Presidency

 Monday is fall break.  Read these items for Wednesday, October 20.

• Tocqueville, pp. 99-105, 262-276
• Federalist # 78.
• Wurman, ch. 6.
• Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, "The Joy of Jury Duty," The Atlantic, May 3, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/the-joy-of-jury-duty/275444/

In your reflections for next week, focus on suggestions for the rest of the course.  Are there any topics that we should discuss?  Do you have any ideas about class format or any other aspect of the course?

The presidency clip that everybody always remembers long after they have forgotten The Federalist.

The Constitution and Federalist

• ARTICLE II
• The 25th Amendment
• Presidential Succession Act
• Federalist 70
• "The ingredients which constitute energy in the Executive are, first, unity; secondly, duration; thirdly, an adequate provision for its support; fourthly, competent powers."
• Federalist 71
• . "It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another to be dependent on the legislative body. 
• Federalist 73
• "But the convention have pursued a mean in this business, which will both facilitate the exercise of the power vested in this respect in the executive magistrate, and make its efficacy to depend on the sense of a considerable part of the legislative body. Instead of an absolute negative, it is proposed to give the Executive the qualified negative already described. This is a power which would be much more readily exercised than the other."

Congress checking the president: NAIL:

• Nominations
• Appropriations
• Investigations/Impeachment
• Legislation

The presidency and national security:

• Federalist 8: "It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority."
• Democracy in America: "If executive power is weaker in America than in France, the reason for this lies perhaps more in circumstances than in the laws. It is generally in its relations with foreign powers that the executive power of a nation has the chance to display skill and strength. If the Union’s existence were constantly menaced, and if its great interests were continually interwoven with those of other powerful nations, one would see the prestige of the executive growing, because of what was expected from it and of what it did."
• Nuclear war

Three different concepts of the presidency TR, Taft, Wilson

• Roosevelt – stewardship
• Taft – constitutional
• Wilson – leadership of public opinion (from Monday)
• Trump: "Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.  But I don’t even talk about that because they did a report and there was no obstruction."  (video)