Chapter 12 Executive Branch

Question 1

presidential primary election (ch.12)

Answer 1

Members of the party vote to decide which candidate they want their state to support at the party’s national convention.

Question 2

caucus (ch.12)

Answer 2

Instead of simply casting a ballot, you participate in a meeting to discuss the candidates and then somehow express your preference. (such as by raising hands or dividing into groups based on which candidate you prefer)

Question 3

Electoral College (ch.12)

Answer 3

Members of the Electoral College are called presidential electors, or just electors. Each state
appoints a number of electors equal to its total members of Congress, senators and representatives
combined. For example, since every state has two senators, a state with five representatives in the
House would have seven members of Congress. As a result, the state would appoint seven electors.

Question 4

Presidential Electors (ch.12)

Answer 4

when someone votes for a presidential candidate, it’s not a direct vote but an indirect one.
Basically, their vote says to the state, “When you appoint our presidential electors, I want them to be
from this candidate’s party”

Question 5

Impeachment (ch.12)

Answer 5

Impeachment means you’ve been formally accused of committing
wrongdoing. The power to impeach belongs to the House of Representatives, and they exercise this
power by a majority vote.

Question 6

Trial (ch.12)

Answer 6

Once someone has been impeached, they have to go on trial because the impeachment is just an
accusation. So now we have to try the impeachment to see if the person is guilty as charged, and the
trial happens in the Senate. All of the senators sit and listen to the evidence against the accused, and
then they vote guilty or not guilty. To convict the accused, it takes a two-thirds vote of the senators.
This is a supermajority, and it’s hard to get. If the vote is less than two-thirds, then the accused is
found not guilty, and they remain in office.

Question 6

22nd Amendment (ch.12)

Answer 6

The 22nd Amendment basically says if you succeed to the presidency and finish more than half of
the other president’s term, then that counts as your first term, and you can only get elected once
after that. So that’s a situation where the president would not even be eligible for eight years. But if
someone succeeds to the presidency and does not finish more than half of the previous president’s
term, then that time does not count against them, and they’re still allowed to get elected two times
afterward. So in that situation, they’ll be able to serve more than eight years. Hopefully that makes
sense.

Question 7

Departments (ch.12)

Answer 7

The executive branch has fifteen departments. Metaphorically, think of a department as a box. If you
open the box and look inside, what you see is a bunch of related bureaus, agencies, commissions,
authorities, stuff like that. These are the institutions that take the laws passed by Congress and run
the programs created by those laws

Question 8

Secretary (ch.12)

Answer 8

Each department is headed by a person called a secretary. So the secretary of Defense is the head
of the Defense Department

Question 9

Attorney General (ch.12)

Answer 9

The only exception here is that the head of the Department of Justice is
called the attorney general of the United States, not the secretary of Justice

Question 10

Cabinet (ch.12)

Answer 10

So when you hear this word cabinet, it’s talking about the fifteen
department heads and a few other people sitting together as a body of leaders to give advice to the
president

Question 11

Cabinet Departments (ch.12)

Answer 11

Because the heads of these departments are in the president’s cabinet,
we oftentimes call the departments cabinet departments. They are the main subdivisions within the
executive branch. You have the president’s executive office at the top, and then down one level, you
have these fifteen departments

Question 12

Independent Establishments (ch.12)

Answer 12

Now go down one more level and picture a bunch of boards, bureaus, commissions, agencies,
authorities—just sitting there on their own. They’re not part of any department. The government calls
these independent establishments, and in some ways they’re similar to the institutions inside
cabinet departments. But when Congress created these entities, it did not place them inside any
department. It just left them in the executive branch out on their own. Each of these establishments
has leaders as well. They might be board members, commissioners, whoever’s in charge of the
institution

Question 12

Bureaucracy (ch.12)

Answer 12

So when we say the president is the national chief executive, we’re saying the head of all that
organizational structure within the executive branch. If you’ve ever heard the term bureaucracy,
that’s what we’re talking about

Question 13

Bureaucrats (ch.12)

Answer 13

And the people that work in it are called bureaucrats

Question 14

Appointment Power (ch.12)

Answer 14

Now in reality, the federal bureaucracy is so large and handles so many things that the president
cannot possibly control it all. But there are tools the president can use to steer the bureaucracy in
the direction of the president’s priorities. Let’s talk about some of those.
The first one is the appointment power. The heads of the fifteen cabinet departments and the people
who head all the boards and commissions and agencies and such, they are appointed by the
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president. So if the president is careful when they choose these people, that will go a long way to
making sure these agencies fall in line with what the president would like the government to do.
The appointment power is checked by the Senate. When the president nominates someone to fill one
of these positions, the Senate will take a vote and has to approve before the appointment can take
place. If the Senate disapproves, then the president has to nominate someone else. That’s just part
of our system of checks and balances.

Question 15

Office Of Management and Budget (ch.12)

Answer 15

Think of this office as a filter. Whenever an institution in the federal
bureaucracy makes a budget request, or makes a regulation of some sort, or makes a request to
Congress for a certain kind of law, those things have to pass through the Office of Management and
Budget to make sure they’re consistent with the president’s priorities

Question 16

Ability to Persuade (ch.12)

Answer 16

Still, the federal government has roughly 3 million employees. You can’t possibly control them all.
This is why political scientist Richard E. Neustadt wrote that a president’s success depends on their
ability to persuade others. According to Neustadt, persuasive power comes from effective
bargaining. When I first read his book in college, I thought, “Why should the president have to bargain
for compliance by people below him in the chain of command?” Well, the federal bureaucracy is too
vast and scattered to be brought under control during a single presidency. For this reason, good
“people skills” are valuable tools when trying to lead federal bureaucrats. Orders are more likely to
be obeyed when the people receiving them respect the person giving them.

Question 17

Power of The Purse (ch.12)

Answer 17

Another check that Congress has on the commander in chief is its power of the purse. If the
president fights a war that Congress disagrees with, Congress can cut off the funding. Remember, as
we talked about earlier, Congress controls the federal government’s money. No money can come out
of the U.S. Treasury to pay for anything unless that expenditure has been approved by law. So the
theory is that if the president oversteps their boundaries and starts a war without permission from
Congress, Congress could end that action by cutting off the funding. If you can’t pay for the war, you
can’t fight the war

Question 18

War Powers Resolution (ch.12)

Answer 18

Where is the line between Congress’s power and the president’s power when it comes to military
actions?
Congress tried to clarify that line in 1973 when it passed a piece of legislation called the War Powers
Resolution. This legislation imposed three requirements on the president.
* First, before committing troops into battle, the president has to consult with Congress
whenever possible.
* Second, within 48 hours after deploying troops into hostilities, or a situation where hostilities
are imminent, the president must file a written report with Congress telling them that the
troops have been deployed.
* Third, if after 60 days Congress has not approved the president’s military action, the president
has to bring the troops home.
Richard Nixon was president when this legislation got passed, and he vetoed it. But Congress
overrode the veto. That means there was a two-thirds vote in the House and a two-thirds vote in the
Senate to pass this resolution, even though the president had vetoed it.

Question 19

Diplomacy (ch.12)

Answer 19

The word diplomacy refers
to relationships between countries.

Question 20

Treaty Power (ch.12)

Answer 20

The president is the one authorized to act on behalf of the United
States with foreign countries. This role includes the treaty power. The Constitution says the
president has the power to make treaties with foreign countries. Now that power is checked by the
Senate. After the president negotiates a treaty, it has to go to the Senate, and they’ll vote on whether
it should be ratified or not. Again, that’s just part of our system of checks and balances.

Question 21

Executive Agreement (ch.12)

Answer 21

This is a vocabulary term, and it just means
an agreement between the president and a foreign country that is not a treaty. Since these are not
treaties, they don’t have to be approved by the Senate

Question 21

State of the Union Address (ch.12)

Answer 21

The Constitution says that from time
to time, the president shall give the Congress information on the state of the Union

Question 22

Unified Government

Answer 22

Unified government is when one political party has the presidency, the House of
Representatives, and the Senate. In other words, the president’s party has a majority in both
chambers of Congress. Then we would say the government is unified

Question 23

Divided government

Answer 23

Well, then obviously divided
government is when the president’s party does not have control of both chambers of Congress. The
other party controls at least one chamber, maybe both.

Question 24

going public

Answer 24

One thing that presidents commonly do to try and persuade Congress is use a tactic called going
public. Let’s say there’s something the president wants Congress to do, but Congress is dragging its
feet. The president might go to the public—traveling around the country, giving speeches, holding
rallies, doing stuff like that to try and get the people on the president’s side. Because if the people are
on your side, those people vote, and members of Congress have to pay attention to that. This is
basically a strategy of getting around members of Congress and trying to apply pressure by going
straight to their voters.
This might seem like a good idea if you need to motivate Congress, but some political scientists say
that it backfires more often than it helps the president. One of those political scientists is a guy
named George Edwards III. He specializes in the presidency, and he’s pointed out that oftentimes
when the president takes an issue public, this has the effect of polarizing the debate. By polarize I
mean it splits the public into two different groups that oppose each other. The president’s supporters
are rallied, but the president’s not really gaining any new supporters or changing anyone’s minds.
People just dig in their heels, and it makes compromise and progress even less likely.
So when the president chooses to go public, there’s a risk that this action will replace deliberation
and compromise (which is what’s supposed to happen in a democracy) with confrontation and
events like what you would expect during a political campaign. Edwards and others would argue that
it’s better for the president to continue working behind the scenes with people in Congress to try and
cut deals that will allow them to move forward on legislation. When you take it public, things tend to
blow up, and the plan might backfire.

Question 25

veto power

Answer 25

The last item I want to talk about regarding the president working with Congress is the veto power.
This definitely gives the executive branch some leverage in the law making process. When Congress
passes a bill, the bill cannot become a law until it has been presented to the president. If the
president approves of the bill, they can sign it. But if they disapprove, they have the option to veto it.
The only way Congress can pass a bill into law if the president vetoes it is by getting a two-thirds vote
in the House and a two-thirds vote in the Senate, which is very difficult because those are
supermajorities. So during negotiations with Congress, if the president signals that the bill would be
vetoed as written, that gives Congress incentive to change the language of the bill. The threat of a
veto carries weight.

Question 26

executive action

Answer 26

Well, sometimes the executive and legislative branches just cannot agree. In these situations, the
president may be tempted to take unilateral action. By unilateral I mean by themself, acting alone.
The name for this practice is executive action. If someone makes a statement like, “We need
executive action on this issue, ” it means they want the president to execute a plan without getting it
passed into law by Congress. When presidents do this, they usually look through laws that are
already on the books and find one in the ballpark of what they want. Then they give the law a
permissive reading to legally justify what they’re doing.
If you want two examples, this is how Donald Trump got funding to build a border wall, and this is how
Barack Obama claimed authority to start the DACA program. It’s pretty common nowadays for
presidents to do such things, but there are two reasons why working with Congress is better than
proceeding unilaterally through executive action.
First, some would argue that unilateral policy making violates the Constitution. In a government with
separation of powers, major plans of action are supposed to pass through the legislative branch and
be enacted into law. Then the executive branch takes those plans and carries them out. But that’s
not what happens with executive action. When the president acts unilaterally, Congress is removed
from the process, which raises questions about the legality of the action. This happened when
President Biden tried to cancel more than $400 billion in student loan debt. A lawsuit was filed, and
the Supreme Court declared his action unconstitutional. The Court said that because no existing law
permitted such dramatic action, the president had to either drop his plan or get it through Congress.
The second reason why it’s better for the president to work with Congress is that such cooperation
produces more durable action. If a policy is enacted through the constitutional lawmaking process,
and by that I mean Congress passes a bill and the president signs it, that policy is likely to last longer
than if it were put in place by the president through unilateral action. Why? Because in the first
situation, the policy is an actual law, and all presidents have a duty to faithfully execute the law. So
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whoever becomes the next president still has to enforce that policy. But if the president established
the policy through executive action, then the next president can come in and just change course by
undoing the policy because it was not passed through legislation.
And that’s pretty common. Someone will get elected president, they’ll come into the White House,
they’ll issue their own executive orders canceling out some executive orders that the previous
president made. You can’t do that with laws of the land. A president can’t just come into office and
cancel out laws that were passed during the previous president’s administration. You have a duty to
execute the law whether you like it or not. But that does not apply to executive orders and other
executive actions taken by the previous president.

Question 26

line-item veto

Answer 26

But as the president, you don’t want to overplay your hand. Let me explain why. Although the
Constitution gives the president the power to veto, it does not give the power for a line-item veto. A
line-item veto is where you can veto a line out of a bill, or an item out of a bill, and sign the rest into
law. It’s a partial veto. The U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow that. The only kind of veto that is allowed
is vetoing an entire bill. The president either has to sign an entire bill into law or veto the entire bill.
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You can’t veto part of it and sign the other part into law. In some state governments, the governor has
this power, but the president of the United States does not.
Think about the kind of political gamesmanship this makes possible. Imagine the president going to
Congress saying, “I don’t like that provision in the bill. If it comes to me with that provision in it, I will
veto it. ” Well, you have Congress’s attention because they know that if the bill gets vetoed, it’s
probably dead. They probably won’t be able to get enough votes to override it. But that doesn’t mean
they will automatically take everything out that the president wants taken out. What they might do
instead is add something the president really wants. Because remember, if the president’s going to
veto something, it has to be the entire bill, not just part of a bill. So if you put something in there that
the president really wants, then the president has to think twice about exercising a veto.
This is what politics looks like. You take the power you have, and you try and use it to get what you
want. But you have to realize the other side has power too, and that’s supposed to force us to bargain
and compromise.

Question 27

reprieve

Answer 27

And the
Constitution, as I said previously, mentions the word reprieves. A reprieve is a postponement of your
sentence. You still have to serve it as it was ordered in court, but we’ll put it off for some reason. The
president has the authority to do that as well.

In summary, a reprieve is a postponement of your sentence- you still have to do it, but we’re going to put it off for some reason.

Question 27

pardon

Answer 27

The Constitution says the president is authorized
to grant reprieves and pardons. This has to do with sentences for crimes

In summary, a pardon is forgiveness for a federal offense- you cannot be punished

Question 28

commutation

Answer 28

There’s another thing called a commutation. If the president commutes your sentence
instead of pardoning you, that means your sentence has been shortened. Maybe the president
knocks it down from ten years in prison to five years in prison. That would be a commutation

In summary, a commutation is a reduction in your sentence- we will shorten your prison term.