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Re #4 - we saw this throughout the Obama tenure as well, more executive orders, more expectations of the President to create and change law rather than execute

Re #4 - we saw this throughout the Obama tenure as well, more executive orders, more expectations of the President to create and change law rather than execute it, etc. Point is, it's not just Trump - or Trump and Obama - it's been a slow but steady march toward treating the Office like a monarch...

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
He only resorted to the EOs because of the obstructionism from Congress. What else is a president to do when faced with such petulance?
- bpodgursky 10y ago
  Nothing. He should be able to do nothing. That's the point of having three branches of government. A president has no god-given right to push through whatever policies they want; congress has no obligation to help.
  - throwaway729 10y ago
    > nothing That's also a failure of checks and balances. Of course the presidency can do all sorts of things without Congress! It's not and was never intended to be a ceremonial position. Or a position bound to the will of congress in all things! Hence "separation of powers", not "devolution of powers to Congress and the judiciary". Indeed, kevin_thibedeau's observation is SPOT ON, and is exactly how things should and were explicitly designed to work! The presidency has certain powers that are typically only exercised during a divided government. This has been true since the very beginning of the union. That shouldn't be surprising at all! It's intrinsic to an effective separation of powers. If the presidency proceeded in identical fashion regardless of who Controlled congress, then that would be a clear indication that the separation of powers has failed. The presidency should do what he thinks he has the authority to do. Congress should pass explicit laws limiting that power if it feels the presidency has become too powerful, using the purse as leverage when necessary. The courts should mediate inevitable conflicts and check the abuses of a unified executive and legislature. That is separation of powers.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      > This has been true since the very beginning of the union. Not entirely true. Executive orders (and similar powers of the executive), as far as I understand, have significantly evolved since the founding of the US. The ability to use them is implied rather than explicitly granted by the US Constitution, and use in practice (and what constitutes overreach) has largely been defined through the US Supreme Court. Side note: this right was not explicitly given to the Supreme Court either in our founding documents and was largely hammered out by sheer force of will by John Marshall in Marbury vs Madison (perhaps one of the greatest cases of all time, replete with some seriously shady last-days-in-office chicanery by John Adams) [1] [2]. I'd highly recommend listening to the podcast episode in the second link. Based on Wikipedia's numbers [3] (which seem reasonable, given that they weren't called "executive orders" until ~1900 when they were retroactively numbered them back to Lincoln), Theodore Roosevelt could definitely be said to be the first major user. By my count, the 25 presidents before Teddy Roosevelt signed 1,262 orders. Roosevelt signed 1,081 himself (in two terms). Notably, if I'm reading the figures right, both of Roosevelt's terms were characterized by large majorities in the Senate and slim but still majorities in the House. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison [2] http://www.wnyc.org/story/giggly-blue-robot/ http://www.wnyc.org/story/giggly-blue-robot/ [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_States) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_Stat...
  - Sharlin 10y ago
    I wonder if that's actually a net positive thing in practice. In parliamentary systems, found in many of the most objectively democratic countries in the world, the legislative and executive branches are more closely interlinked than in presidential systems. Because the party that gets the most seats in a parliamentary elections gets to form the executive (with other parties if necessary), and the executive parties typically control the majority of the seats, any legislation proposed by the executive usually passes.
    - jMyles 10y ago
      Parliamentary systems have other checks that the American Presidential system lacks (of course this varies somewhat widely by state, from Britain to Israel to Canada there is something of a spectrum).
    - amyjess 10y ago
      FYI, there's an article on Vox that argues that presidential systems are inherently prone to collapse and that it's a miracle America made it this far: http://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doomed http://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doome... One interesting point the article raises was that one of the few things saving the American political system from collapse was our ugly racial history.
  - pvg 10y ago
    Nothing. He should be able to do nothing. That's the point of having three branches of government No it isn't. It's not a system in which one branch can fully incapacitate another. The goal is still governing, not doing nothing. Recall that this isn't the founders' first pass at organizing a government and in part a response to a previous one not being able to get much done.
jkn 10y ago
we saw this throughout the Obama tenure as well, more executive orders... Number of executive orders per president, per year in office[1]: Theodore Roosevelt 144.7 William Howard Taft 181.0 Woodrow Wilson 225.4 Warren G. Harding 216.9 Calvin Coolidge 215.2 Herbert Hoover 242.0 Franklin D. Roosevelt 307.8 Harry S. Truman 116.7 Dwight D. Eisenhower 60.5 John F. Kennedy 75.4 Lyndon B. Johnson 62.9 Richard Nixon 62.3 Gerald Ford 69.1 Jimmy Carter 80.0 Ronald Reagan 47.6 George H. W. Bush 41.5 Bill Clinton 45.5 George W. Bush 36.4 Barack Obama 34.6 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_executive_orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_...
- notadoc 10y ago
  Is this some kind of fact based comment?
- bpodgursky 10y ago
  The raw numbers are not really useful. There are a lot of EOs which do not push the bounds of presidential authority (awarding medals, ordering flags to half-mast, etc). They are not comparable to EOs which, for example, order the government to not enforce immigration law, or use torture.
  - 1_2__3 10y ago
    Right, so we're just arbitrarily moving the goalposts now that the data doesn't back the claim. Got it.
    - jMyles 10y ago
      Not arbitrarily, but with good reason. It sometimes makes sense to move the goalposts when they no longer work as a mechanism for measuring the metrics of the sport in question. In this case, the total number of executive orders doesn't speak to the degree to which executive power is used to do things other than execute.

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago

He only resorted to the EOs because of the obstructionism from Congress. What else is a president to do when faced with such petulance?

bpodgursky 10y ago
Nothing. He should be able to do nothing. That's the point of having three branches of government. A president has no god-given right to push through whatever policies they want; congress has no obligation to help.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  > nothing That's also a failure of checks and balances. Of course the presidency can do all sorts of things without Congress! It's not and was never intended to be a ceremonial position. Or a position bound to the will of congress in all things! Hence "separation of powers", not "devolution of powers to Congress and the judiciary". Indeed, kevin_thibedeau's observation is SPOT ON, and is exactly how things should and were explicitly designed to work! The presidency has certain powers that are typically only exercised during a divided government. This has been true since the very beginning of the union. That shouldn't be surprising at all! It's intrinsic to an effective separation of powers. If the presidency proceeded in identical fashion regardless of who Controlled congress, then that would be a clear indication that the separation of powers has failed. The presidency should do what he thinks he has the authority to do. Congress should pass explicit laws limiting that power if it feels the presidency has become too powerful, using the purse as leverage when necessary. The courts should mediate inevitable conflicts and check the abuses of a unified executive and legislature. That is separation of powers.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    > This has been true since the very beginning of the union. Not entirely true. Executive orders (and similar powers of the executive), as far as I understand, have significantly evolved since the founding of the US. The ability to use them is implied rather than explicitly granted by the US Constitution, and use in practice (and what constitutes overreach) has largely been defined through the US Supreme Court. Side note: this right was not explicitly given to the Supreme Court either in our founding documents and was largely hammered out by sheer force of will by John Marshall in Marbury vs Madison (perhaps one of the greatest cases of all time, replete with some seriously shady last-days-in-office chicanery by John Adams) [1] [2]. I'd highly recommend listening to the podcast episode in the second link. Based on Wikipedia's numbers [3] (which seem reasonable, given that they weren't called "executive orders" until ~1900 when they were retroactively numbered them back to Lincoln), Theodore Roosevelt could definitely be said to be the first major user. By my count, the 25 presidents before Teddy Roosevelt signed 1,262 orders. Roosevelt signed 1,081 himself (in two terms). Notably, if I'm reading the figures right, both of Roosevelt's terms were characterized by large majorities in the Senate and slim but still majorities in the House. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison [2] http://www.wnyc.org/story/giggly-blue-robot/ http://www.wnyc.org/story/giggly-blue-robot/ [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_States) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_Stat...
- Sharlin 10y ago
  I wonder if that's actually a net positive thing in practice. In parliamentary systems, found in many of the most objectively democratic countries in the world, the legislative and executive branches are more closely interlinked than in presidential systems. Because the party that gets the most seats in a parliamentary elections gets to form the executive (with other parties if necessary), and the executive parties typically control the majority of the seats, any legislation proposed by the executive usually passes.
  - jMyles 10y ago
    Parliamentary systems have other checks that the American Presidential system lacks (of course this varies somewhat widely by state, from Britain to Israel to Canada there is something of a spectrum).
  - amyjess 10y ago
    FYI, there's an article on Vox that argues that presidential systems are inherently prone to collapse and that it's a miracle America made it this far: http://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doomed http://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doome... One interesting point the article raises was that one of the few things saving the American political system from collapse was our ugly racial history.
- pvg 10y ago
  Nothing. He should be able to do nothing. That's the point of having three branches of government No it isn't. It's not a system in which one branch can fully incapacitate another. The goal is still governing, not doing nothing. Recall that this isn't the founders' first pass at organizing a government and in part a response to a previous one not being able to get much done.

jkn 10y ago

we saw this throughout the Obama tenure as well, more executive orders... Number of executive orders per president, per year in office[1]: Theodore Roosevelt 144.7 William Howard Taft 181.0 Woodrow Wilson 225.4 Warren G. Harding 216.9 Calvin Coolidge 215.2 Herbert Hoover 242.0 Franklin D. Roosevelt 307.8 Harry S. Truman 116.7 Dwight D. Eisenhower 60.5 John F. Kennedy 75.4 Lyndon B. Johnson 62.9 Richard Nixon 62.3 Gerald Ford 69.1 Jimmy Carter 80.0 Ronald Reagan 47.6 George H. W. Bush 41.5 Bill Clinton 45.5 George W. Bush 36.4 Barack Obama 34.6 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_executive_orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_...

notadoc 10y ago
Is this some kind of fact based comment?
bpodgursky 10y ago
The raw numbers are not really useful. There are a lot of EOs which do not push the bounds of presidential authority (awarding medals, ordering flags to half-mast, etc). They are not comparable to EOs which, for example, order the government to not enforce immigration law, or use torture.
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  Right, so we're just arbitrarily moving the goalposts now that the data doesn't back the claim. Got it.
  - jMyles 10y ago
    Not arbitrarily, but with good reason. It sometimes makes sense to move the goalposts when they no longer work as a mechanism for measuring the metrics of the sport in question. In this case, the total number of executive orders doesn't speak to the degree to which executive power is used to do things other than execute.