Can a president be indicted? Part 1

This is uncharted territory, the Constitution is silent on the matter. Arguments exist on each side.

For 2305:

- Can we indict a sitting president?
- The Only Way to Find Out If the President Can Be Indicted.

I'll more soon.

From Vox: Donald Trump will be the only US president ever with no political or military experience

For our discussion of the presidency.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? His advisors will likely have an unusual amount of influence over the next few years.

- Click here for the story.

We just elected the most inexperienced president in American history.

In the office’s storied 227-year existence — from George Washington to Barack Obama — there has never been a president-elect who has entirely lacked both political and military service. Donald Trump will change that.

I went through historical presidential archives and manually compiled each president’s total years of service to the country prior to being elected. I define “public office” as any elected or appointed government position and “military service” as active duty in any capacity, including leadership positions. In cases where service amounted to less than one year (like Washington’s three months as a delegate, or Lincoln’s three months in the militia), I rounded up to a full year.

From Politico: The Friday Cover ‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky’ Where was the president in the eight hours after the Sept. 11 attacks? The strange, harrowing journey of Air Force One, as told by the people who were on board.

A great inside story of the president's activities - and who was in charge of them - on the morning of 9/11. A nice look at the workings of the White House and the president's relationship to the Secret Service and the military.

- Click here for the article.

A small taste:

Staff Sgt. Paul Germain, airborne communications system operator, Air Force One: We thought it was weird even just when the first plane hit. People who know airplanes, that’s some real stuff right there. Big airplanes just don’t hit little buildings. Then, as soon as that second plane hit, that switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree.

Col. Mark Tillman: Everything started coming alive. We were hooked into the PEOC [the White House bunker] and the JOC [Joint Operations Center], for the Secret Service. They’re all in the link now.

Andy Card: Another plane hit the other Tower. My mind flashed to three initials: UBL. Usama bin Laden. Then I was thinking that we had White House people there—my deputy, Joe Hagin, and a team were in New York preparing for the U.N. General Assembly. I was thinking that Joe was probably at the World Trade Center, that’s where the Secret Service office was, in the basement.

Mike Morell: I was really worried that someone was going to fly a plane into that school. This event had been on schedule for weeks, anyone could have known about it. Eddie [Marinzel, the lead Secret Service agent] wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

Rep. Adam Putnam: There’s some debate within the staff that I can hear about how the president needs to address the nation. They’re saying, “We can’t do it here. You can’t do it in front of fifth-graders.” The Secret Service is saying, “You’re doing it here or you’re not doing at all. We’re not taking the time to do it somewhere else. We need to get him secure.”

Dave Wilkinson: We’re talking to folks back at the White House, we’re beginning to get the motorcade up and running, getting the motorcycle cops back, we’re ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice. All of a sudden it hits me: The president’s the only one who doesn’t know that this plane has hit the second building.

From the Tampa Bay Times: Marco Rubio seeks to dismiss court challenge to his eligibility to be president

As pointed out in a previous post, Senator Rubio's eligibility to hold office is also being challenged in court. The Tamps Bay Times lays out the conflict.

- Click here for the article.

Here's the a bit from the article:

Rubio was born in Miami in 1971. But Rubio's Cuban immigrant parents did not become U.S. citizens until 1975.

That’s convinced so-called birthers to conclude Rubio is ineligible under Article 2 of the Constitution, which says "no person except a natural born citizen … shall be eligible to the Office of President."
. . . Birthers rely on various passages to back up their argument. One is the treatise The

Law of Nations by Swiss philosopher Emer de Vattel, which they say influenced the founding fathers. "The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens," Vattel wrote.

They also cite the U.S. Supreme Court, which in the 1875 case Minor vs. Happersett, used the term "natural born citizen" in reference to persons who were born in the United States, of U.S.-citizen parents.

"The arguments aren't crazy," said Georgetown law professor Lawrence Solum, an expert in constitutional theory. But, he added, "the much stronger argument suggests that if you were born on American soil that you would be considered a natural born citizen."

The article points out that Rubio took the claim seriously enough - they go back at least to 2011 - to prepare a legal argument stating that he is a "natural born citizen according to the Constitution. It is contained in his motion to dismiss the lawsuit against his eligibility.

- Click here for it.

I'll note briefly that in page 3, Rubio argues that the plaintiff lacks standing to bring the lawsuit forward. They argue - among other things - that standing requires that the plaintiff demonstrate a special injury, which he has not suffered.

More on this as the semester progresses.

This didn't take long - from The Hill: Attorney files 'birther' lawsuit against Cruz

This will be worth following. I assume it will go through the courts quickly, but who knows? The article reports that Marco Rubio's eligibility is also being challenged.

- Click here for the article.

A Texas attorney has filed a lawsuit questioning Ted Cruz’s eligibility to serve as president.

The federal case filed in Texas argues that the question must be presented to the Supreme Court for fair adjudication instead of left up to popular consensus.
“The U.S. Constitution is not a popularity document for fair weather only,” says the lawsuit filed by Newton Schwartz.

“However persuasive one finds each side in this debate, the final decision ultimately rests in the hands of five or more of nine Justices on the Supreme Court as mandated by the Constitution.”

Bloomberg News first reported on the suit, which challenges Cruz’s standing because he was born in Canada to an American mother.

The suit argues that the constitutional mandate that the president must be a “natural-born citizen” has never been settled in court and warned that the “mounting questionings crescendo” must be settled as soon as possible. It goes on to note the “persistent doubt” about President Obama’s eligibility.

In his closing, Schwartz warns that the failure to hear the case could amount to another Bush v. Gore situation, where a contested election ended up in the hands of the Supreme Court.

Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned Cruz’s eligibility for the White House in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, on Feb. 1. The two sparred over the issue during Thursday night’s debate, with Trump warning that the threat of similar lawsuits could jeopardize the Texas senator's bid.

But Cruz shot back by arguing that by the most extreme “birther” theories, Trump himself wouldn’t be eligible because his mother was born in Scotland.

Critics have also filed a suit in Florida questioning Marco Rubio’s eligibility, arguing that he’s ineligible because his parents were both not citizens at his time of birth in Miami. Rubio’s lawyers rebutted that argument in a legal filing this week.

Here's the image we talked about in 2305 yesterday

It flew by my facebook feed this morning so I figured I should post it here.

Here's background on the photo op.

He was arguing against proposals made in the Senate that would have limited his direct control of the personnel in the newly created Department of Homeland Security. Democrats were concerned that this was an attempt to limit civil service protections for federal employees. Republicans wanted to ensure the entire agency was directly controllable by the president.

Images like this are argued to be able to overcome negative coverage by the national media.

Click here for a 2004 assessment of W. Bush's relationship with the press.

For Obama's click on these. Apparently its a bit tense:

- Why reporters are down on President Obama.
- The Presidency and the Press.
- The president and the press.
- In Obama’s war on leaks, reporters fight back.
- Is Obama at war with journalists?
- Obama Administration Has Gone To Unprecedented Lengths To Thwart Journalists, Report Finds.

What is a natural born citizen?

Senator Cruz's announcement coincides with our look at Article 2.

Only natural born citizens can be president, but what does that term mean?

- FactCheck: Ted Cruz's Presidential Eligibility.
- CBS News: Good Question: How Is ‘Natural Born Citizen’ Defined?
- Wikipedia: Natural-born-citizen clause.

A royalist presidency?

The Dish flags a book that suggests we that the presidency is not only based on the British model, but that the colonists - prior to becoming revolutionaries - wanted the king to balance the interests of the colonial legislatures with Parliament, as well as among themselves.

Their principle grievance was with Parliament, not the king:

Resistance leaders and the Continental Congress repeatedly urged George III to take their side in the struggle against Parliament’s assertion that it possessed unlimited authority to enact laws governing the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” In their view, the king should act as a wholly independent monarch who would treat each of his empire’s representative assemblies as possessing essentially the same authority. If Parliament overstepped its power in enacting laws for the colonists, the king should intervene, wielding his royal veto against unjust legislation. He should act, as Thomas Jefferson memorably wrote in 1774, as “the balance of a great, if a well poised empire.” Far from clinging unthinkingly to the Glorious Revolution settlement of 1688 and its aftermath, which made the British king a decidedly constitutional and limited monarch, George III should reclaim his prerogative and vigorously exercise the independent powers that custom and theory located in the executive.

Overrated and Underrated Presidents

A Washington Post writer asked his readers to send him their picks. Read through the comments to see what was sent.

A good handful think Reagan is overrated and Carter and H.W. Bush are underrated.  

From OUPblog: The two-term era

When I began teaching in 1994, the standard question we asked when we covered the presidency was why presidents were unlikely to be reelected, and why Republican presidents were more likely to be reelected than Democrats.

At that time, only Eisenhower, Nixon (who was unable to finish his term) and Reagan were elected to two full terms of office. Many other had been defeated. Now with Obama's reelection, we've had three president in a row who've won second terms.

Here's a look at why that might be the case.

I find this part most compelling:

Several factors may be at work, but one stands out. Most recent incumbent presidents have enjoyed the advantage of early, unified support from their own party.

Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama faced no challenge when they decided to seek renomination. Certainly they had their critics within their own party, especially the Democratic incumbents. Both Clinton and Obama faced murmurings of liberal discontent. But it did not suffice to propel a challenger to enter the fray.

On the other side, George H.W. Bush encountered sharp conservative opposition from Pat Buchanan. Although Buchanan never represented a serious threat for the nomination, he did pressure Bush 41 from the right. Bush’s situation paralleled that of Johnson, Ford, and Carter, each of whom did battle with a popular rival in his own party (Eugene McCarthy, Ronald Reagan, and Ted Kennedy).

With no competition for the nomination, a sitting president does not have to engage in one of the familiar exercises of American electoral politics in the modern era — repositioning himself between the primary season and the general election campaign. Mitt Romney’s attempt to redefine himself in the final months of the campaign, to shake the “etch-a-sketch” once he sewed up the nomination, is a necessary move given the sharp difference between the primary and general electorates.
We touched on similar thoughts in class, but note that this supports the idea that political parties have transformed the constitutional system.

Presidents - Before and After

The job does tend to wear you out.

Obama Proposes Military Policy

President Obama announced his military policy yesterday. NYT coverage can be found here. A little snippet: 

Mr. Obama outlined a new national defense strategy driven by three realities: the winding down of a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a fiscal crisis demanding hundreds of billions of dollars in Pentagon budget cuts and a rising threat from China and Iran.
Slate argues that the cuts will pose "existential" problems for the army and the marines.

The report containing the recommendations can be found here

A Visual History of the American Presidency

A pretty expensive poster, nice graphics though. You can zoom in on it pretty closely. Check it out.

Will Voters Punish Republicans for Killing the Jobs Bill?

Probably not. Presidents get the blame for the economy.

Do we want a President or a Messiah?

Probably the latter.

America is desperate for a messiah. Christie Fever would seem a little more remarkable, for instance, if conservatives hadn’t already contracted Bachmania, Donalditis, and Restless Perry Syndrome, then cast aside each of their would-be saviors as soon as he or she showed the slightest earthly imperfection. Meanwhile, on the left, and in the center, the very voters who fueled President Obama’s landslide 2008 victory are now awarding him the lowest job-approval ratings of his career. Christie summed up popular sentiment in his speech. “If you’re looking for leadership in America,” he said, “you’re not going to find it in the Oval Office.” Never mind that the administration just assassinated yet another Al Qaeda kingpin, Anwar al-Awlaki, out-Bushing Bush and further discrediting the old canard that Democrats can’t protect America. The belief that there’s someone better out there—someone who can lead us not into recession, but deliver us from unemployment—now extends to both sides of the aisle.

Do we suffer from a crisis of leadership, or unrealistic expectations from the electorate?

The Presidential Line of Succession

From a conversation today - why is the line of succession to the presidency that way it is?

I really have no idea - it seem to follow the formation of institutions in the Constitution then the age of executive departments.

Presidential Trivia: Oaths and Affirmation

We've been covering the Constitution in most classes recently and in 2301 read through the part in Article 6 that mandates that officials be "bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution." I used this to comment on what an oath is as opposed to an affirmation.

Just now I stumbled across mention of Franklin Pierce's inauguration, which took place soon after his young son was killed in a train accident. According to the story he refused to swear an oath on the Bible at the ceremony and is the only president who affirmed rather than swore his loyalty to the Constitution.

More evidence that the presidency has become more prominent in the minds of Americans than Congress

Click here for graphical proof (with a caveat):

If I Were President ...

The NYT has a fun piece where they asked different people what they would do if they were president. It's worth a quick read, but as you do, its worth wondering whether what they propose is actually feasible. While we tend to think of the president as one of the more powerful - if not the most powerful - positions in the world, we forget that the office exists within a system of checks and balances. Presidents do not have magic wands they can wave and make things happen automatically.

Its also worth remembering that before one can be president, one has to have the political skills - or connections - to become president.

Ranking the Presidents by G.D.P.

From the NYT, a ranking of president since and including Eisenhower based on GDP growth while in office:

They are listed in reverse order of growth.

Barack Obama, 1.2% annual G.D.P. growth rate (previously 1.5%)
George W. Bush, 1.6% (previously 1.7%)
George H.W. Bush, 2.1%
Gerald Ford, 2.2%
Dwight Eisenhower, 2.5%
Richard Nixon, 3.0%
Jimmy Carter, 3.2%
Ronald Reagan, 3.5%
Bill Clinton, 3.8%
Lyndon B. Johnson, 5.0%
John F. Kennedy, 5.4%