The President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States and is the highest political official in the United States by influence and recognition. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is one of only two nationally elected federal officers (the other being the vice president of the United States).
Among other powers and responsibilities, Article II of the U.S. Constitution charges the president to "faithfully execute" federal law, makes the president commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces, allows the president to nominate executive and judicial officers with the advice and consent of the Senate, and allows the president to grant pardons and reprieves. Due to the United States' status as the only remaining superpower, the president of the United States is generally regarded as the most powerful person in the world.
The president is indirectly elected by the people through the Electoral College to a four-year term. Since 1951, presidents have been limited to two terms by the Twenty-second Amendment. Forty-three individuals have been elected or succeeded to the office, serving a total of fifty-six four-year terms. On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama became the forty-fourth, and current, president.
Origin
In 1783, the Treaty of Paris left the United States independent and at peace, but with an unsettled governmental structure. The Second Continental Congress had drawn up the Articles of Confederation in 1777, describing a permanent confederation, but granting to the Congress—the only federal institution—little power to finance itself or to ensure that its resolutions were enforced. In part, this reflected the anti-monarchy view of the Revolutionary period, and the new American system was explicitly designed to prevent the rise of an American tyrant to replace the British King.
However, during the economic depression due to the collapse of the continental dollar following the American Revolution, the viability of the American government was threatened by political unrest in several states, efforts by debtors to use popular government to erase their debts, and the apparent inability of the Continental Congress to redeem the public obligations incurred during the war. The Congress also appeared unable to become a forum for productive cooperation among the States encouraging commerce and economic development. In response a Constitutional Convention was convened, ostensibly to reform the Articles of Confederation, but that subsequently began to draft a new system of government that would include greater executive power while retaining the checks and balances thought to be essential restraints on any imperial tendency in the office of the president.
Individuals who presided over the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary period and under the Articles of Confederation had the title "President of the United States in Congress Assembled," often shortened to "President of the United States". The office had little distinct executive power. With the 1788 ratification of the Constitution, a separate executive branch was created, headed by the president of the United States.
A president's executive authority under the Constitution, tempered by the checks and balances of the judicial and legislative branches of the federal government, was designed to solve several political problems faced by the young nation and to anticipate future challenges, while still preventing the rise of an autocrat over a nation wary of royal authority.
Powers and duties
Article I legislative role
The first power conferred upon the president by the U.S. Constitution is the legislative power of the presidential veto. The Presentment Clause requires any bill passed by Congress to be presented to the president before it can become law. Once the legislation has been presented, the president has three options:
- Sign the legislation; the bill then becomes law.
- Veto the legislation and return it to Congress, expressing any objections; the bill does not become law, unless each House of Congress votes to override the veto by a two-thirds vote.
- Take no action. In this instance, the president neither signs nor vetoes the legislation. After 10 days, not counting Sundays, two possible outcomes emerge:
- If Congress is still convened, the bill becomes law.
- If Congress has adjourned, thus preventing the return of the legislation, the bill does not become law. This latter outcome is known as the pocket veto.
In 1996, Congress attempted to alter the president's veto power with the Line Item Veto Act. The legislation empowered the president to sign any spending bill into law while simultaneously striking certain spending items within the bill, particularly any new spending, any amount of discretionary spending, or any new limited tax benefit. Once a president had stricken the item, Congress could pass that particular item again. If the president then vetoed the new legislation, Congress could override the veto by its ordinary means, a two-thirds vote in both houses. In Clinton v. City of New York , 524 U.S. 417 (1998) , the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such an alteration of the veto power to be unconstitutional.
Article II executive powers
War and foreign affairs powers
Perhaps the most important of all presidential powers is command of the United States armed forces as commander-in-chief. While the power to declare war is constitutionally vested in Congress, the president commands and directs the military and is responsible for planning military strategy. The framers of the Constitution took care to limit the president's powers regarding the military; Alexander Hamilton explains this in Federalist No. 69:
The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. ... It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces ... while that of the British king extends to the DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all which ... would appertain to the legislature.Congress, pursuant to the War Powers Resolution, must authorize any troop deployments more than 60 days in length. Additionally, Congress provides a check to presidential military power through its control over military spending and regulation.
Along with the armed forces, foreign policy is also directed by the president. Through the Department of State and the Department of Defense, the president is responsible for the protection of Americans abroad and of foreign nationals in the United States. The president decides whether to recognize new nations and new governments, and negotiates treaties with other nations, which become binding on the United States when approved by two-thirds of the Senate. The president may also negotiate "executive agreements" with foreign powers that are not subject to Senate confirmation.
Administrative powers
The president is the chief executive of the United States, putting him at the head of the executive branch of the government, whose responsibility is to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." To carry out this duty, he is given control of the four million employees of the federal executive branch.
Various executive branch appointments are made by presidents. Up to 6,000 appointments may be made by an incoming president before he takes office and 8,000 more may be made while in office. Ambassadors, members of the Cabinet, and other federal officers, are all appointed by a president with the "advice and consent" of a majority of the Senate. Appointments made while the Senate is in recess are temporary and expire at the end of the next session of the Senate.
The power of a president to fire executive officials has long been a contentious point of debate. Generally, a president may remove purely executive officials at his discretion. However, Congress can curtail and constrain a president's authority to fire commissioners of independent regulatory agencies and certain inferior executive officers by statute.
Juridical powers
The president also has the power to nominate federal judges, including members of the United States courts of appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States. However, these nominations do require Senate confirmation and this can provide a major stumbling block for presidents who wish to shape their federal judiciary in a particular ideological stance. The president must appoint judges for the United States district courts, but he will often defer to Senatorial courtesy in making these choices. He may also grant pardons and reprieves, as is often done just before the end of a presidential term.
Executive privilege gives a president the ability to withhold information from the public, Congress, and the courts in matters of national security. George Washington first claimed privilege when Congress requested to see Chief Justice John Jay's notes from an unpopular treaty negotiation with Great Britain. While not enshrined in the Constitution, or any other law, Washington's action created the precedent for the privilege.
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