284 Postscript
conflict, and American hostility towards Syria and Iran, all have the potential
to provoke crises which inevitably increase the importance of presidential
power and the influence of hawks in the administration.
Another long-standing characteristic of the American political system is
the tension between president and Congress, and the determination of the
latter to limit the power of the president. The structure of the separation
of powers established by the Founding Fathers was intended to achieve this
result and it has done so with considerable success over the past 215 years.
However, the Founding Fathers’ intention could have been frustrated by a
strongly disciplined party system, binding members of the president’s party
in Congress to support the administration’s policies; no such party system
ever emerged. Indeed, had it done so the result could have been disastrous;
the differing electoral systems for the presidency and the Congress can, and
often do, result in ‘divided government’, a president of one party and one or
both Houses of Congress dominated by the opposing party. In fact, in the
mid-term elections of 2006 the Democrats won majorities in both the Senate
and the House of Representatives. For the final two years of his presidency
George W. Bush will, therefore, be faced by a Congress controlled by the op-
posing party. Divided government, which has characterised American politics
during much of the period following the Second World War, has returned.
Apart from these structural considerations the degree of partisan sup-
port enjoyed by George W. Bush in the early years of his presidency had
come under considerable strain by 2006. Not only the setbacks in Iraq, but
a number of domestic policy considerations led to questions being raised by
Republicans in Congress about the policies of his administration. The large-
scale programme of secret interceptions of telephone calls, emails and bank
transfers, on which the administration failed to consult Congress, caused
disquiet among legislators. In July 2006 President Bush vetoed a bill which
would have provided government funds for stem cell research using human
embryos. The Bill had been passed by the Senate by a vote of sixty-three
to thirty-seven; the majority was composed of forty-three Democrats, one
Independent and nineteen Republican Senators, including the Republican
Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist. An attempt to overturn the President’s
veto in the House of Representatives failed to get the necessary two-thirds
majority although fifty-one Republicans contributed to the vote of 253–193
against the President. The Supreme Court’s decision, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in
2006, placed directly on Congress the responsibility of determining the con-
ditions under which prisoners would be held at Guantánamo Bay, and the
way in which they would be tried. The need for Congress to act, rather than
merely to acquiesce, disclosed deep divisions within the Republican Party.
The Hamdan decision made it clear that the Supreme Court will continue
to act as the arbiter of constitutional rectitude, but the way in which the Court
will perform this role in the future is less clear. In Hamdan there was a five-to-
three majority in favour of putting limits to the power of the President; the
new Chief Justice Roberts took no part in the case. President George W. Bush
was able to nominate two Justices to the Court, both of whom are expected to