Domestic Policy:

• Presidents may demand the resignation/removal of cabinet officers, high-ranking appointees (like ambassadors), and members of presidential staff

  • The Tenure Act (1867) during reconstruction, tried to curtail the president’s removal power, requiring Senate concurrence to remove nominees, in 1962 SCOTUS ruled that the Senate had no right to impair the president’s removal power

• Pardon: once used fairly sparingly, the pardon power has become more visible in recent decades

  • Truman issued over 2000 pardons and commutations, more than any other post WWII president

  • Gerald Ford became the only president to pardon another president (Nixon)

• Executive orders: proclamations to achieve policy goals

  • usually exec orders direct government agencies to pursue a certain course in absence of congressional action

  • subject to court rulings or changes in policy enacted by Congress, and are subject to removal by presidents who come after

  • more likely to justify & use exec orders in cases of national security or as part of their war powers (ex internment of Japanese Americans, suspension of Writ of habeas corpus)

  • Since WWII it has been the president who has taken the lead in engaging the US in military action outside the nation’s borders (Korea, Vietnam)

• Line-item veto: a type of veto that keeps the majority of a spending bill unchanged but nullifies certain lines of spending within it, the president got this power in 1996 after Congress passed a law permitting it, however SCOTUS heard a case concerning the line item veto and the law 16 months later was declared unconstitutional

• Executive Agreement: formal agreements negotiated between 2 countries but not ratified by a legislature as a treaty must be, treaties take a long time and a 2/3’s majority and in a fast pace & complex environment for foreign policy treaties are often burdensome

  • exec agreements need congressional approval when they commit the US to make payments (Congress has the power of the purse)

Rally around the flag effect: presidential popularity spiking during moments of international crisis