Separation of Power vs Hirarchical Power

[mooeypoo]

Hey again guys,

 

First, I'll say it again - I'm not too well versed in American Politics, but I did take a course in Political Science this semester (Politics and Leadership) and we've had a large section about the Federalist Papers, some of the aspects of the Constitution, and the meaning of Separation of Powers in American Politics.

 

I was wondering something, though. This is very different from what I am used to (my country is more of a Parliamentary system), so I'm not sure if my confusion is because of a misunderstanding of the process, or is coming from the fact that I notice things as an "outsider".. you'll be the judge

 

Every time we spoke about the President and his role, I had the feeling that there's some sort of semi-worship thing going on. Not in the level of a monarch, but in the type of respect the President is given. It is as if by his role, he is supplied with this "Aura" of power, which people are taking very seriously.

 

This wouldn't have been anything bad or wrong, but something my teacher said got me thinking. We were talking about different Presidents and their advisors and the way they manage their influences (Imperial Presidency, by Schlesinger, was the 'catalyst' for this debate), when someone in class said something along the lines of "Who am I, the puny Senator, to tell the President what to do".

 

So yes, I understand that Senate is composed of a lot of people, not only one, but still: Separation of Power is supposed to mean that there are unique powers to each "branch"; no one is "lesser" than the other - that's the point. They're all important, and they're all "masters" of their responsibilities.

 

Obviously, we don't live in a perfect world, but I get the feeling that by "Idolizing" the President, we are giving him a lot more Power than the other Branches, which makes the Executive branch more powerful, and pretty much ruins the idea of *separation* of powers...

 

I'll give a short example of what I mean by "Idolizing" the President. I am using "Idolizing" because I couldn't find a better word, but I don't mean it as a monarch or a tyrant, I mean more like in terms of "uber-respect" or "respect-no-matter-what" thing.. err.. I'll try to explain in these points, which I understood from my course peers:

 

• You cannot flat-out-disagree with the President when you are in his chambers; you need to be "political" about it.. or nice..
  
• You cannot raise your voice on the President.
  
• You will not just shake the hand of the President if he passes next to you (and I'm not talking about Security reasons)
  
• The President is called "Mister President" but he can call his staff whatever-the-heck he wants. I understand President Bush called his cook "Cookie" or something. That, to me, sounds utterly demeaning. Wtf.

I am not sure if I managed to convey my meaning.. perhaps I should explain that where I'm coming from is a Parliamentary system. The President is a "symbolic" figure, and the "head of state" is the Prime Minister. He has a lot of power as the head of the Executive Branch, but people do talk BACK to him, they argue, and they sometimes yell in parliament (I don't mean to say that yelling is good, but it does show the difference in the *relation* or "treatment" for the head of state).

 

I got this feeling that the President - out of his ROLE - is slightly "feared".. as if you wouldn't just *tell him* flat-out that he's wrong (I mean the political branches) but rather do it "subtly"..

 

Doesn't that destroy the point of *Separation* of powers? Doesn't that make the President "Above" other branches, hence the system "Hierarchical" and not Separated?

 

Hope I managed to convey my intention, I am not sure.. I guess I'll see from your answers if I did, and worse case, I'll try to re-explain

 

Ta

 

~moo

[swansont]

Some of these things are not so different from the military chain of command and the relationship between junior and senior personnel. Within the system*, you respect the rank, so even if you don't agree with the individual there is a certain decorum one must continue to follow. Commanding officers (and senior officers in general) can be informal with people under their command, but it's not reciprocated. The president is just the most senior person around.

 

* Outside the system (i.e. those not in government service, or certain circumstances outside of a work if you are) you have the freedom here to be pretty much as disrespectful as you wish.

[mooeypoo]

Some of these things are not so different from the military chain of command and the relationship between junior and senior personnel. Within the system*, you respect the rank, so even if you don't agree with the individual there is a certain decorum one must continue to follow. Commanding officers (and senior officers in general) can be informal with people under their command, but it's not reciprocated. The president is just the most senior person around.

 

* Outside the system (i.e. those not in government service, or certain circumstances outside of a work if you are) you have the freedom here to be pretty much as disrespectful as you wish.

 

Wait wait, but the army *is* hierarchical... if there's this feeling between the President and his staff that's one thing. But a feeling like that between the President and a person in the House of Representatives, for instance, is quite another.. there shouldn't be an "army-like" relationship ...

[swansont]

A representative or senator is locally elected, while the president wins a national election. There is a hierarchy tied to the population represented by the individual.

[mooeypoo]

Doesn't that make the President have more power than the House of Representatives and the Senate?

 

Isn't that against the point?

[Mr Skeptic]

The president's role is to be a powerful leader. There are limits to what he may do, but if he weren't very respected, there would be little point to having him.

[Pangloss]

Mooey I don't think you're wrong, but I think you overstate the case. The current president's approval rating has frequently been in the low 30s, and at least two presidents have dropped into the 20s (Carter and Nixon, I believe). That's a long way from "idolization".

 

And it's not just a matter of public approval. Congress (whose approval rating is currently even lower than Bush's in spite of Democratic control) knows about those approval ratings and capitalizes on them whenever it can. They certainly knew about it this past week when they began calling for hearings and ignoring the Justice Department's requests to drop the CIA file-shredding incident.

 

The rest of that stuff is just a matter of respect. I wouldn't raise my voice to a Senator or Congressman either, and even in disagreement I would be polite and generous. It's not so much about what I think of them personally as it is about what I want them to accomplish during their service and how I want them to go about accomplishing it -- with thoughtful consideration and a level head.

 

Put another way, I'm not polite to the president because of what it says about him. I'm polite to the president because of what it says about me, and what I think this country should be.

[swansont]

Doesn't that make the President have more power than the House of Representatives and the Senate?

 

Isn't that against the point?

 

I think it means that the president has more power than any individual representative or senator.

[doG]

A representative or senator is locally elected, while the president wins a national election. There is a hierarchy tied to the population represented by the individual.

 

The President is not a Representative though, he is the Executor. There is no hierarchical relationship. An organizational chart or hierarchical chart would not list the President at the top with the Representatives of the people and/or the states listed below him/her. The President's power is limited to that which is authorized by Congress itself since it is Congress that maintains our Constitution and it is the Constitution that enumerates the powers of the three branches. In the end it is the people at the top of the chart with the President, Congress and the Judicial branches listed below with equal standing.

[swansont]

And yet the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Congress may have equal power (or sometimes more) but not any individual congressperson. I'm just not surprised by the decorum of how the president is treated, nor do I think it's wrong.

[doG]

And yet the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

 

Only because the President is constitutionally conveyed this power. Congress has the power to change this via Constitutional amendment. Also, the President is the Commander In Chief but is not authorized to declare war, an act reserved to the power of Congress.

[Sisyphus]

Don't think of it as "the President vs. Congress." On Constitutional grounds, they would be on equal footing. (In practice that isn't the case, but anyway...) What's important is that the President is one person. And so obviously the President has far more power than one Congressman. The formalities of addressing the President might be equivalent to the formalities of addressing the entire Congress. So in that way it makes sense.

 

In practice, of course, there are other reasons. It is much easier for the unified Executive Branch to accumulate power than the divided Legislative Branch, whose efforts are expended fighting amongst themselves. And so the Executive gradually accumulates more and more de facto powers, and an imbalance develops.

 

Also, one person is always much easier to mythologize than a group of people. Especially THAT person, the single most powerful person in the country (and lately, the world, hence "leader of the free world," an especially mythological-sounding moniker), who more than anyone else represents that country.

[JohnB]

I think I see what Mooeypoo is getting at. From the outside looking in, the US system looks odd.

 

In Oz nothing becomes law until passed by the Parliment. So we say "The Government did this, or the Government did that". We may take it a step further and refer to "The Coallition" or "The Labour Party", but we never say "The Prime Minister did this or that".

 

From the outside, US politics seems to revolve around the POTUS. "Bush did this" or "Bush did that", Congress rarely gets a mention. Presumably they must pass the President's Bills or they wouldn't become law, so why is it always the President who gets all the blame or kudos?

 

To be honest, the US system sometimes looks like a cyclical 8 year Dictatorship with a Parlimentary false front. If the Congress can't prevent the President implementing bad laws, then why do they exist? If they can prevent bad laws and don't, then why don't they cop some of the blame?

 

The attitude of people towards the President is almost like that given to Royalty. Is the POTUS "The King you have when you don't have a King"?

 

A thought has occurred. I wonder if the difference is in the different ways our respective "Executives" are chosen. Under the Australian system, all Ministers, the equivilent to the US "Secretary of" are chosen from sitting members of the Parliment whereas I don't think the US has this prerequisite.

 

Perhaps this leads to a fundamentally different outlook. Our Executive Ministers are all part of the governing party, they all hold seats in Parliment but the US Secretarys could be viewed as being outside the system and simply "friends of the POTUS". Hmmmm.

[doG]

From the outside, US politics seems to revolve around the POTUS. "Bush did this" or "Bush did that", Congress rarely gets a mention. Presumably they must pass the President's Bills or they wouldn't become law, so why is it always the President who gets all the blame or kudos?

 

Actually it is the President that must sign Congress' bill for them to become law. There is the exception that a majority in Congress can override a Presidential veto in which case Congress can pass a law not signed by the President.

 

For the sake of trivia this looks like a good place to point out that Congress can actually pass laws that even the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction of:

 

Article 3 Section 2 - Trial by Jury' date=' Original Jurisdiction, Jury Trials

[/url']

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

 

To my knowledge there are no such laws on the books...........yet!

[mooeypoo]

I obviously understand that the President (being one) has more individual power than the SINGLE representative or Congressman.

 

But.. don't you guys thing that when he has this "aura" around him, that allows for more power?

 

We were studying Schlesinger's "Imperial Presidency" - he speaks of the President's "seize" of power over other branches by multiple reasons, but mostly by his ability to convince and the fact that the people around him (individuals) want to 'use' his favor. So.. individual congressman would love to get on his favor-side, effectively creating an "Imperialist" presidency -- where the separation of powers is not as strict.

 

 

Don't you guys think that the fact the President *has* this "aura" around him increases this effect, or the chance of this effect to take-over the Presidency?

 

And isn't *that* exactly *against* separation of powers?

[john5746]

But.. don't you guys thing that when he has this "aura" around him, that allows for more power?

 

Don't you guys think that the fact the President *has* this "aura" around him increases this effect, or the chance of this effect to take-over the Presidency?

 

And isn't *that* exactly *against* separation of powers?

Maybe so, I think Reagan was the last President to have an "aura" around him. Bush is an acting commander in chief with powers endowed to him by the legislature. Outside of Iraq, he has been a pretty weak President, especially with his own party.

 

As far as the war, the Democrats feel obligated to the soldiers, not the President. Most troublesome to me has been the influence on the CIA and Attorney General.