Well hey there and welcome back to Heimler's History. In this video we're going to continue working through Unit 2 of the AP Government Curriculum and that means in this video it's time to talk about the roles and powers of everybody's favorite politician, the President of the United States. The POTUS with the MODUS. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, well then let's get to it.
Okay, here's what we're trying to do in this video. Explain how the President can implement a policy agenda. So first, what is a policy agenda?
policy agenda. Well, every president has certain policies that he or she campaigns on, and this is a kind of informal contract between the candidate and the people who vote the president in. When the president outlines a policy agenda, it's just saying, like, if you elect me, here are the laws that I will work to put into place.
But wait just a dang second. We're far enough along into this curriculum by now for you to know that according to the Constitution, the president has precisely no authority to pass laws. That is the job of Congress.
So without any constitutional power to pass laws, how does the President get a policy agenda passed into law. Well, the President does that by means of formal powers and informal powers, and I reckon we ought to talk about both. The formal powers of the President are those powers explicitly given to the Executive in Article 2 of the Constitution. The first formal power you should know is the veto, and in case it helps you to remember it, the veto is an old Latin word that means I forbid. So it's like when my six year old asked to play with my Luke Skywalker Legacy Lightsaber, VETO!
But Dad, why can't I play with your toys? It's not a toy, it's a collectible. VETO. Anyway, the President has the power to veto any bill that comes across the presidential desk.
And if that happens, the bill will not become a law unless, of course, Congress overrides that veto with a two-thirds vote. And once the bill arrives from Congress on the President's desk, the President has 10 days to sign it into law. Now, how does the President decide which bills to sign and which to veto? Well, the answer is a lot more complicated than what I'm about to say, but for our purposes, you just need to know that the President will veto a law if it is not in line with the presidential policy agenda. Now, usually the veto is not a surprise to anyone.
The President knows what kind of legislation is being worked on in Congress, and Congress wants to avoid that veto at all costs, because if legislation is vetoed, it starts right back over in Congress. So in many cases, all the President has to do is threaten to veto a bill, and that motivates congressional representatives to try to fashion the bill into something that the President will sign. Okay, so a veto is an executive power given to the President by the Constitution.
But there's a sneakier way to veto a bill, and that is called a pocket veto. Remember I told you that the President has 10 days to sign a bill. Well, if Congress adjourns before that 10-day period is up and the President just doesn't sign the bill, it's effectively vetoed. Another formal power given to the President by the Constitution has to do with foreign policy.
Namely, the President is the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces. Even though the President is the leader of the Armed Forces, don't forget that it's Congress who has the power to declare war, according to Article 1, Section 8. Even so, the President can use this formal power to implement the presidential policy agenda. For example, Joe Biden campaigned on the promise to end the war in Afghanistan and remove all American troops. And as the commander in chief, he has the authority to do that, and he has done that.
Now it's turning into kind of a mess, but that's not the point of this video. The point is, that was part of Biden's plan. policy agenda, and he uses formal powers to get it done. Okay, so those are two of the formal powers of the President that you should know. Now let's consider the informal powers by which the presidential policy agenda is enacted.
Informal powers are not mentioned in the Constitution, but they exist because of the nature of executive power. The first example is bargaining and persuasion. We'll talk more about this in another video, but here you should just know that the President has the ear of the nation in a way that no other politician does, and as such, the President the President can talk to the people and try to persuade them to put pressure on their representatives to pass legislation in line with the presidential policy agenda. But the President can also bargain with Congress to get favorable legislation passed.
Usually, the President's ability to buy the bill is the only thing that can make a difference. bargain is directly correlated with the presidential approval ratings. For example, in Lyndon Johnson's first term, he had something like an 80% approval rating, which gave him a lot of leverage to get Congress to pass his Great Society legislation. But a few decades later, when President Clinton was trying to get healthcare legislation passed, his 40% approval rating meant that Congress really didn't need to listen to him, and spoiler alert, they didn't.
Another informal power of the President is the Executive Order. This is a directive from the President that has the force of federal law but is not actually a law. And that can be very confusing at first, so let me explain it up real nice for you.
As the executive, the President is the head of the entire bureaucracy of the executive department. So this would include the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense, the Department of Education, and so on. All of these departments answer directly to the President, although they do depend on Congress for their funding. Additionally, remember that the executive branch exists to execute the laws passed by Congress. An executive order is a way for the President to direct a bureaucracy or move money around or whatever to accomplish his or her policy agenda.
Let me give you an example. Donald Trump was unable to persuade Congress to pass legislation to build a wall on the US-Mexican border, and so he rerouted funds by executive order between his executive departments to get it done. Probably the most famous example of an executive order was Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all enslaved people in the Confederacy. As the President, Lincoln had no power to make these enslaved people into citizens.
That would have to wait for the 13th Amendment. but he did this as a military strategy in concert with his formal powers as the commander-in-chief. Another informal power you should know is the signing statement. When signing a bill into law, the President can offer a signing statement that informs the nation how the President interprets that law and thus how he or she intends to execute it. Needless to say, the Presidential interpretation of the law in this case will often be different from the congressional intent of the law.
For example, President Franklin Roosevelt issued a signing statement when signing a law during World War II. He mentioned that he disagreed with one of the sections, he thought it was unconstitutional, but he had no choice but to sign the law since a veto would delay US efforts on the war front. And so in his signing statement, he said that if the law came before the courts, his lawyers would attack the section, not uphold it. And that's exactly what happened, and the court ruled that the section was unconstitutional. Okay, the last informal power you should know is the power of executive agreements.
These are just agreements between the President and some other head of state. And it's not some formal treaty which constitutionally would require Senate approval. Rather, it's an agreement that the President makes on the President's own authority. For example, I mentioned in another video how President Obama entered the Paris Accord on climate change by means of executive agreement and not by treaty, which was an impossible ability since the Senate was against this move. But executive agreements only exist as long as that president is in power, which is why Donald Trump put the kibosh on America's involvement in that agreement, and then Joe Biden went right ahead and got us back in.
So what you really need to understand is that executive agreements are more politically binding than legally binding. Alright, thanks for watching. You can check out my review packet right here if you want help getting an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May, and I've got more videos on Unit 2 right here.
And if you want me to keep making these videos, then by all means subscribe and I shall oblige. Heimler out.