant LBJ ‘all means necessary ‘ to
repeal any armed attack….. To prevent
further aggression – this symbolised an
abdication of power by Cobngress and
LBJ took it as a blank cheque
Nixon the ‘revolutionary president’
• Vietnam, Cambodia, Watergate, bugging,
wire tapping, demonisation of political
opponents. But Congress was better in
the Nixon years
• The Case Act 1972
• The War Powers Act 1973
• The Congressional Budget and
Impoundment Control Act 1974
• Impeachment of Nixon
The Imperilled Presidency
• Ford – ‘The presidency does not operate
effectively. That is a very serious development,
and is harmful to our overall national interests’
• Why? Erosion of party leadership
– Inability of presidents to control the federal
bureacracy
– Solutions? – beef up powers of party
leadership in Congress
– Make greater use of VP and Cabinet
– President to spend more time with members of
Comgress
Reagan and the post-imperial
presidency
• Reagans success undermines the musings of Ford. Reagan never
had control of the House and only had control of the Senate for 6
years. His controversy was the Iran- Contra affair, involving
Colonel Oliver North and John Poindexter, NSA and the two
pronged plan to sell arms to the Iranians and provide funde to
support the rebels in Nicaragua, both of which defied congressional
bans.
• The result was a Congressional Select Committee Report
concluding that, similar to a bygone imperial presidency era!
• Secrecy, deception and illegality
• Unelected officials disrespecting Congress
• Both defended themselves by saying they wanted no outside
interference
• The response was ‘Circumvention of Congress is self-defeating and
that is the theory of our Constitution
George Bush Senior, the
Cooperative Presidency
• GB Senior restored the post of NSA to policy
coordinator rather than policy initiator and was
determined to restore congress as an equal
partner in foreign policy making.
• E.g. 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait – he waited
for approval and got bipartisan support form
Capitol Hill as the Select Committee under
Reagan had requested. He sent troops in and
the 44 day conflict was all his from then on!
Clinton – an Imperial President?
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Gene Healy – ‘The Arrogance of Power Reborn’ he commented on The War Making
Power and the Treaty Making Power
The Treaty Making power is clear with 2/3 Senate approval for ratification. The
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to stop underground testing of nuclear weapons was
delayed for two years and then not approved. Howeever 5 days after this Madelaine
Albright assured foreign signatories that the USA would abide by it anyway and she
met with congressional outcry and calls that her comments were incorrect and not
binding on the USA.
The Kyoto Protocol – similar incident
Pursued military action in Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq – The
verbal defence of these policies always rested around ‘definitions’ of the word War ‘ it
does not meet the definition as we define it’ – Joe Lockhart
According to Healy – the Clinton Administration ‘ espoused a view of executive war
making authority that was as unconditional and unconstrained as that claimed by any
president in American History’ therefore according to Healy, Clinton deserves the
label of Imperial President
Others have written the opposite –’ The INCREDIBLE Shrinking President’
Schlesinger the original author said ‘ So much for the Imperial President’
GWB and the Imperial President
Reborn
• The Imperial President has arrived –
Helen Thomas 2002
• The Imperial President is Back – but who’s
watching – Christian Science Monitor 2003
• The Imperial Presidency reborn –
Schlesinger
• The Bush doctrine of Preventative War is
clearly unconstitutional
The Bush Doctrine – Preventative
War
• The transfer of excessive powers to the
president was what Lincoln warned
against in 1848. Many argued that Bush
wanted to bring back the Imperial
presidency but in the Economist 2005, ‘Et
tu, Brute’ it was claimed that
Washingtonians were determined to
loosen GWB’s grip on power
How much of this was Dick
Cheney’s creation?
• ‘Cheney is living in a time warp’ – Bruce Fein, a constitutional
lawyer. The fact is that GWB inherited a very powerful office and
Cheney acts as if he is still under the constraints of the legislation of
the 1970s. These acts have been outmanoueverd long before
GWB. Cheney’s aganda of restoring the Presidency to its proper
constitutional standing in the federal system of checks and balances
is misguided.
• Do you blame GWB in defending the nation or Congress in not
checking or evaluating the powers given to GWB after 9/11
• BUT Congress were more proactive later e.g. opposition the Patriots
Act, Guantanamo ban and wire tapping and the Supreme Courts
Declaration in Hamdan v. Rumsfield 2006
Conclusions and viewpoints- very
important to learn
• Schlesingers comments provide a useful opener for discussion of
presdential power, but the concept of the Imperial President is
flawed
• British academic – David Mervin 1990 – it’ was always something of
a cliché as it summons up images of the president as emperor, a
master of all he surveys, which clearly he is not’.
• Nixon in his memoirs – ‘The concept was a straw man created by
defensive congressmen and disillusioned liberals who idolised the
strong leadership of JFK and FDR. Now they had a strong
president….who was a Republican – and they were having second
thoughts.’
• Tanenhaus – Wall Street Journal 2002 – The IP is not a useful idea.
It is an epithet, dredged up whenever a president combines strength
with imagination. Presidents are , in sum, leaders , not rulers, which
means of course, they are not imperial at all.
………more views
• Richard Davies – University of Nevada –
‘whether Bush is exhibiting an IP air is in the eye
of the beholder’
• Dante Chinni – ‘The President is as imperial as
the congress, the press and the public allow him
to be’
The general debate raises similar to the arguments
on elective dictatorship – coined around the
same time