While watching the State of the Union address, I couldn’t help being slightly cynical about everything Obama was proposing and hoping our country could achieve. Don’t get me wrong—I like Obama, he was the first President I voted for as a registered voter and have always given him the benefit of the doubt through the difficult decisions of his presidency, but the agenda he proposed for the coming years struck me as overly ambitious. Realistically, I understand that the purpose of the State of the Union in modern times is for the President to set the agenda for things he would like to work on with Congress. However, I think the fact that it is such a public address, (as a component of Neustadt’s “self-executed order”) gives it the ability to get people’s hopes up and possibly lead to disappointment if the proposed goals aren’t achieved.
Even so, I appreciated the tone Obama set for our country and society, especially with his opening statement of “we should not only focus on sitting here together tonight, but working together tomorrow”. The main points Obama focused on were the promotion of innovation, education developments, the literal and metaphorical rebuilding of America, fiscal responsibility, government reform, and general improvement of our international presence.The discussion of innovation promotion had somewhat of a Cold War-esque taste to it, since it was brought up in a competition mentality against other countries’ achievements but the overarching goal was related to environmental policies. The most specific goal mentioned was to eliminate tax funding for oil companies and transfer that funding to the development of clean fuel. By 2035 President Obama aims to have 80% of our electricity derived from clean energy sources.Education promotion was probably the agenda component I feel the most strongly about but again, a Cold War-esque competition rhetoric was employed. The President stated that we must promote math and science in the classroom and urged families to take responsibility for promoting the love for knowledge in their children’s interests. Obama appealed to older students through mentioning the implementation of a permanent tuition tax credit to promote college affordability and revitalizing community colleges. Rebuilding America took on a literal and metaphorical meaning. Obama saidwe needed to not only rebuild or nation’s infrastructure and therefore provide a multitude of jobs for people, but also reform the way we interact with overseas powers and reforming our policies, like healthcare. Fiscal responsibility was aimed at the immense amount of debt our country still owes which is supposedly going to be aided by cuts on military spending and the elimination for tax breaks for millionaires. The topic of governmental reform exemplified the definition of presidential power since Obama said he would veto any legislation that contained earmarks. Since Obama is up for re-election in about a year, this authoritative stance is important for him to establish somewhat of a resume of things he has accomplished while in power that he can later use in debates/the election process.
Overall, I felt like the dates Obama set as the end points for the effects of his proposals were silly. No one is going to hold him accountable for those dates since he will be long out of power by then. I also don’t know how much of this agenda he will be able to accomplish if we implement the cuts on domestic spending since it seems like too much will be going on at the same time. Finally, as a point brought up in Neustadt’s “self-executed” order, I feel like Obama needed to reevaluate if the officials he is proposing all of this to are actually able to execute his agenda since their personal opinions on the issues could vary and they may just be unable to get all of this accomplished at the same time. In this state of the union, Obama was asking our Congress to multitask like never before.
Although the Constitution of the United States is generally praised as an effective document for both government organization and the protection of constituents’ rights, it is undeniable that there should be room for revision. After all, the Constitution was written hundreds of years ago and clearly, our society has been anything but stagnant since then.
The executive branch of government in particular lends itself to the discussion of Constitutional revision/clarification, especially regarding the following four issues:
1.The Electoral College
2.Whether or not natural born citizens should be the only people permitted to run for president
3.The relative generalizations mentioned in the presidential oath
4.Generalizations regarding impeachment
While some may believe these issues to be irrelevant (“don’t fix it if it ain’t broken”), we must realize that the executive branch is the United States’ face to the world—if our most visible government officials are disorganized and unsure of their own positions, how are we supposed to be taken seriously by other world leaders?
The Electoral College Problem; mentioned in Article II of the US Constitution
Like most people, the Electoral College was something I was suspicious about but didn’t understand very well until I watched this short video by CommonCraft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok_VQ8I7g6I
According to the basic explanation in the video, the Electoral College is supposed to give more power to more populous states. This seems contradictory to me since individual states generally want equal representation in the federal government, so they would probably want to be equally represented in electing the president. I have to admit that I am no political expert, but wouldn’t the election process even out without the Electoral College? If the majority of people in a state already like a certain candidate, that candidate would still get a lot of votes from that state regardless of the Electoral College. Yes, we live in a representative democracy but during every election a common voter complaint is that some people can’t find candidates they truly believe in because our elections are limited to two parties. By simplifying the election process, the Electoral College doesn’t allow for other parties to enter the political arena while simultaneously forcing people to “waste” their vote on a candidate they do not fully support (that is, if they choose to vote at all).
Amendment Twelve addresses the Electoral College and its’ reorganization since post-Revolutionary times, but it still seems as though the actual people who are being represented (i.e. NOT politicians) have little say in who their president will be since the Electors seem to act as the middlemen of the election process.
It seems like a better idea to hold popular elections since that would allow people to fully express their opinions as voters. We would also be able to have more variation in political parties since voters do not have cohesive views as solely being Democrats or Republicans. Having said that, if we were to actually implement this change, the government would have to establish a relatively speedy way of doing as to not interrupt an election that would fall in the middle of the deliberations. Also, the new way of voting would need to be carefully planned so that it would actually work and be proven accurate before it would actually be used in an election.
Only a Natural Born Citizen Can Become President; Article II of the US Constitution
Having a natural born American citizen as president is a very symbolically patriotic belief, and it is understandable why the framers of the Constitution would want to specify the country’s leader as such as to ward off foreign invasion/influence after the Revolutionary War. However, immigration to the US has grown exponentially since the 1700s and it would be ignorant to say that every single current naturalized citizen of the US would act against his new home country. Therefore, it seems exclusionary to prevent naturalized citizens from becoming President; after all, they chose to abandon their own cultures to assimilate into the greater American melting pot, so why should they be denied the same opportunities?
The counter argument to this would be that allowing a naturalized citizen to be president would cause a series of sociopolitical problems since a person’s personal cultural ties could influence his or her decisions in the executive office. While admittedly, there is no guarantee that this wouldn’t occur, the same could be said for a natural born citizen as well—just because someone was born in the US, does not mean that they completely identify with America.
By allowing people who were naturalized to run for president we wouldn’t necessarily be putting our country in any more danger than it is already in, we would just represent our population in a more accurate manner. Presently, someone in our country could have ideas as to how to fix the issues we face as an American society but isn’t allowed to achieve his goals simply because he or she was born outside our borders. By allowing naturalized citizens to run for president we would open doors to new ideas and new viewpoints to represent the American public.
There would still need to be rules as to who could and could not run for president, however. It would be necessary for a person to fully assimilate both culturally and socially into the American way of life to ensure that he or she would be in touch with the constituents. To make it as fair as possible, a naturalized citizen should be a full citizen of the United States for a minimum of 30 years (five less than the necessary age to run for president). In this way, there would still be an age limitation so that wealthy “off the boat” immigrants couldn’t form some kind of conspiracy theory against the US (if such a thing was to happen) and so that natural born candidates wouldn’t have an age advantage over naturalized candidates.
The Presidential Oath; Article II of the US Constitution
The presidential oath is rather open to interpretation when read carefully:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
“Preserve”, “protect” and “defend” are very generalized verbs that could be successfully interpreted to mean many things (things that an individual in power could use to his or her advantage…). This isn’t to say that US Presidents are bound to morph the oath into something sinister to take over the world, but there is room to specify what exactly his responsibilities are. A few more sentences could be added to aid this, maybe something like:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. I will preserve the liberties of the American People; protect their livelihoods and maintain their safety, while defending the Constitution of the United States in a just and fair manner. "
The benefit of adding more detail to the Presidential Oath might not be the most important change to the constitution, but it would allow people to actually know what their president promises to do for them first and foremost. This is important since people commonly believe that politicians, including the President, are “bought off” by lobbyists and corporations. With this change, symbolically people would be able to hold their president accountable for his actions as their elected leader.
Reasons for Impeachment; Article II of the US Constitution
“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
Considering the fact that impeachment is one of the most embarrassing things that could happen to a president, it is shocking to see how general the rules for impeachment actually are. While bribery, treason, and high crimes are relatively straightforward, “misdemeanors” are things that could practically be interpreted as anything unfavorable but not necessarily political.
For example, President Clinton committed a “misdemeanor” when he cheated on his wife and then lied about it to the American people. While his character might have been tarnished in doing so, he didn’t actually do anything that affected the American people directly. No wars were started over Monica Lewinsky and no one suicide bombed a major city in Hillary Clinton’s honor.
“Committing misdemeanors” should be further specified by including how the said misdemeanors would affect the American people, since it is the President’s job to act on their behalf. A more accurate phrase could possibly be something like, “…Misdemeanors that endanger the United States and the American People.”
With this clarification, bitter senators who may not agree with the President’s policies will not be able to attack him or her on topics irrelevant to the actual act of running the country.
