The president has always been the central actor in American politics.

Explain and analyse three ways in which the Executive is checked and balanced. (9 marks)

Analyse, evaluate and compare the arguments in the above passage for and against the view that the President has too much power. (25 Marker)

End of unit assessment: 

Paper 2: The Executive

The president has always been the central actor in American politics. But over the last several decades, the spotlight on the White House has shined ever brighter. And for good reason. For decades, the presidency has become ever more powerful as an overwhelmed and gridlocked Congress has left more and more to the executive branch. Some of Congress' self-imposed decline has come through specific delegations of authority, some by rolling over and letting the president dictate the legislative agenda, and some through sheer inaction and neglect.

The core problem with the central focus in the presidency is that it has consumed our ability to evaluate individual candidates for Congress — and state and local office — independent of the presidency. Every choice, from bottom to top of the ballot, is a referendum on the presidency.

Article adapted from an opinion piece from NBC news ‘Donald Trump and the White House have too much power. That's ruining democracy, March 2020.

The framers (writers) of the Constitution were creating the structures that would allow for—and limit—the options that were available to the President.

The framers were particularly focused on constraining presidents, “The starting point was that we’d gone through a revolution against monarchical power,” he says. “Nobody wanted the chief executive to have the kinds of power the British monarch had.”

In addition to separating the government’s legislative, executive and judicial branches, the framers imposed a range of other limitations. For example, presidents had to get re-elected, they had relatively short terms, and they could be impeached.

Article adapted from an article in the Harvard University Law Journal, Summer 2019

Analyse, evaluate and compare the arguments in the above passage for and against the view that the President has too much power.  (25 marks)