The Power of the Presidency

Under the Bush Administration, few will argue that presidential power has been stretched as much as possible (the most recent example being the firing of U.S. Prosecutors so that other more desirable candidates can be put in place without congressional interference)...and, mostly, at the urging of Vice President Cheney. Whether or not that stretching has proven successful is debatable but, nevertheless, there has been a real constant tension between this White House and the Legislature as the Administration has tried to extend its grasp in order to establish and carry out its agenda.

But how far should it extend without upsetting the precarious system of checks and balances outlined by our founding fathers? This is a pivotal question for those already campaigning for the office (as well as those waiting in the wings, biding their time before they make a formal announcement). As suggested yesterday by Deputy Editor Daniel Henninger in The Wall Street Journal, Americans should make certain they know where each candidate stands when it comes to the role of the President:

"For the purposes of picking the next president, we should be glad that Democrats have made the presidency itself--its foreign-policy decisions and the use of presidential authority (Guantanamo, wiretapping, the war decision)--the core of their criticism. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are their standard bearers. Logically, one wonders: What do they think a presidency should be? What are their views on the exercise of presidential authority? Let's find out now, before it's too late.

"Historically, a U.S. president's tools are two: soft power and hard power. Soft power is diplomacy. Hard power is the military. The question that one wants answered soon is: Have the Democrats become a soft-power-only party? Hillary Clinton especially has berated the Bush presidency for not being willing to "talk" to the likes of Iran and Syria. Reading Democratic foreign-policy intellectuals of late, it is hard to find the conditions under which they would deploy U.S. military resources. The military option may be on the Democrats' table, but it's buried beneath a foot-high pile of talking points. Have the Democrats, in their opposition to the Bush Doctrine, forced anyone seeking their nomination into a soft-power-only corner? Someone should ask them.

"This matter links unavoidably to presidential authority.

"Presidents and the Congress live in perpetual tension over the uses and limits of presidential authority. Nothing new there. And with George Bush, both Republicans and Democrats have sought to rein in presidential power, notably in their dispute over wiretaps and the FISA statute. But the Democrats have gone further. The current Murtha proposal in the House on troop deployments is a hard challenge to presidential authority. They also have tried to thwart less controversial exercises of presidential authority--refusing votes on judicial nominees and putting holds on executive-branch appointments.

"Sen. Clinton, as president, would you assent to these limits on executive power, or would you refuse to abide them? Sen. Edwards, is Carl Levin's reading of the FISA statute on the wiretapping of suspected terrorists your reading of that statute? Sen. Obama, do you support the Murtha proposal on Iraq? Could you all elaborate your understanding of the term, "commander in chief"? Or the War Powers Resolution. Or the pardon power.

"Congressional ambivalence toward presidential authority is likely a large part of the fact that no sitting senators other than John F. Kennedy and Warren G. Harding have ascended to the presidency. Rudy Giuliani may be outstripping John McCain because voters see Sen. McCain as a creature, however eminent, of Congress. Bill Clinton established the outer limits of domestic presidential authority. Would Clinton-44 settle for less? Not likely, but someone should ask her.

"Even if you argue that Mr. Bush brought this on himself, the fact remains that presidential authority is in a hole. At this rate of erosion, there will be such lack of clarity about the presidential role come January 2009 that any new president will spend an entire term merely reestablishing his or her authority. A Democratic president who hasn't drawn a line in the presidential sand will be in hock to the party's pacifist left. Absent a vigorous debate on these matters, we are likely to elect a weak President, no matter who wins.

"There is no bigger campaign issue than the proper role of the presidency. On current course, our winner the morning of Nov. 5, 2008 may be uttering Robert Redford's famous last line in "The Candidate": "What do we do now?" As with the primaries, let's move up the answer to that question from too late to very early."

Perhaps this is one of the first issues the candidates ought to debate because, let's face it, they can't fulfill any of their campaign promises without real cooperation between the different branches of government.