Whether the American Presidency Is an “imperial Presidency”?

Whether the American Presidency is an “Imperial Presidency”?

     For the question about whether the American presidency is an imperial presidency, there are different opinions about it.  Some people think that since the United States is the most powerful country in the whole world, the president of the United States is no doubt occupies the most powerful office in the world and is regarded as an “imperial presidency”.  However, other people argue that compared to the British Prime Minister and the Prime Minister of the most democratic nations, the American presidency is one of the weakest executives anywhere. They analyze the question in different angles, so they come out with different answers.  In my opinion, I think the both arguments above are correct. Following let’s demonstrate why that both of the arguments are correct.

     Never in the history of the world has one nation can be more powerful than the United States.  America keeps its dominative position in many fields: economics, military, geopolitical advantage, superpower and ideology (Stoddard, 2014).  As a result, we can simply claim that the president of the United States is the most powerful president in the world.  If we go deeper and examine more, this argument will be more persuasive.  In American, power has moved from the states to the center.  In other word, power has moved from Congress (Pennsylvania Avenue) to the White House (Stoddard, 2014), so the president actually has been holding more power in both foreign and domestic affairs than Congress.  For the foreign power, the president is not only the head of the state, but also the commander in chief.  The reason why President John Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson could send US soldiers to Vietnam and President Bill Clinton could send American troops to Haiti without Congress’s declaration of war (Wilson, Dilulio & Bose 2012) is that the President is the boss of a chain of command.  It is only the President can make war rather than Congress, so that the war could meet the requirements: efficiency, speed, and secrecy.  The Congress doesn’t have chain of command, so it can only declare war.  The president is also the head of the intelligence community which helps the President to perform executive power.  For the domestic power, most people understand that the President is the head of the executive branch; however, they don’t know that the President is also the chief legislator.  In the process of making laws, the president authorizes bills and sends them to the Congress, and the Congress just reacts.  The President is in the leading position of forming laws.  One example indicates the point.  “President Barack Obama got Congress to approve, and the Supreme Court to uphold, a sweeping reform of the nation’s health care system that was opposed by about half the public” (Wilson, Dilulio & Bose 2012, p.250).  It is so obvious that president Obama has overwhelming power of legislative in the US.  To sum up, the presidency of the most powerful country naturally becomes an “Imperial Presidency”.

     Except the American presidential system, there is another way of organizing a democracy: parliamentary system.  It is common in Europe, for example, the United Kingdom.  It is the existence of the British parliament system makes some people believe that the American presidency is one of the weakest executives in the world.  After examining the parliamentary system, it is reasonable to think American presidency is not an “Imperial Presidency”.  In a parliamentary system, people elect the House of Commons which then elect the Prime Minister.  People cannot elect the Prime Minister directly.  The government of parliamentary system is more efficient because there is no separation of powers, division of powers, judicial review, or bicameralism to limit the power of central government within which are the Prime Minister and his or her cabinet.  The court usually does not interfere.  Thus, almost all of the decision and law are made by a single powerful government.  Unlike the parliamentary system, the American presidency within which the power is separated into three branches: executive, legislature, and judicial.  The power is also divided between the federal government and states.  The Supreme Court has power to declare an art of Congress and president to be unconstitutional and therefore, void. The bicameralism is also a power limitation that prevent all power concentrated in a single government.  All of these limitations guarantee policies to be tested for their political acceptability in the process of the policy making and not just at election time (Wilson, Dilulio & Bose 2012).  These are the reasons why it is difficult for presidents to be reelected.  “Since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, nine have had to deal with an opposition party that controlled one or both house of Congress: Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama” (Wilson, Dilulio & Bose 2012, p.251).  That means the president of the United States have great difficulty to perform his power as long as the Congress is existing.  Differently, the prime minister can make policies as long as he or she is supported by a majority of the parliament.  It is hard for the US president to get anything accomplished as efficiently or easily as the prime minister.  Therefore, the prime minister is more powerful than any other presidency from the perspective above.

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