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Originally Posted by overgrowthegovt
Nay. The bigger the fools in power, the more susceptible they are to manipulations, both good and bad. ultimately it is no better to have an easily manipulable figurehead than it is to have an overly bullheaded one.
When? When will the people be free to govern themselves, and be able to take responsibility for themselves?
While Obama may be able to keep them on a short leash due to the fact that most of the house/senate are in the same party as him.. you realize that the President actually has no authority over the House or the Senate correct?Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonrider
I've said it before and I'll say it again. The president is not responsible for everything nor does he have power over all. Therefore all things good, or negative cannot all be attributed to him.
We should be expecting a lot of attempted philibusters from the right over the next 4 years.
I know the President has no Constitutional authority over the House or the Senate, but the President has some political power that he can use for agenda control and a greater bully pulpit than the congress. Any control he can exert will be more about politics than about Constitutional authority. It will be a challenge.Quote:
Originally Posted by daihashi
The problem I have with your statement is that you place too much of your expectations on the presidents shoulders when the government does not work that way.Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonrider
Leveraging your position against congress is a tool available by that office however that is not how you use your executive power nor is it the means in which you should govern.
Do you mean IDEALLY the government does not work that way, or do you mean in REALITY the government does not work that way? Because I think in reality the House, Senate and President often have competing political interests that are not perfectly aligned, even if they are controled by the same party, and DEFINITELY if they are controled by different parties. The Constitutional systems of checks and balances provide different kinds of institutional leverage, for example the veto and the veto override. And political power that comes from things like election mandates and popularity provides another kind of leverage. The different branches of government definitely use their leverage to get their way when they can.Quote:
Originally Posted by daihashi
I may be placing too many expectations on the President's shoulders. And who knows how it will really turn out? But I think President Obama has more political clout right now than Congress, and I think he also has more political interest in keeping a more centrist approach than the Congress right now. So I think he will probably use some of that clout to steer the Congress on a more centrist path than they would follow on their own.
I'm with you, Dragonrider. If there's anyone who thinks the government doesn't work by unofficial influence-pressing and exerting their interests on others, that's someone who's not read enough history or watched government actually function. I hope we'll have less of that influence on the executive and legislative branches under Obama from lobbyists and special interests (who wrote the book on how that works). But influence-pressing is what politicians do--in all directions--to get things done and to get their own way. LBJ was a master at pressing and influencing. So were Kennedy and Clinton. Reagan and Bush II are said to have been very effective at picking up the phone and pressing a few key senators and congressman to get them to vote their way on things, promising various actions in return. Carter, Bush I and Ford were said to be less inclined to exert power this way.
I think this influence-pressing business is why matters will still be slow even under a same-party government. Obama will move from the left to the center, as we've already seen him touch on. All executives and leaders have to do this to be able to reach out to both extremes of those they work with, and in the new president's case, he wants to do that anyway because the last administration was so diametrically opposed to functioning in bipartisan fashion. When the center is the anchor point, that makes the extreme-leaners underneath more contentious. So there'll be a lot of pulling from those ends of the spectrum on legislation. It's going to be Obama's ability to influence those extreme factions that'll prevent filibusters and keep legislation moving. Be interesting to see if he can do that. They almost always give a new president a honeymoon where everyone cooperates and gets along nicely before they start fussing and holding out like three-year-olds. Tell you what, though, they'd better get their acts together to do something about this economy.