Jackson's View

Justice Jackson provides us with three categories in which the president has the ability to exercise power, and he ranks them in order of how legitimate that power usage is. First the President may act with express or implied consent from Congress giving him most legitimacy. Second, he may act when congress has been silent on the issue, and third, he can go against express congressional orders with this category having no legitimacy at all. Jackson believes the limits of the President are determined by the Congress and that Congress is the only one that can give the President power and reduce its own. In this way, the Executive branch answers to the Legislative Branch as a way to limit the Executive Branch's power.

It also seems to me that Jackson is saying that the Court exists as a protector of Congressional rights in certain situations. And that the court must be the last institution to be allowed to change. The court is there to ensure it keeps check on Presidential Power that is not always kept in check by Congress. And by protecting the Executive Branch from receiving too much power, it is in effect protecting Congressional power that Congress may have given away unconstitutionally.

Jackson's view is similar to the framing of the constitution. He believes that power should not be shared and the Congressional Powers must be kept separate from Executive powers and he makes clear that the Executive Branch has no power to legislate or go beyond its means as enumerated in the Constitution. The government must now ensure that it uses its power properly and that it does not go beyond that. IF they do, the Court should be there to stop the offender and protect the victim.

War, Makes For Some Decent Movies

Let me first start off by saying that Obama is my favorite president of this decade, and Bill Clinton was certainly my favorite President in the '90s. And both of these President's start off their respective, let's call them "intervention" speeches, with a brief explanation of where in the world we were even sending our military. This follows a recent tradition in American warfare dating back to Vietnam where we seem to be fighting wars in places that our general public has neither heard of nor can even locate on a map. A large theme of their speeches includes beating it into the viewer's mind that we have a mandate to do this. In both cases, the President at the time emphasizes the support and authorization that we have both from the UN and NATO. Clinton's speech however does not really include a name-calling section where he calls Milosevic certain nicknames. He maintains that Milosevic has legitimacy to lead his people, but that he has gone too far and is violated the terms of previous peace accords and resolutions. In Obama's case, the Libyan leader Gaddafi has indeed lost legitimacy to lead, and rightfully portrayed as a tyrant and a terrorist. Both President's stress the need to only be a defense force, not an attack and occupy force. This is vital, in my opinion for keeping the American Public at your side. If they know we are only using our superior technology and relatively safe bombing raids that only cost a bit of money but rarely any lives, then the public remains happy and supportive.

Barack Obama, in his speech, lays out the reasons why we should intervene in some countries and not others. Obama accurately states, with an odd level of truth, that the US just cannot be counted on to intervene in every place where people are being suppressed. He goes on to say that we should not use that excuse to never act on preventing a massacre of the innocent. This is exactly the position I wish all President's would take. No lying, just the truth about our capabilities. Obama explained how he was not going to sit by and wait for pictures of mass graves before acting. This position was also taken by Clinton in that he explained that he was not going to wait for another holocaust to occur before acting. And he presented the hypothetical "what if we went to war with Germany sooner? How many lives could have been saved." In my opinion these are all great reasons for going to war to protect civilians.

These speeches don't exactly present a doctrine with points, although they do outline a general foreign policy belief and both are similar. Both Presidents are willing to intervene when both our interests and the lives of innocent people are at stake, but both are also reluctant to repeat the mistakes of previous Presidents (Bush and Bush, for Somalia and Iraq respectively) in putting boots on the ground and taking a bigger responsibility than solely defense of people. The problem now is what to do with the other countries experiencing the same rebellion with the same overbearing, murderous governments. My mind goes to Bahrain, a country with few American interests. I doubt that the Americans or anyone will intervene here because of its little use to anybody. The reason we went into Libya is because both the Arab League and the Opposition asked us to. I think Obama will play this one very carefully to make sure nothing goes wrong and so he retains his military bargaining for the rest of his Presidency. Had all this happened during the Bush presidency, he would not have been able to send troops without a massive world outcry because bush had failed so miserably in Iraq.

Judicial Nominations

Today the judicial nomination system is...well...a little useless. Yes there have been a few examples in the last few years such as Harriet Myers or Robert Bork that haven't exactly worked out well for the President, but in general, the nomination process is more based on party politics than it is on merit for the Judicial System. Today, a President will search around the country not for a justice who exhibits great judicial qualities but for someone who exhibits an ideology similar to that of the makeup of the Senate. For Barack Obama, this was easy, as the entire Senate was comprised of democrats (in my dreams right?). But in general, the President selects a nominee that will probably get through the Senate and then gives a little deference to the BAR Association, and asks them to rate nominees which except for Clarence Thomas, they always rate well qualified.

In my opinion, this isn't how it should be, but of course it won't change. I feel like the President shouldn't even be the one to nominate justices. The process just gets so political and so partisan it takes what really should be in the process out of it. I don't believe we have a competent court now and I think the process and the vetting of the court nominees is to blame for this. I don't even know how to fix it, I just know it is broke.

Delegate or Trustee?

In my honest opinion, I believe that the President should only act as a trustee when he represents the people of the United States. A President that follows the wishes of the public of the country, will follow an incorrect path in my opinion. Why do you ask? Because the American people, on average, are dumb. The American person is not mentally or intellectually equipped to know what is best for the country. I think the American people should vote to elect a President that they can trust will do the right thing, not what the American people will say they want because more often than not, Americans will be wrong. The cons to this are that the president is afforded a lot of power in just doing what he wants and not being able to be directly checked by the American people except in elections which will only occur once.

The President should really strive to represent his own political party because if they do that, I believe more things will get done. Reason being, I believe that moderation rarely works...if we always moderate, we will stay the exact same. We need something extreme in order to make the country the way it needs to be. Unfortunately this means that this Presidents will rarely get reelected as people will feel disenchanted if they arent represented.

Lastly I believe that the President should be more on the side of substantive representation as I believe the President needs to realize political needs of constituents, yet not desires. Needs are different than wants and I think a president should distinguish from the two and make his or her best decision without regard to public opinion.

Presidential Theories of Power.

There were some real differences in the Presidential philosophies between President's Taft and and Roosevelt. First we have President Roosevelt's philosophy that a President could, and should do everything in order to serve the people of the United States as long as the Constitution does not specifically forbid it. President Taft on the other hand believed that the presidency is equal in importance to the rest of the branches of government and the President should only exercise powers that are directly stated and enumerated in the Constitution.

The pluses to Roosevelt's theory is that he could be a very involved and vocal president. He could be a President that gets shit done. Roosevelt could use powers that aren't specifically denoted in the Constitution and use them to unilaterally to advance his agenda. Unfortunately, the downsides include mostly a very very thin stretching of the Constitution and a possible public backlash for being much too strong and being "out of touch".

Taft on the other hand, had a few pluses as well, including the fact that he allows himself to work within the check and balance system. There would be a lot of advising between the government branches going on and the government would probably be making compromises left and right. Negatively however, Nothing that Taft truly wanted to get done would probably ever get done because the power specifically enumerated to the President is few and far between.

My personal thoughts on this matter are more in line with Roosevelt although on a few issues I agree more with Taft. When it comes to Legislation, I believe that the President should have a bit more of a role in attempting to pass bills because a President's agenda and how he gets elected is big face of our Government and I believe the President doesn't have enough power to fulfill his promises and enact his agenda. When it comes to military control however, I believe that the President should exercise less power in their control. Troop usage should be primarily left up to a wide body of people and voices (in this case, Congress) and the President should stick to his constitutional duties under this issue. My overall view then perhaps is a hybrid between the two view points as, on most issues, I would really prefer a very very strong executive but on a few issues, especially where lives of people are at stake, I prefer to have a weaker executive in these areas

State of the Union

Despite the fact that this speech was probably one of the most boring speeches in the history of Barack Obama, it was certainly an effective and dare I say, a safe speech. Not that I expected there to be much specificity but the fact remains that there was none to very little of it. One of the big things that stuck out in my mind was the President's promise to veto any bill with an earmark attached. Putting aside my support for the earmarking process in general, I think this promise is just a little bit of a pander to the public on something that they don't even understand. There is no question, however, that the President has the formal power to do as he as promised through his enumerated power to veto bills. The question is whether or not he will do so. In my opinion, this is either a legitimate move to cut down on spending, or it gives the President a nice excuse in which to veto legislation that may come with Republican authors.

The second most prominent and certainly the most lasting element of the speech was Salmon.

Moving beyond food, also known as "fish" to animal rights folk, The President also mentioned his desire to start investing the country in green technologies and creating green jobs. This cannot be done by the President alone however. This can only be done by an act of congress that will need to be signed by the President. All that Obama may do is recommend a budget to congress with his priorities in it and outlined. The President can only use his influence in this matter.

The President also made clear his desire to put a spending freeze at next years levels for the next five years. Unfortunately, not only is this a poor idea, but one that the President has the power to do. All he really has to do is veto any bill which adds to the Budget Deficit. This is an issue both parties are likely to get behind.

This speech was an effective demonstration of how President Obama wishes to start compromising with the Republican Party. He gives a lot of power here to be left up to the Congress and reserves some for making his own decisions.

Changing the Presidency

Contrary to popular belief in this country, I do not believe our governmental system is flawless. Yes, it has withstood a huge test of time and generally works and is accepted by a large portion of America, but I believe that our system that serves us well does not necessarily serve us the best. The Presidency, as laid out in Article II of the Constitution is terribly flawed. In some areas, our executive has too much power such as his ability to wage war as he or she needs no initial congressional approval. In the area of legislation however, I believe the President doesn't have enough power in the creation and approval of legislation and that the signing/veto principle is useless and serves nothing except to make the passing of each and every bill a partisan issue

First, overall I would prefer to do away with the Presidential system we have now and create a parliamentary system not unlike that of the United Kingdom where the head of our government would be elected by the legislature, be a member of that body, and have the same legislation rights as any other member of the legislature. I don't believe that a nearly powerless "Head of State" figure like the Queen is necessary but I suppose it wouldn't matter if we elected a figurehead "President" just for fun. I think a parliamentary system is easier to work with as there are less hurdles for a bill to go through to become law, allowing more things to get done with an exact agenda created by the Prime Minister instead of our current system where our President has to use multiple different people to introduce his agenda into congress, before it inevitably gets changed nearly beyond recognition.

An important power I would take away from our executive is the power to pardon anyone he or she sees fit. It is outrageous that we would invest so much power in one person to undermine the justice system of our country. This power allows the president to have people commit crimes for him, and have them feel safe because if they are caught, the President just has the power to pardon them. This practice is no longer necessary or relevant and must be stopped.

I suggest we also remove the powers given to the President under the War Powers Act. This takes waging war from being an issue of the state, to being an issue of the Administration. Due to the effect a war has on the entire nation, I believe the waging of that war should be approved immediately by representatives of the entire nation.