PS 201 Presidency (4) 40m 15ms - 52m 7s

But if we had to do that quickly,
how-- what would it look like?

Well, the president,
him or herself,

and remember, I always say,
"The President herself,"

because, look,

one day,
hopefully sooner than later,

we're going to have
a woman who's president, all right?

So that's going to happen, folks.

It's almost happened,

Hillary Clinton
versus Donald Trump, 2016,

and remember that Hillary Clinton
won the popular vote.

She just lost
the Electoral College vote.

So it's going to happen,
all right?

Again, hopefully sooner
than later,

we've been waiting a while.

So the president
is in the middle,

and the president,
of course, is surrounded by:

the First Spouse,

that's that inner circle,
for sure;

the vice president,
definitely inner circle,

not quite as tight
as the spouse, right?

And also, what we call
the White House staff, here.

Those are
the president's personal advisors,

the Chief of Staff,
the Press Secretary,

any close personal advisors,
okay,

not any daylight there

between the president
and all these folks.

Now again, the vice president,
you could argue,

is maybe
one concentric circle out, right?

Remember, we saw this
with Vice President Mike Pence

and Donald Trump.

There was some conflict there,
folks, when it came time

to count Electoral College votes,

and then we had the attack
on the U.S. Capitol.

Remember that?
Okay, yeah, you do.

January 6, 2021, they're counting
the Electoral College votes.

Vice President Pence is
in charge,

and that was a rough patch,
folks, okay,

for America, but also
between the President and Pence.

So that's an example
of the daylight

that you can see there,
you know what I mean?

So...,

typically, however,

the vice president is pretty tight
with the president.

Kamala Harris is pretty tight
with Biden,

not much daylight there.

That situation
that happened between...

Mike Pence
and Trump is a bit unusual.

And then the Executive Office
of the President

is one step removed
even further,

and then
the final concentric circle

would be the president's cabinet,
okay?

So let's talk about these.

Let's start with the Cabinet,
this is what the Cabinet looks like.

The Cabinet is...
a funny term, right?

The Cabinet basically refers
to all the heads

of the main departments
and agencies

in the United States government.

So, the State Department,

Treasury, Interior, Defense,

Commerce, Labor, Education,

Homeland Security.

Each one
of those has a secretary,

or, you know, in the case of--

in the case
of the Department of Justice,

that'd be
an attorney general, right?

And those folks make
up the president's cabinet, okay?

And literally,
they kind of sit around--

imagine, like, you have meetings
with the Cabinet,

and you sit around a big table,

and you talk about all the issues
confronting America,

all the problems that you want
to solve and whatnot.

We'll talk more
about the departments themselves

in our chapter
on the bureaucracy, okay.

So right now,
I just want to acknowledge,

this is one of the big resources
available to the president.

This here is the major link,

the conduit between the president
and the bureaucracy,

that vast
independent bureaucracy.

The intermediary,
the sort of liaison, if you will,

is that cabinet secretary,

because
underneath the cabinet secretary

is an entire department,
part of the federal bureaucracy,

and then
above that is the president, okay?

Now, I said
that this cabinet circle

is arguably the most distant.

Yeah? Okay,
what do I mean by that?

It means that the president
actually appoints

all the heads of the department,

but the president needs consent,

confirmation by the Senate

to get an appointment through,

and what you often find

is that just because, literally,
the president handpicks someone

to be, like,
Secretary of Defense,

or Secretary of State,

or Secretary of Agriculture,

just because the president
handpicked someone,

doesn't mean
they're going to get along great.

Oftentimes, cabinet secretaries

kind of have
an independent streak.

They feel like,
Hey, Mr. President,

I'm going to push back
on you here a little bit,

I totally disagree
with what you want to do, you know?

We saw this-- next slide--

in the Trump administration--

Oops, there we go--
okay, there we go.

Where there was a ton
of turnover

in President Trump's Cabinet.

Like, 92% turnover rate, folks,

which is kind of astounding,
you know,

when you think that,
literally, these are people

that President Trump handpicked

and then he fired them,
or they quit, you know?

So that just gives you--
I mean, the reason I bring this up

is because it's a great illustration
of the independence

you see here with the Cabinet.

Pretty far removed,
like, on the one hand,

it seems pretty close
to the president, but on the other,

you often have a lot of daylight there,
you know?

You can see other
presidents compared, okay?

There's always turnover,
as you can see,

just not quite as much
as we've seen with Donald Trump.

Next, let's talk about
the Executive Office of the President,

"EOP," this is
on the outline as well,

"c" on the outline.

So these are
the permanent agencies

that assist the president

in making policies.

The most prominent-- the one
we hear about the most, I'd say,

is the Office of Management
and Budget.

So we'll just use
that as an example.

The Office of Management
and Budget is the...

is the agency in the EOP

that helps the president
make the budget every year.

So, one thing we haven't talked
about in this class so much,

but, you know,
the president is responsible

for making the annual budget,

for drafting the budget, okay?

So, that process starts
with the president,

the executive branch,

and the president does that

with the help of the OMB because,
you know, it's a big job.

You know, how much money
are we going to spend

on all these different programs?

What's the budget going to be
for all these different agencies

and departments
in the executive branch?

So the EOP--

the Office of Management
and Budget, the OMB,

helps the president with this.

Now, I'd say this is sort
of one concentric circle removed

from the president,
because basically,

you know, it's close.

It's closer than the cabinet,
I'd say,

but you know,
not quite as close and tight

as like the president's
close personal advisors,

but generally speaking,

the Office of Management and Budget

for example, is, you know, treats the president as their client.

So they want to do whatever--

they want to try to help the president, you know,

craft and implement the budget

that he wants.

They're going to try to make that work.

That said, you know, the Office of Management and Budget

is made up of a bunch of people.

Some of those folks are just hired economists,

and you know, they're going to have some independence

from the president, right?

So there's going to be a little bit of back and forth,

and pushback, give and take, you know.

The president wants to do this with the budget,

spend this much money, maybe cut this budget by this much.

And the OMB may say, Well, I'm not so sure

that's a good idea, right, at the end of the day,

the president's in charge, but there can be

some pushback.

What about the vice president?

Well, the vice president, we talked about that briefly,

typically pretty tight.

The vice president doesn't have a whole lot of power

in our system.

As John Adams said-- this was George Washington's vice president,

he complained that, quote-- here's a direct quote

from Vice President John Adams, "My country has, in its wisdom,

"contrived for me, the most insignificant office

"that ever the invention of man contrived,

or his imagination conceived."

Pretty strong words,

didn't think too highly of the Office of the Vice President,

and that's because the vice president doesn't have a lot of power.

The most notable power, as we discussed

in our chapter on Congress, is breaking tie votes in the Senate.

That's pretty significant.

The other one is "one heartbeat away."

That's probably the most important power,

but that power is really just a waiting game.

In other words, the vice president

is waiting for something

to happen to the president, you know?

Sounds awful, but, look,

the fact is, it's happened nine times, folks.

Nine times! That's a lot, that ratio, okay?

We call these "accidental presidencies."

Accidental presidencies occur when something happens

to the president, and that means--

when I say something happens, I mean either:

dies in office, and that can be

through assassination, okay;

or, uh, natural, you know,

from health problems,

natural causes.

Eight presidents died in office.

And-- and I should say, four assassinations, folks,

we often forget that, four of our presidents

have been assassinated.

Yikes! You know?

And then the other four died of natural causes.

Of course, President Nixon-- Nixon is the only one

to resign in 1974, he probably would have been

impeached and removed from office if he hadn't resigned.

But he didn't, he resigned, he wasn't impeached and removed

because he resigned first.

All right, so, there you go, the vice president.

in that, you know, in this case, literally,

the First Spouse has zero constitutional responsibilities.

In other words, the Constitution does not talk about

the powers of the First Spouse, you know,

but, a president can definitely opt to delegate powers

to the First Spouse.

So some spouses have lots of power,

or are granted, given delegated powers.

Think Hillary Clinton,

when she was First Spouse, Bill Clinton--

President Bill Clinton gave her the incredibly difficult job

of reforming our health care system.

Imagine that one, okay, you know?

But generally speaking--

and there have been notable First Ladies, historically,

okay, um, for sure,

but, um,

generally speaking, in recent years,

First Spouses haven't had a whole lot of power.

They haven't been delegated much power,

you know, Michelle Obama, you know,

she wasn't delegated much power.

Melania Trump, not delegated much power.

Jill Biden, not delegated much power, okay?

So, but the President has that option,

they just regularly choose not to use it, okay?