Executive Branch I

Questions on the assignment? 

Office hour today: 1:15-2:15

For next time:

• Reagan "Evil Empire" speech
• Noonan memoir (on Canvas)

On a lighter note... 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."

Presidential staff, the Waldman reading, and democratic writing

Congress checking the president: NAIL:

• Nominations
• Appropriations
• Investigations/Impeachment
• Legislation

Informal pressure:  Harry Reid and Gates

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."

Complexity of the national security establishment

Broken Links:

• Stephen Hadley
• Mike Mullen, chair of JCS
• Regional and functional combatant commanders

Gates

The secretary of defense is second only to the president in the military chain of command (neither the vice president nor the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is in the chain at all), and any order to American forces worldwide goes from the president to the secretary directly to the combatant commanders (although as a practical matter and a courtesy, I routinely asked the chairman to convey such orders). More important than any of the meetings, the secretary makes life-and-death decisions every day—and not just for American military forces. Since 9/11, the president has delegated to the secretary the authority to shoot down any commercial airliner he, the secretary, deems to be a threat to the United States. The secretary can also order missiles fired to shoot down an incoming missile. 

 Nuclear war steps

Nuclear war

Tom Nichols: "In 1973, an Air Force nuclear-missile officer named Harold Hering asked a simple question during a training session: “How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?” The question cost him his career. Military members are trained to execute orders, not question them.