The Presidency: The Powers of the President

1) Ronald Reagan (Republican) served from 1981-1989. 2) George H. W. Bush (Republican) served from 1989-1993. 3) Bill Clinton (Democrat) served from 1993-2001. 4) George W. Bush (Republican) served from 2001-2009. 5) Barack Obama (Democrat) has served since 2009.

The powers of the president are his tasks, functions or duties. They are laid out in Article II of the Constitution. These powers have been held by George Washington and Barack Obama, and all the 41 presidents between. They are the formal sources of presidential power.

The president has the following powers: 1) To propose legislation to Congress. 2) To submit the annual budget to Congress. 3) To sign legislation passed by Congress. 4) To veto legislation passed by Congress. 5) To act as chief executive. 6) To nominate executive branch officials. 7) To nominate federal judges. 8) To act as commander-in-chief. 9) To negotiate treaties. 10) To pardon felons.

The president proposes legislation to Congress in a number of ways - most obviously through the annual State of the Union Address, when he addressed a joint session of Congress. This occurs each January, and it gives the president the chance to set out a legislative agenda for the coming year. But the president can propose legislation at any time by, for example, calling a press conference or making an announcement at some public event.

Some examples of presidential initiatives by President Obama are: 1) healthcare reform. 2) Wall Street regulation reform. 3) credit card regulation reform.

The annual federal budget is drawn up for the president by the Office of Management and Budget. The president then submits it to Congress. This is followed by a lengthy bargaining process between the president and Congress - especially lengthy if the president and Congress are controlled by different political parties.

Once bills have passed through a lengthy and complicated process in Congress, they land on the president's desk. He has a number of options, but the most likely is that of signing the bill into law. He will do this with bills for which he wishes to take some credit.

As well as signing bills into law, the president has the option of vetoing them. The regular veto is a much-used presidential weapon. Even the threat of it can be an important bargaining tool. Altogether, from George Washington (1789) through to the end of the presidency of George W. Bush (2009), presidents have used fewer than 1,500 regular vetoes, of which Congress has overridden 110, which means that presidents have been successful on vetoes 93% of the time. George W. Bush's success rate of just below 64% was the third lowest of any president.

To veto a bill, the president must: 1) veto the whole bill, not just parts of it. 2) return the bill to the house which first considered, within ten working days. 3) include a note (called a 'veto message') explaining any objections to.

It is then up to Congress to decide what to do. Congress may decide to: 1) do nothing - conceding that the president has won and that the bill will not become law. 2) attempt the override the president's veto. If Congress decides to attempt to override the president's veto then the bill must be passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses. But as we now know, this is exceedingly difficult to achieve. Presidents will often choose not to veto bills if they know that Congress will override them. To have a veto overridden by Congress is often politically damaging for the president.

George W. Bush vetoed the Child's Health Insurance Bill (which passed the House by 265-142 and the Senate by 64-30) on 12/12/2007. The House voted to override the veto but failed to achieve the required two-thirds majority. With 412 House members voting, 275 votes were required to override the veto. The House vote fell 10 votes short of that. There was therefore no point in the Senate voting as the veto was sustained. George W. Bush also vetoed the Food Conservation/Energy Bill (which passed the House by 306-110 and the Senate by 77-15) on 18/06/2008. Both houses achieved a two-third majority (the House voting 317-109 and the Senate voting 80-14) and the President's veto was overridden - the bill became law.

The president may also have the power of pocket veto at his disposal. But this can be used only after a session of Congress has adjourned. When Congress is in session, a bill becomes law after ten working days if the president neither signs nor vetoes it. But when Congress has adjourned and the president does not sign the bill, the bill is lost. This is called a pocket veto. Because Congress is no longer in session, pocket vetoes cannot be overridden. George W. Bush used on one pocket veto in his eight years in office (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008).

The opening words of Article II of the Constitution state that: "The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America". This makes the president the chief executive, in charge of running the executive branch of the federal government. This is a huge job and much of the day-to-day running is delegated to those who run the principal departments and agencies of the federal government.

The president is given the power to nominate hundreds of officials to the executive branch of the federal government. The most important nomination of these are the heads of the fifteen executive departments such as State, Treasury and Agriculture. At the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama nominated Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State, Arne Duncan to be Secretary of Education and Tom Vilsack to be Secretary of Agriculture. All of these nominations were subject by confirmation to the Senate by a simple majority. Hillary Clinton was confirmed 94 votes to 2.

Again, this involves the president making hundreds of appointments. Not only must he fill up vacancies on the Supreme Court, he must also do this for the federal trial and appeal courts. All judicial appointments are for life and therefore assume a special importance. The most important are those to the Supreme Court. During his first two years in office, President Obama made two appointments to the Supreme Court: Sonia Sotomayor (2009) and Elena Kagan (2010). President George W. Bush made only two appointments during his entire eight-year presidency, as did President Clinton.

This was a particularly significant power for the presidents office between the 1940s and the early 1990s - from Franklin Roosevelt (Democrat) to George H. W. Bush. With the USA fighting in the Second World War and then taking the lead for the West in the Cold War, the president's commander-in-chief role was significant during a period that also saw the Korean War, Vietnam War and the Gulf War, as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the presidency of George W. Bush - to name only the principal conflicts. Arguably, in the post-Cold War era, this power is less to the fore. But crises will still occur and the power is potentially an important one. Again, the president is checked by Congress's 'power of the purse' as well as its powers to declare war and conduct investigations.

The president's seal of office shows an eagle clutching a bundle of arrows in one claw, symbolising the commander-in-chief role, and an olive branch in the other to symbolise his peace-making role. President Obama negotiated the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia in 2010 - a major nuclear arms control agreement. Treaties must be ratified by the Senate by a two-thirds majority. The 2010 START was ratified 71-26 in December 2010. In 1999, the Senate rejected President Clinton's Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by a 48-51 vote.

President possess the power of pardon. Mostly used in uncontroversial cases, this power has occasionally been used in high-profile and controversial ones. The most notable was President Ford's (Republican) 1974 pardon of former president Richard Nixon (Republican). President Clinton caused controversy when he issued 140 pardons on his last day in office in January 2001. President George W. Bush used the power sparingly, issuing only 189 in eight years.