The President National Security
The President's role in National Security has been a topic of enduring debate in U.S. politics from the Constitutional Convention to our present day situation in Kosovo. Nearly every American President has had to struggle with this issue and deal with the Constitution's separation of power between Congress and the Executive. The President and Congress share the war-making powers, treaty-making and foreign policy powers, and among many others, the power to place desired officials into certain offices. These powers, though disliked by many, are shared so as to protect the people of this nation with our grass roots system of checks and balances. Most critics of shared powers focus on the areas of war-making and foreign policy. This conflict can be traced all the way back to the struggle between Hamilton and Madison. After what was said to be a series of failed Presidencies (Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter), one group of "modern Hamiltonians" wanted to "increase the power of the President explicitly." They hope to reach their goals legitimately through legislation and constitutional amendments. Another group of Hamiltonians emerged informally after the Presidency of Ronald Reagan a
1. Hamilton, Madison, et al., The Federalist Papers (New York: Penguin Books, 1961) During his presidency, Richard Nixon instituted an even greater amount of centralization in the White House than Truman, thus increasing the amount of gray area in distinguishing the separation of powers and the exclusivity of the power of the Executive. "Nixon reasoned that as holder of the Executive power, a President can go beyond his enumerated powers and take whatever steps are necessary to preserve the country's security, even if his actions might be unconstitutional." (#6, p.124) It is clear that since the early thirties, Congress has delegated much power to the president, intentionally or not. The War Powers Resolution was an act of Congress to try to regain some of it's lost powers. However, in 1973 Nixon vetoed the provision and every President since has disregarded or blatantly ignored it. 4. National Security Council, http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/NSC/html/nschome-plain.html I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis-broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency as great as the power that would be given me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.(#6, p.59) Pious criticized the Executive branch's disavowal of the War Powers Resolution as the most recent example of "presidents ...playing a shell game, claiming to act according to law yet dispensing with statutory law at their convenience in national security matters."(5) In concurrence with this statement, the President needs to take every effort to have the backing of Congress and the American people when sending the military into hostilities so he doesn't make the same mistake Truman did when he sent troops into Korea. "He needs to have Congress and the people with him on the takeoff so they are accountable with him on the forced landing."(#6, p.70) By the Executive taking these powers into his own hands he is bearing a responsibility that no one man can handle by himself. The arguments against the War Powers Resolution favor a move to a unitary state, or a "plebiscitary Presidency". If these shared powers were taken from Congress and changed to a unitary power solely held by the President himself it would destroy the system of checks and balances on which this country was founded. This could not be expressed more eloquently than by the words of James Madison who warned in Federalist, No. 47, that "the accumulation of all powers legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." The War Powers Resolution was a joint resolution passed under article I, section 3, the "presentment clause," by both the House and the Senate and then sent to President Nixon where he vetoed the bill. It was a resolution and not an act because Congress passed it over his veto with a super majority vote. Also, it was a resolution because it not only affected the Executive branch, but it also "provided for congressional action and priority procedures with respect to a Presidential report or congressional concurrent resolution, and amended the rules of the House and Senate to carry them out." (#6, p.62) This resolution is often
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Approximate Word count = 2221
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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