Presidential Constraints

Many citizens today view the President as having minimal constraints as the most powerful person within the United States government. President Trump’s supporters often express this sentiment in their opinions regarding his intent to issue executive orders on immigration, crime, trade, and various other issues. That many of these actions require budget requests subject to congressional approval or judicial review highlight the true nature of presidential constraints. James Madison argued in Federalist #10 for institutional pluralism within a representative government to mitigate factionalism and the passions of the masses. Presidential powers were deliberately limited to preclude that branch from usurping power and becoming a monarch.

First, measuring a public mandate for presidential action seems tenuous at best. Not only is it difficult to determine if a mandate for action actually exists, it is unclear who determines what exactly the mandate is for? While this lack of clarity suggests that a president should attempt to achieve congruence between their policy goals and public opinion in order to validate a presumed mandate or sustain its persuasive force, it also suggests presidential discretion in interpreting a mandate’s meaning. Canes-Wrone and Shotts (2004) show that presidents are only responsive to public opinion when an election is imminent or when they have average approval ratings, which suggests the questionable influence of mandates on presidential power. This leads to the second concern, the structural influence of broader political cycles on presidential authority and the question about in which cycle we currently find ourselves. Given ever-increasing governmental dysfunction characterized by legislative gridlock between the mid-1990s to today, are we experiencing the politics of disjunction which present impossible problems that resist presidential power? Or are we entering a period of reconstructive politics that will define a new order? Unfortunately, Skowronek’s structural account reflects a trailing, descriptive indicator of presidential

Though derived primarily from the power of persuasion, presidents may increase or leverage their power through reputation-based bargaining, going public to generate support for their preferred policy agenda, and capitalizing on the strength of their mandate upon entering office. Neustadt demonstrated that the strength of bargaining power depends on the President’s reputation. This strength may be diminished within a divided Congress, thereby tempting the President to go public, which Kernell showed was an increasingly powerful tool shaped by changing societal conditions. Skowronek highlighted the evolutionary aspect of presidential power and showed that it relies, in part, on the President’s policy mandate upon entering office, as well as his predecessor’s legacy. While President Truman may have complained about having to rely upon persuasion to achieve his objectives, this in no way means that the President’s power is