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[1] Be before we start can I make two quick announcements, one er I made at the last lecture, that is there is a public lecture given by Baroness at five fifteen today on the subject of the Soviet Union and wh where does it go, erm and that's in [...] . [2] The other announcement erm is er Dr has asked me to address some delinquents, no that's not fair, some er hard working but misguided students erm tt ... er who are doing a political processes course, a sort of pale imitation of this course, erm ... probably find none of them are here today, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's b let's not be shy now, is erm ... is Ian here? ... |
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[3] Is James here? |
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[4] Yeah. ... |
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[5] Good. [6] ... Is Abe here? [7] ... Right? [8] Is Damien here? [9] ... Is Christian here? [10] ... At least they're consistent in their delinquency aren't they? |
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[11] Er ... is [laughing] Tim [] is Tim here? [12] ... Right. [13] Well those people I've, who are here, erm ... I'm told by Dr and I'll read this because I can't understand it myself ... [reading] political processes, please remember [] he says [reading] that tutorials for part three commence next Monday and Tuesday the twenty first and twenty second but papers for only two of the seven groups are currently in the folders. [14] If you have not completed your paper, then please do so without delay. [15] ... Papers are missing [] from the names I've just read out. [16] [reading] If you have removed a paper from one of the folders, please return it immediately [] . [17] Alright? [18] If you want to know what that actually means see Dr but he asked me to read it out. [19] Okay this is the fourth in our series and the second on the presidency and I want to do two things in this lecture. [20] The first is to spell out to you the precise erm ... constitutional position of the president and the second, and perhaps more interestingly, is to talk about the notion of presidential power. [21] Erm ... now I know that most of you have memorized the constitution ... but because I suffer from Alzheimer's I had to bring mine with me to remind myself erm what the constitution says about the, the powers of the presidency. [22] Erm ... now what powers are given to the president of the United States by the constitution of the United States? [23] There's to be a special er ... sweet or something, bar of chocolate for those who get these questions right. [24] ... What powers does the constitution of the United States give to the president? [25] ... Not a single offer? |
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[26] Gives him the executive. |
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[27] First sentence of sect article two section one says [reading] the executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America [] full stop. [28] ... Right, later on it describes in enormous detail how the president is chosen and the electoral system and then under section two it gives several specific powers that the president has and I would like at least one contribution from this packed assembly here. ... |
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[29] Commander in chief of the armed forces. |
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[30] Commander in chief of the armed forces. [31] The president of the United States is commander in chief of the armed forces. [32] ... Or act as it actually says in the constitution, [reading] the president shall be commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States and of the militia of the several states [] ... erm ... there wasn't an airforce then so by extension it's assumed that he commands the airforce as well. [33] Okay, commander in chief. [34] Right. [35] We're making progress. [36] ... Another power of the president given to him by the constitution? |
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[37] Yes, that's dealt with actually under the leg legislative section of the constitution but still I, I'll buy er I'll buy that. |
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[38] Nominations. [39] ... Nominations to what? ... |
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[40] Judiciary. |
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[41] Yes. ... |
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[42] Ambassadors. |
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[43] Yes. [44] Working hard this man. [45] ... Who's gonna help him? [46] ... What do you understand by the term nomination? ... [47] Does he have the power of appointment? [48] ... Right I shall read aloud, all together, chant this in your sleep ... [reading] he shall have power [] ... let's read it all [reading] he shall have power by and with, by and with ... the advice and consent of the senate ... to make treaties ... he shall nominate ... and by and with the advice and consent of the senate shall appoint ambassadors ... other public ministers and consuls ... judges of the supreme court ... and all other officers of the United States whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for [] . [49] ... Interesting isn't it? [50] ... The president of the United States is not free to appoint whoever he chooses as secretary of state or secretary of the treasury or as director of the C I A or director of the F B I or the secretary of defence or the justice of the supreme court or ambassador to London or anybody else ... except by and with the consent of the senate. [51] ... So remarkable restriction. [52] ... Does the president of the United States have any powers over the congress? [53] ... Does he have any way of controlling or directing what congress does? [54] At the back there. |
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[55] The veto, yes we touched upon that, that's ... that's stopping the congress from doing something rather than making them do something. |
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[56] No. [57] ... So you can't dissolve a congress, there's a fixed term, I'll read you what the constitution says, it says ... [reading] the president shall from time to time give to the congress information on the state of the union [] you may have heard of the famous state of the union address to congress that the president makes on an annual basis ... [reading] and he shall recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient [] . [58] ... So this is not a power here, this is again ... it's a recommendation, as with the appointment it's a recommendation to the congress. [59] And I think what that emphasises in the constitution is that the founding fathers, who devised the constitution, saw the congress as the central organ of American government and they saw the presidency as an appendage. [60] ... And I think what I was trying to say, get over last time was that this has been in a sense practically inverted in American politics today. [61] That the presidency is now seen as the heart of the American system and the congress is seen as a sort of unfortunate if necessary check and control on the presidency. [62] But if you think about it in contemporary terms I ... I was giving a lecture in London er a couple of weeks ago erm on the subject of erm America's changing foreign policy under Clinton ... if you just think about foreign policy making and who makes it, and questions of consistency ... and you think about some of the crises that are going on in the world from Bosnia and so on what does the constitution tell us? [63] The constitution tells us that the president of the United States [clears throat] is commander in chief [clears throat] of American armed forces ... and as commander in chief he can despatch American armed forces to any part of the world he chooses to. [64] ... There's a nice story about my, one of my favourite presidents, I told you last time, Theodore Roosevelt, Roosevelt got very frustrated with congress ... so he sent the American navy, he had no money, they wouldn't give him any money, so he sent the American navy to the Philippines ... and he said to congress if you want them back again you'd better vote some more money cos they haven't got any fuel ... erm which is a fairly odd way of proceeding one might think. [65] [clears throat] So if you think of it, let's just take, take these, these in turn ... the president is commander in chief, what does that mean? [66] ... Can the president of the United States commit America to war? [67] ... Who possesses the war making power? [68] ... And the answer is the congress. [69] ... So although the president is given by the constitution the power of commander in chief, in the same document at the same time congress is given the power to declare war. [70] ... The president, it says in the constitution which I've just read, the president has the power to make treaties ... to make agreements with foreign countries. [71] ... We've seen treaties on er nuclear disarmament, we've seen treaties on control of the Panama canal in recent years. [72] The president has the power to make treaties but the constitution says only, only if those treaties are approved by two thirds of the senate. [73] ... And if you want to try to understand say something like the er Iran Contra scandal ... then part of the roots of that scandal lie in the American constitution ... in the way that there is,th that the president is controlled by other aspects of the constitution. [74] The president is not free to choose, to start wars wherever he feels like it, the president is not free to make agreements with any country he feels like making it with ... and some presidents have had to learn the hard way. [75] ... If you remember your, from, from your history at school the, the, the first world war ... the Americans in the historic role of arriving at wars rather late erm came in to the first world war to win it for us erm and after it President Wilson ... who used to be professor of politics at Princeton, just put that in, er ... President Wilson created, essentially cos we were all bankrupt at the time as usual er the Americans the only ones who had any money left at the end of the wars, erm President Wilson helped to create the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations ... but the U S senate refused to ratify the agreement. [76] The American president was then left with a situation in which he'd created a club which he hims he himself couldn't join. [77] Er so that there is built into the constitution then, checks and controls on the president. [78] And if you look at the literature ... on the American presidency in the post second world war years you will find two themes ... two related themes. [79] One is ... a theme of er presidential frustration ... the idea that the presidency of the United States is too weak an institution to cope with the responsibilities that it faces. [80] ... And this was a particularly popular view in the nineteen sixties ... and you found lots of people arguing that the American system needed reform ... that here was the president who was hamstrung by congress, or in the er ... in the er question I've set in the, in the programme, you know, the president is less Gulliver in Lilliput, you know, as more like Pinocchio in Lilliput erm ... that the president has enormous responsibilities, that the nation looks to the president, the world looks to the president but the president can't do anything ... and that you need an increase in presidential power. [81] Now that was true until the late sixties early seventies and of course er you find there the election to the o to the White House of one Richard Milhous Nixon, conservative Republican ... er a man who was not above hiring gangsters and burglars to do his work for him, and this produced a reaction ... and if you read the, the presidential literature of the nineteen seventies you will find the opposite, you will find er political scientists, all American, er demanding reforms of the American system, not to make the president more powerful but to make the president less powerful. [82] ... Indeed the best selling book of the nineteen seventies in American politics by a famous historian Arthur Schlesinger Junior called, it was called The Imperial Presidency. [83] ... You don't have to read the book, it's rubbish, but I mean you can just say, if you remember the title, The Imperial Presidency, here was a view that the presidency had become dominant, the presidency had grown out of all proportion to the intentions of the founding fathers and needed to be reined back. [84] ... And then of course you've got Ronald Reagan ... and [laugh] history ended with Ronald Reagan. [85] [laughing] The [] ... what you've got here was an ideological debate. [86] In the nineteen sixties you had broa this is a broad brush approach, you had liberal, quote unquote, progressive, quote unquote, presidents faced with conservative congresses and the conservative congress was preventing the liberal president from taking action. [87] ... Ninety five percent of American political scientists are liberal democrats ... they didn't like that, so they wrote books criticizing congress and saying the president ought to have more power. [88] But then the good old American public elected Nixon ... so here you had Al Capone in the White House and these same political scientists wrote books saying hey hang on, when we said more power to the president we meant more power for our kind of president, you know, Jack, you know, and L B J and the boys, not this Nixon, Tricky Dicky character. [89] What we want here is controls on the president. [90] Er and it's, it's very odd, very odd because, you know, there's an ideological reaction. [91] Faced with a conservative president the liberals want to control the presidency, faced with a liberal presidency er conservative congress want to control the presidency. [92] So there's a, there's a tug of war here ... and it's partly institutional, it's partly a congressional presidential conflict and it's partly a liberal conservative conflict ... about the nature er of the presidency as an institution. [93] Okay well let me say something now about what political power means er to an American president and what its limits are. [94] ... And what I will do is to look erm ... tt in some detail at er ... an analysis of a man r called Richard Newstat I mentioned last time, Mr Shirley Williams, and Richard Newstat wrote a book in nineteen sixty called Presidential Power and that book is now in whatever, what it is, I don't know, seventh or eight edition and it's probably still the single best selling book on the American presidency ... and er for good reason because it, it, it raises an, an argument which is really quite simple but often neglected. [95] Before I do that let me just digress and say one word about books, I've had a few people ask me about books ... erm ... I gather that the distinguished Durham bookshops have sold out of my wonderful book but I gather that ... lorries are hurtling up motorways with |
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[96] planes are landing as we speak, erm ... there are an enormous number of books on American politics, most of them are identical er with different covers. [97] It takes at least five Americans to write a book erm they're all multi- authored volumes ... erm for, for most of your purposes, for almost all your purposes er and certainly for basic reading for, for lectures and, and tutorials it really doesn't matter which one you read ... erm there are, I mean there are in the library I think the last time I counted them about twenty five or thirty general textbooks on American politics, it doesn't really matter er which one you read. [98] Some are better than others and one of course is extraordinarily distinguished. |
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[99] Okay. [100] ... Let me then say a little bit about Newstat and presidential power and, and if you remember my last lecture I said that he was the man who coined the phrase that presidential power is the power to persuade. [101] ... Now er Dick Newstat er ... didn't invent that phrase, he got it in fact from, from President Harry Truman tt erm in the nineteen forties. [102] Truman once said ... he was asked what the job of the presidency involved and Truman once said I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have the sense to do without my persuading them. [103] ... But the word persuade occurs several times. [104] Why, because I have, in the previous discussion we've just had, I emphasised the limits on presidential power, on direction. [105] ... What er Newstat does though is something quite interesting he says well we all know, well I hope you all know, that there are limits on presidential power ... and we all know that the president can't direct congress, we know the president can't appoint anybody without consulting congress, we know the president can't control the supreme court, we know all these limitations but nevertheless, leaving that to one side, pushing that to one side, there are major powers here. [106] Commander in chief of the armed forces ... let's take, let's take er cases of ... presidential power being used by presidents to see what it in fact means in practice. [107] ... And I'll just, just discuss briefly two of the cases that he uses ... and they're, you know, they're, they're old now, I haven't read the most recent edition of his book, he might have updated his case studies but it doesn't really matter ... he takes two cases er one relating to erm the conduct of the Korean war in the nineteen fifties, and the other relating to the desegregation of southern schools, also in the nineteen fifties, as examples of presidential power. [108] Now let me just, let me just run, run the story by you. [109] Here comes a brief history of the Korean war ... starting in about, yes, about ninety seconds on the Korean war erm North Korea invades South Korea ... and won. [110] The Americans decided that an armed resistance was necessary and they went to the United Nations, shades of Bosnia here, they went to the United Nations to get support and, as luck would have it, the Soviets were sulking, this was quite common in the nineteen forties and fifties, and the a the Soviet ambassador to the U N was having a sulk and was refusing to attend the Security Council and he therefore persuaded the Security Council to pass a resolution er producing a United Nations force to aid plucky little South Korea against its vicious oppressive northern neighbours ... and so the Korean war started and the United Nations' forces were commanded by one General Douglas MacArthur, General Douglas MacArthur, in case you don't know, won the second world war single handedly |
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[111] er [laugh] it's not funny, he believed it. [112] Erm he, he won the second world war in the Pacific and after the war he became emperor of Japan, well that wasn't his title but that's how he saw it. [113] Tt and so he was then sent to er to er wo mi mop up this little skirmish in Korea. [114] Tt with the aid of the good general the er United Nations army and the South Koreans pushed the North Koreans back into North Korea and er MacArthur's view was well while we're winning why don't we keep going, you know, perhaps we could take over China as well |
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[115] erm ... and the North Koreans were going backwards at a vast rate of knots and in came the Chinese ... the Chinese army, it stood at that time I think at twenty five million men erm ... [laugh] and, and Douglas started losing again, sad really isn't it? [116] Er at this point Douglas said er he thought it'd be a jolly good idea ... if they dropped a few of these new bombs that they'd discovered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki er on these slit eyed people and that would really show them who was in control of the world ... er now this, as you might expect, caused something of a problem to President Truman. [117] ... Now President Truman er ... was a man of erm limited intelligence but extraordinary courage and tenacity and erm er his previous career involved a failed haberdashery store which went bankrupt, er and then acted as a bag man for a sort of organized crime in Kansas City but that's, you know, you've gotta get on the job training somewhere haven't you? |
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[118] Anyway he wasn't viewed, he was not viewed by, by the emperor of Japan, sorry Douglas MacArthur, as er as a very impressive figure. [119] In the end Harry Truman decided that he really couldn't stomach any more of Douglas MacArthur this, this guy was clearly off the planet, you know ... er and so er President Truman sacked MacArthur and er replaced him as commander in Korea. [120] And this is an ex example, as er Newstat first presents it, of presidential power. [121] Here is a man, he's commander in chief, he's the president of the United States ... he's faced with a, a recalcitrant and difficult general who was sabotaging the purposes of his campaign, extending the campaign beyond proper limits and the president has to show who's boss, and he showed him who's boss and he sacked him, great, presidential power in action. [122] ... But there's a fly in the ointment ... and the fly in the ointment is that General Douglas MacArthur was a war hero, General Douglas MacArthur was one of the most popular men in the United States ... and Harry Truman was one of the least popular men in the United States. [123] Er Harry Truman ... could've run for the presidency in nineteen fifty two but chose not to. [124] He chose not to, not because he wasn't enjoying it, he loved it, but he chose not to because he knew he would lose ... and part of the reason knew he would lose was because he sacked Douglas MacArthur. [125] One of the consequences of sacking Douglas MacArthur was that the U S congress called hearings on television into Truman's conduct of the Korean war ... and Truman's public popularity fell even further. [126] When Douglas MacArthur returned to America, MacArthur had not been back to America since nineteen forty one this is ten years later, he'd been running Japan in the meantime ... there was one of these huge ticker-tape parades in New York, he was the welcoming hero and President Truman was seen as the villain ... and some analysts argue that that decision, that single decision to sack MacArthur may well have cost Harry Truman the American presidency. [127] ... And that's presidential power? [128] ... The other example that er er Newstat uses is about segregation in southern schools. [129] Here what we had was a case of the supreme court, well I'll say more about this later, but the supreme court declaring segregation by race to be unconstitutional and requiring that these decisions be recognized and enforced by relevant authorities. [130] Most of the southern states resisted this and in one particular state ... one that's sprung to prominence in recent times, the State of Arkansas er and its capital Little Rock, the then state governor, who wasn't then Bill Clinton but a man called Orville Forbus ... defied the supreme court's order ... and on a historic day in nineteen fifty four a little troupe of black children trooped up to the local high school and were met by armed, armed police and turned away. [131] President Eisenhower, who was also a war hero, er Republican president er ... when he heard of Forbus's erm actions ... er he er he sent ... federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, and on the second day of the school year federal troops in full combat gear, you know with, with machine guns and all the rest of it and er helmets and stuff, escorted the black children into school. [132] And this was another demonstration or confirmation at one level of presidential power. [133] Here you had the governor of a state in a federal system choosing to act in a particular way and the president overriding him and demonstrating his power. [134] ... Well that's certainly one way of looking at it erm but it's not the way that Eisenhower looked at it, and it's not the way that many people looked at it erm tt afterwards. [135] Erm ... I think the, the point that's being made here is that even within the defined areas of authority given to him by the constitution, the president finds it very difficult to act ... unless certain specific conditions are met. [136] Erm the president finds that ... people only obey his decisions if certain conditions are met and these conditions rarely come together. [137] ... Let me, let me just illustrate that ... in the case of ... sacking MacArthur and in the case of sending federal troops to Little Rock to des desegregate schools, the orders were readily carried out. [138] MacArthur didn't say to Truman hey you can't sack me, I'm the emperor of Japan, no? [139] I've, I've got the divine right of kings or something. [140] He recognized the president's authority. [141] He didn't always recognize the president's authority, there's a wonderful, there's a wonderful true story of er er at some point in the Korean war Truman flew out from Los Angeles and MacArthur flew out from er Korea and they met in one of the Pacific islands, I forget which one i er Wake Island I think, and, and on the runway you had the president's plane at one end and MacArthur's plane at the other end you see, and Truman sits there waiting for MacArthur to come to him and MacArthur sits there waiting for the president to come to him, you see, and nobody moves. [142] ... So after about half an hour of this Truman sends an order saying tell that son of a bitch to get over here. [143] And reluctantly MacArthur agreed to come and talk to the president. [144] But when the order came signed by the president ... you know, hands up, who's commander in chief, not so fast MacArthur, you're out of a job ... erm MacArthur accepted that. [145] ... When er the army was instructed by the president to go to Little Rock and enforce the desegregation of schools, they went and they did it. [146] ... But how often, how often are presidents' decisions or orders complied with? [147] And ... only if certain conditions are met, I would argue or as Richard Newstat argued and I agree with him so he must be right, erm ... the first is that in this decision the president's involvement was unambiguous ... unambiguous, there was no question about it ... that here you had the president directly, personally involved ... in a one to one communication. [148] How often has that happened? [149] ... Most of the time the president works through other people. [150] So you're sitting in your office and some, you know your, your boss comes in and says hey the president says ... so and so, but the president doesn't usually say it to you he says it to somebody else so there's always, there's always a possibility of ambiguity, somebody else has interpreted the president's message in a particular way. [151] But these cases, Douglas MacArthur had his piece of paper, Harry Truman's signature on the bottom, you're fired. [152] You know, this is not capable of many different interpretations, it's clearly not a promotion, you know it's clearly not a reward for good behaviour, you know it's, it's a, it's a sanction. [153] The second is, the second condition is that the president's language ... was plain ... and simple. [154] There was no question of er, again, ambiguity creeping in. [155] ... There's the classic story of erm ... at the time of the Cuban missile crisis ... er Nikita Khrushchev in nineteen sixty two said to Jack Kennedy hey you want us to get our missiles out of Cuba, why don't you get your missiles out of Turkey? [156] You know, you're worried about us threatening you on your borders, you've been threatening us on our borders ... you get rid of yours we'll get rid of ours, fair? [157] Seems reasonable. [158] ... Eighteen months previously President Kennedy had ordered the withdrawal of the American missiles in Turkey ... but eighteen months later those missiles were still there ... and when Kennedy was presented with this bargain, bargaining counter by Khrushchev he sort of shouted at his chiefs of staff and secretary of defence and anyone else he could shout at and sort of said what the hell are those missiles still doing in Turkey, I told you eighteen months ago for God's sake get rid of them! [159] ... And his adviser said well Mr President you did say we should get rid of the missiles in Turkey but you didn't say when ... you know, you didn't say by Tuesday morning at ten o'clock or by next week or in three months' time, you just said ... withdraw the missiles from Turkey. [160] And what happened in practice was simply the Turkish government made representations to the State Department and said hey, you know, these bases, they provide a lot of work, you know, we have to provide empl alternative employment for these people so could we phase out this withdrawal over say a three year programme? [161] And the State Department said sure, you know, cos they didn't have a deadline, the president hadn't given a deadline. [162] So that's usually the way things happen, the president can't spell out things and dot the Is and cross the Ts. [163] So two conditions then, the president's involvement is unambiguous, the second that his language is plain. [164] The third is that a president's decision is widely publicized. [165] ... The sacking of MacArthur was a public sacking, it was intended to be a public humiliation of MacArthur, and that's what it was. [166] But most government business doesn't take place on television ... most government business takes place behind closed doors. [167] In most cases, on most issues, nobody knows what the president has decided. [168] Only his immediate advisers and staff know that. [169] ... And where, where the president speaks publicly, then his orders are obviously much more likely to carry weight than if it's simply behind, behind closed doors. [170] ... The fourth factor is that ... there's really no point in giving people orders or making up policies or decisions unless the people who receive the orders have the resources to carry them out. [171] ... And in this case it was no big deal, a company of soldier you want a company of soldiers to go to Little Rock? [172] No problem. [173] ... You want er you want a letter carried by hand and given in to the hand of Douglas MacArthur? [174] I think we can manage that. [175] I think the resources of the American government can manage that. [176] ... But if the president says hey, you know, go and win the war in Vietnam for me, you know, that's a bit more tricky, a bit more tricky. [177] Doesn't, doesn't automatically follow just because the president expresses a wish that it, that it happens. [178] ... And er fifthly then, the fifth condition is that those who receive presidential orders were in no doubt about the president's authority to give those orders. [179] The president here remember is working under his powers as commander in chief ... directly from the constitution and nobody questioned it. [180] If they had questioned it the chances of the orders being carried out would've been much less of course. [181] ... So these are in a sense then the five factors making for compliance. [182] Five factors which make presidential power er a reality. [183] ... Erm and the question of course is, you know, how often do these circumstances occur? [184] How often does presidential power take this form? [185] Er and the answer is not very often. [186] That er in the ordinary course of business, life is different. [187] And that although these are cases of power, the president has done er what he wanted to do, people have obeyed him, things have changed, something's happened, in both cases you will find that the actual order was the last thing the president wanted to do. [188] Douglas MacArthur, as I said, was the most popular man in America. [189] What Harry Truman wanted was for Douglas MacArthur to behave himself, he wanted Douglas MacArthur to stop giving impromptu press conferences, he wanted him to stop inventing strategy as he went without reference to the president, he simply wanted to restore the chain of command. [190] And he sent er memo after memo to the commanders in Korea advising them of what the guidelines were, what they were allowed to say, what they weren't allowed to say and so on. [191] He had this meeting on Wake Island that I described to you when they wouldn't get out of the planes, all attempts to persuade MacArthur to behave in a reasonable fashion. [192] But he didn't. [193] And Truman felt that his authority as president was being directly challenged and he had no alternative but to sack MacArthur. [194] But his decision to sack MacArthur was a failure in persuasion. [195] ... He had failed to persuade MacArthur to do what MacArthur should have done. [196] And the similar tale can be told of the, the episode in Little Rock. [197] General Dwight D Eisenhower, when elected president of the United States, had absolutely zero interest, minus zero interest, in the question of racial integration. [198] ... President Eisenhower took the view that what happened in the states was really a matter for each state to decide. [199] He was very concerned that the integration of the races might lead to violence and public disorder on a large scale. [200] He spoke publicly about the need for each state to work out its own solution ... and erm earlier in that year, in fact it's nineteen fifty seven, I think I said fifty four before, er earlier in that year nineteen fifty seven er Eisenhower said in a speech ... in r in response to a hypothetical question he said [reading] I can't imagine any set of circumstances that would ever induce me to send federal troops into any state to enforce the orders of a federal court [] . [201] ... And six months later he did just that. [202] What had changed ... was ... two things, one that the governor of the state had talked about defying the court ... rather than actually do it ... and secondly, that Eisenhower had summoned Forbus to see him at Camp David, the president's summer retreat in Maryland, and had a weekend of talks with Forbus Now I wasn't there, I was at primary school then, but I wasn't there ... as far as one can piece it together what, what Eisenhower said to Forbus was, you know, I don't really care what you do, but I don't want it on prime time national television, I don't want a scene, I don't want you to flagrantly, openly, publicly to flout the order of the court. [203] There's more than one way to prevent segre to prevent integration, you can draw school boundaries in certain ways to effectively segregate schools if you want to, but let's not have this macho stuff on the school steps, armed guards, you know, er I mean er the pictures of mobs, that's the only expression for them I suppose, mobs of white people, you know, throwing, throwing bricks and bottles at seven and eight year old black children on the way to school, I don't want, I don't want, I can do without it. [204] And he spent two days trying to impress this upon Forbus and Forbus went back to Arkansas and did exactly what he said he was going to do. [205] And this was construed by er President Eisenhower as a direct snub to him, that he had tried to solve a situation, a difficult situation by persuasion and he'd failed. [206] And so Forbus was gonna get the smack of firm government and the federal troops went into Little Rock and sorted it out. [207] ... Now that's not what President Eisenhower wanted, I've just read out this quotation, it's the last thing I want to do he says but he's driven to do it because the state governor refused to accept the arguments that, that Eisenhower put to him. [208] ... So what er Richard Newstat is saying in his argument is, is, and go back to the beginning of this lecture, is to say the constitution of the United States makes life extremely difficult for any president. [209] ... There are a whole range of things he can't do, he can't direct congress, he can't appoint who he wants freely, he can't make treaties with whom he wants when he wants, he can't start wars [laughing] if he wants to start wars [] ... all these controls are on the president but what I, what er Newstat is saying is, over and above that, even in the areas where he appears to have constitutional authority, as a matter of practice it's very difficult for the president to exercise his authority and when the president does exercise his authority he does so at great cost to himself. [210] ... It's damaging to the president to exert power over people. [211] ... What is the lesson of all this, according to Richard Newstat the lesson is that techniques of persuasion ... are really the essential armoury of any president, any president who wishes to be successful. [212] And you've got in at least two of the last three presidents ... in President Clinton and President Reagan, two presidents who, who ... intuitively understand that, who absorbed that message, they are great persuaders. [213] They may not persuade you but they are great persuaders. [214] Ronald Reagan er was the master of persuasion both through er his control and, and, and confidence on television and so forth but also in one to one conversations with er cabinet members or with er members of congress or whoever. [215] A man of great personal charm, I'm told. [216] Bill Clinton ... invests a huge amount of time in persuading people, he likes to work, he likes to work in teams and groups, he doesn't like to sit there giving orders. [217] If you sit at the White House in the Oval Office and give orders then nothing will happen. [218] You have to persuade people and persuasion is a constant process and so Clinton is permanently engaged in persuading people to do the things they ought to have the sense to do without him persuading them. [219] Okay, thank you. |