The Presidency and Presidential Elections

Question 1

notable political scientist who wrote Presidential Power (1960) and defined presidential power as the “power to persuade”; Neustadt applied the theoretical perspective of pluralism to examine the presidency

Answer 1

Richard Neustadt

Question 2

constitutional provision that places (vests) the executive power in the President

Answer 2

vesting clause (article II)

Question 3

constitutional provision that makes the President responsible to faithfully execute the laws

Answer 3

take care clause

Question 4

official who is elevated to the presidency if a President dies, resigns, is incapacitated, or is removed from office; the vice president is president of the senate and can cast tie-breaking votes in that chamber; the vice president also receives states’ electoral votes and confirms the winner of presidential elections

Answer 4

vice president

Question 5

powers not explicitly listed in the Constitution but are instead drawn from ambiguous/vague language or external concepts

Answer 5

implied (inherent) powers

Question 6

landmark Supreme Court case that established the “sole organ” doctrine of inherent presidential power in foreign affairs

Answer 6

U.S. v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp. (1930)

Question 7

landmark case during the Korean War in which the Supreme Court rejected President Harry Truman’s seizure of steel mills

Answer 7

Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952)

Question 8

congress has never explicitly authorized presidential use of atomic/nuclear weapons

Answer 8

presidential use of atomic/nuclear weapons

Question 9

presidential historian who published a seminal work on the historical growth of presidential power in The Imperial Presidency (1973)

Answer 9

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Question 10

assertion that the President holds, under the Vesting Clause, a plenary (complete) executive power to take expansive actions without restraints

Answer 10

unitary executive theory

Question 11

institution for indirect election of the U.S. president; a minimum of 270 electoral votes are needed for a candidate to win the presidency; the popular vote does not determine the winner of a presidential election

Answer 11

electoral college

Question 12

elections that set a record as the most expensive in history with $14.4 billion dollars spent

Answer 12

2020 presidential and congressional elections

Question 13

1951 amendment that set a limit of two terms maximum for the presidency

Answer 13

22nd Amendment

Question 14

a series of essays published by founding fathers Alexander Hamilton (Pacific’s) and James Madison (Helvidius); the debate concerned President George Washington’s 1793 Neutrality Proclamation and the constitutional limits of executive power

Answer 14

pacificus-helvidius debates

Question 15

the presidential assertion of the right to refuse disclosures of information or to refuse/prohibit executive officials from testifying before congressional committees; in 1973 President Richard Nixon infamously refused to provide taped recordings under subpoena while claiming executive privilege; a unanimous Supreme Court ruled against Nixon’s claim of absolute privilege in U.S. v. Nixon (1974)

Answer 15

executive privilege

Question 16

an outgoing president or official (the successor has already been elected)during a transition period

Answer 16

lame-duck