THE PRESIDENCY

1. THE PRESIDENCY

2. Formal Powers (specified by the Constitution) • Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces • Appoints judges, ambassadors and executive branch officials (with confirmation by the Senate) • Negotiates treaties with other countries (must be ratified by 2/3 of the Senate) • Signs or vetoes legislation (a veto may be overridden by 2/3 of each House of Congress) • May call Congress into special session

3. Informal powers • Symbolic role as head of state (national leader) • Richard Neustadt: “Power to persuade” • The President has resources to persuade others to do what he wants: he can mobilize public opinion to persuade Congress to act on a bill, he can make deals with members of Congress, help them raise funds for their campaigns, do them political favors, etc.

4. James David Barber, The Presidential Character • Political psychology: Study of political behavior through psychological techniques (analysis of how the way someone’s mind works affects his political behavior) • Style + worldview = character. • “Style is the president’s habitual way of performing his three political roles: rhetoric, personal relations, and homework.” This has to do with effort put into the job and the way he relates to other people.

5. James David Barber, The Presidential Character • “A president’s world view consists of his primary, politically relevant believes, particularly his conceptions of social causality, human nature, and the central moral conflicts of the time.” • Style may be active or passive. • World view may be positive or negative. • This produces four different character types.

6. Barber’s character types • Active style + positive world view = active-positive character. • Active style + negative world view = active-negative character. • Passive style + positive world view = passive-positive character. • Passive style + negative world view = passive-negative character.

7. Barber’s character types • Active-positive: “There is a congruence, a consistency, between much activity and the enjoyment of it, indicating relatively high self-esteem and relative success in relating to the environment…productiveness as a value.” • Many of the most successful and accomplished presidents have been active-positive character types in Barber’s formulation: Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton.

8. Barber’s character types • Active-negative: “The contradiction here is between relatively intense effort and relatively low emotional reward for that effort. The activity has a compulsive quality, as if the man were trying to make up for something or to escape from anxiety into hard work. He seems ambitious, striving upward, power-seeking.” Active-negative character types seek power for its own sake and frequently get into trouble (Lyndon B. Johnson in Vietnam, Richard M. Nixon in the Watergate scandal).

9. Barber’s character types • Passive-positive: “This is the receptive, compliant, other-directed character whose life is a search for affection as a reward for being agreeable and cooperative rather than personally assertive.” Passive-positive character types enjoy the job but delegate a lot to others and don’t tend to work very hard (Ronald Reagan).

10. Barber’s character types • Passive-negative: “Why is someone who does little in politics and enjoys it less there at all? The answer lies in the passive-negative’s character-rooted orientation toward doing dutiful service…Passive-negative types are in politics because they think they ought to be.” This character type seeks the presidency out of a sense of civic duty similar to military leadership (George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower).