Presidential politics 171events in the history of the United States had taken place, events that were
revealed in the most exhaustive detail to the whole world by the newspapers
and by congressional investigations. An attempt will be made at the end of
this chapter to put this, the lowest point ever reached by the institution of
the presidency, into perspective. Here we are concerned to explore the na-
ture of presidential power, its extent, its bases and its limitations. The end
of the Nixon presidency gave a bizarre colouration to this picture, but the
underlying nature of the problem of the presidency remains the same.
The central problem of the presidency is its solitary character. The cabi-
net rarely acts in any collective sense, and the final burden of decision tak-
ing, or of the extent to which it will be abdicated to others, rests upon the
shoulders of one person. The creation of the Executive Office in 1939 initially
eased this problem, but now it can be seen to have created new and perhaps
more fundamental problems. What then is the nature of this power that the
president wields?
The parameters of power
There are two rather contradictory statements used to describe presidential
power. On the one hand, it is asserted that the president of the United States
is the most powerful elected official in the world; on the other hand, it is
argued that the power of the president is, in effect, simply the power to per-
suade. As we have seen, this power is certainly hemmed in by constitutional
boundaries, but it is a mistake to try to characterise the power of the presi-
dent in a single, well-turned epigram. The reality is much more complex.
We are now in a position to analyse the nature of presidential power, and to
explore its boundaries. Of course, we cannot say anything about the nature
or extent of presidential power in any particular future situation, for so much
must depend upon the exact circumstances, or upon the nature of public
opinion at the time; what is unthinkable at one moment may be practical
politics the next. What we can do is to define the parameters of presidential
power, the constants within which it must develop and be exercised accord-
ing to the political context. We can distinguish three sets of conditions of
this sort, which overlap and combine into differing qualities of potential power.
Given a certain level of public and party support, therefore, the potential
power of the president will vary according to the way in which these factors
add up in a particular instance.
The potential power of the president to act will vary in the following
ways:
1 a if the action involves persuading Congress to confer new statutory powers
on the administration;
b if the action can be taken under an existing congressional statute;
c if the action can be brought within one of the directly granted
constitutional powers of the president;