HY 357 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Executive Privilege, Clinton–Lewinsky Scandal, Franklin D. Roosevelt
6 Jun 2018
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The Executive Branch
The Constitution established an executive branch headed by a president, which represented a
significant departure from the Articles of Confederation. Many of the Founders wanted an even
stronger executive, essentially an elected king. However, they realized that memories of the
revolution against the British monarch were too fresh to permit such a proposal.
Instead, the Constitution granted the president the power to execute the law and titled the office
"commander in chief," without specifying exactly what role that person would play in either
domestic or foreign policy. People who preferred a weak president could see the position
described in the Constitution as nothing more than a chief clerk, someone who would carry out
the legislative branch's orders but play little political role. But nothing in the language of the
Constitution prevented the presidency from developing into more of a leadership position, a
rival political force to Congress.
Of course, numerous limits were placed on the presidency. Congress may override presidential
vetoes. The Senate must approve presidential appointments. The president serves only a four-
year term and has been limited to two terms since the Twenty-second Amendment won approval
in 1951. As the nation witnessed with President Bill Clinton, a president also may be impeached
— that is, brought up on formal charges — by the House of Representatives and removed from
office if convicted in the Senate. None of these limits has been sufficient, however, to prevent
the powers and role of the president from expanding dramatically over the last two centuries.
The Powers of the President
In contrast to the many powers it gives Congress, the Constitution grants few specific powers to
the president. Indeed, most of Article II, which deals with the executive branch, relates to the
method of election, term and qualifications for office, and procedures for succession and
impeachment rather than what the president can do. The powers of the president are not limited
to those granted in the Constitution. Presidential authority has expanded through the concept of
inherent powers (see the section on inherent powers later in this chapter) as well as through
legislative action.
Treaty power
The president has the authority to negotiate treaties with other nations. These formal
international agreements do not go into effect, however, until ratified by a two-thirds vote of the
Senate. Although most treaties are routinely approved, the Senate rejected the Treaty of
Versailles (1919), which ended World War I and which President Woodrow Wilson had signed,
and, more recently, refused to take action on President Jimmy Carter's SALT II Treaty on arms
limitation (1979).
Appointment power
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