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