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Description
The George W. Bush administration has aggressively advanced claims of presidential supremacy in American government. We use data from surveys to explore the reactions to these claims on the part of three groups of governmental elites and the general public. Responses are shaped by partisanship and ideology, which overwhelm institutional loyalties. Democrats are generally unified in opposing practices that expand presidential power beyond established political or constitutional limits. Republicans are more divided. Some entirely reject those practices. Yet about three quarters of Republicans in all samples endorse presidential supremacy, partially or fully, We consider the implications of the findings for possible longer-term outcomes with respect to these issues.
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The George W. Bush administration has been controversial in many respects, but for American democracy the most important issue concerns its conception of the powers of the presidency. Bush has acted aggressively and consistently to assert presidential primacy in American government. He has, for example, claimed presidential authority to contravene international laws or treaties signed by the United States, to ignore provisions of statutes that he believes conflict with his powers as commander in chief of the armed forces, to order preemptive military action without the consent of Congress even if an attack is not imminent, to order interception of telephone and e-mail communications without statutory authorization, and to issue signing statements that declare parts of statutes he signs inoperative.
The administration has defended these claims on the basis of a recently articulated constitutional doctrine of "the unitary Executive" that is now well known to presidential and constitutional scholars and needs only brief summary here. Originally formulated by conservative law school faculty and figures in the Reagan administration's Department of Justice, and promoted by the Federalist Society, this theory of presidential power grants sweeping constitutional and policy-making prerogatives to the chief executive, from complete and singular control over executive agencies to full command of military action to a privileged position for defining the meaning of the law--all without congressional or judicial interference and contrary to prevailing scholarly conventions about checks and balances in the separation-of-powers system. (1) Not all of the administration's claims, of course, are entirely new (James 2005). But the expansiveness, consistency, and forcefulness of Bush's positions are unprecedented and have made presidential power a focal point of controversy during his two terms of office. The issues at stake are central to the way constitutional government is practiced in the United States.
Our article examines the reactions to some of these claims, and related issues, by several kinds of governmental elites in the United States and by the public at large. We use data from three surveys (part of a larger series of surveys) that were developed for the Institutions of American Democracy Project, sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands. The surveys we analyze, which include batteries of the same questions, were conducted from August 2004 to January 2005 and drew samples, respectively, from the political appointees of the Clinton and Bush administrations and career members of the Senior Executive Service (SES); from legislative staff in members' offices in the Senate and the House of Representatives; and from the general public. (2) We are writing a book based on these surveys, with broad attention to the functioning and performance of the primary U.S. policy-making institutions--the presidency and Executive Office of the President, the executive branch departments and agencies, and the two houses of Congress. For this report, however, we focus specifically on public and elite views about a central issue for readers of this journal and for the American polity--the appropriate scope of presidential power. In the long run, the disposition of these issues will turn in large part on what elites inside government and citizens think about them.
The Surveys and Measures
The surveys were designed to facilitate comparisons among legislative and executive elites and the general public. They were conducted in a period that was relatively politically favorable for President Bush. On the one hand, the Iraq War was already going poorly, and the scandals at Abu Ghraib prison had received wide publicity. The Democrats had initiated strong challenges to his conduct as president. And his public approval ratings had dropped dramatically from the astronomical levels after the 9/11 attacks. On the other hand, Bush had yet to face the devastating publicity that accompanied the president's and the federal government's responses to Hurricane Katrina or the deepening public disaffection with the Iraq War in 2006 and 2007. The separate scandals associated with Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr., chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, had yet to become dominant fixtures of media coverage. Throughout the survey period, the president's approval ratings hovered just over 50 percent, and he was reelected, this time winning the popular vote, while Republican majorities were returned to the House and Senate. In short, the data were collected at neither the best of times nor the worst of times for the Bush administration. They probably provide a reasonably representative reading of elite and public views on presidential power during his administration.
Two sets of survey items, asked in all three surveys, measured respondents' views about appropriate presidential power and authority. The first addressed three issues about deference to presidential judgments and decisions. Should other policy makers defer if the president believes something should be done about an important national issue? Should the president have a right to keep his communications with others on policy matters private, even without invoking executive privilege? And, finally, should Congress go along if the president and the majority leadership in Congress agree on a policy matter? These items were designed to tap the notion that other policy makers should voluntarily accept the president's leadership and refrain from intruding on his decision processes; they do not concern novel claims of legal or constitutional authority on the president's part. They do, however, propose forms of deference that have never been part of American constitutional or political norms, even though extreme forms of deference have sometimes occurred.
The second set of items more directly confronted the Bush administration's distinctive legal and constitutional claims. It included measures of respondents' views on three highly controversial issues concerning the president's authority to act unilaterally. These issues were the president's authority--"without the consent of Congress"--to "suspend constitutional protections for certain individuals," to "take military action even if an attack is not imminent," and to "contravene international laws or treaties to which the US is a signatory." In contrast with the first set, these items were designed to tap respondents' support for the president's formal authority to act--in ways not recognized in established constitutional doctrine--even if other policy makers, and specifically Congress, oppose his actions.
All six items are correlated.... |
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