pendulum and the direction of a still the imperial presidency is his style, that he is not threatening, that when george bush got out there and it all that tough talk i think it turned democrats just rapidly against them by one obama says i screwed up or when he has that kind of self-deprecating way about him i think it allows people even republicans. >> off a little bet coming even though he is very privately accumulating enormous amount of power because of a lack of accountability because of the crisis and because people love him and because of his style. so is this temporary? will the pendulum swing back? my guess is, yes, and there are a number of good reasons for that and, of course, we can't predict what will happen in the future but i'm looking at a very black and white world, but if he solves these problems and the

crises go way and without crisis congress will gradually begin to assert itself more. if he does not solve these problems and crises worsened, then what happens is that the republicans get a chance of the next elections and may be the presidential elections after that so i think the pendulum will swing back to congress in the not too distant future. but for the near term i think conditions are ripe for him to accumulate more and more power into in a way that nobody is objecting to release the people who to object on how the power to do much about it. >> chip, thank you very much. >> thank you, bill, thank you for letting me be appear on this panel. i told them this is the only time i have an opportunity to do this. i used to play in softball but i was the coach here it is good two have it here. one bad thing is everybody has had a good so far so i will try and clean up what little i have left here. from time to time i've had

occasion to talk to groups of senior executive branch staff personnel that are doing orientation on congress before they go to the hill for a fellowship program for the second branch does and one of the things i like to do is ask and take a poll. i will try on you in touch with the results are with executive branch folks in this has to do with the balance of powers, who is more powerful, the president or congress or equal? of this group assembled looking at the presidency and congress, and everything the president is more powerful and dominant over the congress? raise your hands. nominee everything that the congress is more powerful than the president? raise your hands. bill has some congressional students. how many think it is about equal? two or three. what i have the sessions with executive branch people invariably they all say congress is more powerful than the president and the executive

branch. if there was one exception one time a woman put upper and and and said why you think that the president is not harmful than the congress issues that i work on the hill for 10 years and move to the executive branch last week. [laughter] so she had a little different perspective, but assets former house staffer myself for 28 years i come down with what i tell these executive-branch people were most members of congress and staff people on the hill without, they would say the president and executive branch far outweigh the congress when it comes to power and they're a little staten that that just as i was is that so many people thought congress was dominating the executive branch. and i would maintain that this dominance by the executive -- president over the congress really goes back a century. at least to teddy roosevelt and not to mcginley in the spanish-american war and was of the modern presidency emerge in the u.s. emerged as a world power but i suspect the reason a lot of these a second branch

civil servants think otherwise is because they see congress as a constant irritant and annoyance, a micromanaging that controls their purse strings. impulses all kinds of reporting requirements and restrictions on the departments and agencies and it eats up their budgets with the senseless earmarks. so i think that is one perspective to keep in mind and why the executive branch folks see congress as dominating the executive. congress, on the other hand, sees things quite differently, they see an executive bureaucracy that cannot begin to get its arms around and it comes to doing decent oversight of the executive, they see a president to is at the center of the news every day making pronouncements that congress must respond to, issuing budget proposals that congress merely tinkers with at the edges and certainly from landing in articulating u.s. demands and our policy is. and political scientists have given a variety of names to the presidents since the modern

presidency emerson over the last century, i will give you a few of them. the rhetorical presidency, legislative, national security presidency, administrative or unilateral presidency, unified executive, an imperial presidency as chip pointed out just to name a few. and i suspect by the next time there is a political science conference rolling around in toronto before labor day there will be a couple more terms attached to the presidency, maybe the global economy presidency and maybe the hope and change presidency. by way of contrast, and you can think of modifiers that regularly put in front of congress when they talk about congress? you will pause and think, well, i can think of one or two, how about to do nothing? [laughter] how about pork barrel? and that is about it. so i think perhaps more important than how members of congress and staff think about the balance of power or have the executive branch folks think about the balance is, how the

american people tend to look at it and i would maintain that not withstanding nixon in watergate, carter in the energy economic and iran crisis, reagan and iran-contra, clinton and monica, george w. and iraq and wiretaps -- most people see the presidency has been as strong as ever and accepted as a necessity in these perilous times. more olver i suspect if you poll people on whether they thought congress should be a branch of government they would throw up their hands and say we have enough gridlock as it is. so i sometimes ask myself why is it the american people tend to see the presidency as being so strong and why they supported as being such want despite all the obvious dangers and pitfalls you have had from an over powerful executive and the answer i come up with is about the same, the people believe with some justification that only a strong central figure can lead the nation during world wars, economic depressions and

recessions, against the current terrorist threats. the president's peace with one voice to the nation and to the world. the congress, on the other hand, as seen as a tower of babel. arthur/enter junior who had chronicled the presidencies of injury jackson and fdr waited until he left the administrations of john f. kennedy and lyndon johnson before he wrote his book the imperial presidency -- 1973 when the whole watergate scandal was breaking on the nixon presidency and he made a very interesting confession in the book which i think is worth sharing with you. he said that he shared in culpability for perpetrating over the years and exalted conception of presidential power and he went on, american historians this writer among them labored to give the expansive theory of the president's historical sanction overgeneralizing from the pre-world war two contrast between a president who is right and congress which is wrong,

scholars developed uncritical cold of the activist presidency. and while he died last year, i think the goals of the activist presidency is still very much alive and with us today. it is still what i think american children learn in schools, college students learn in political science class is taught from a presidential centric standpoint, what the american people when this daily on the nightly news, activism is equated with greatness and a president. i wouldn't want to begin to suggest the special while speaking at the national press club american media are also coble in part by china this cult of the activist president, instead allison gave preference is that if that was released a couple weeks ago by the center for media and public affairs. over the first 50 days of the obama presidency that newscast devoted 28 hours to his presidency compared to eight hours for george debbie bush over the same time. a 50% of the obama evaluations were positive compared to

33 percent for bush and 44 percent for clinton during their first 50 days. so then the cold of the activist presidency is not only be reinforced by and large and enhanced in the medium ones which is not to say that the media has been deprived of this cult or this perception. it was already there as evidence during the campaign and since the election and the excitement generated by the obama candidacy among the american people and of the election after all was about change and obama has gone about with all the powers available to project and deliver on the change since he became president. the media coverage reflex i think of the public interest and excitement surrounding obama and inviting. activist presidency to his daily schedule and travels. schip was mentioning, he was on a plane yesterday of the time of filing reports zero even though you follow the presidency he could and found his report but

the present has been getting around both within the country and around the world. as far as i can determine if there was an attempt in the study and mention to ask whether coming hours coverage given to congress let alone how much was positive and i suspect on the latter question the experts was a statistically insignificant. so in the answer to the question is there in a balance of powers my response is an emphatic yes. it is so lopsided that i think the president is off the charts, every president has been even though sometimes presidents have been weaker and on popular but over all the presidency has been pretty powerful notwithstanding mr. cheney's assessment that somehow it was crippled after the nixon and ford administrations. the question should be well congress and the people demand restoration of balance of power between the branches as the founders intended? i think the answer to that will have to await another symposium as we look further at this presidency down the road but for now and this we can assume the

democratic congress is content to defer and acquiesce in most of the policies proposed by their party's activist president. if he succeeds they succeed and they know it. if he does not succeed they will reassert their independence as a coequal branch sometime in the future. thank you. him i thank you very much. i would like to leave the panelists open to questions following on not note aaron >> and question following on don's conclusion there, the assumption is often made in a political science literature that the presidency has been advantaged in the media age that the television camera, for example can focus more readily on a single individual as opposed to complex institution flight progress and there for the presidency has been elevated

by media attention which in part i think you're arguing, but an alternative argument could be made based on the same technology and that is that the presidency has suffered from the unblinking stare of the television camera. the president get into office, have certain advantages but our ground down over time. the bully pulpit certainly gives the president a microphone -- megaphone to get public attention, the democratic people being with our tend to become impatient over time with presidents and perhaps more importantly congress isn't without its head manages. this sort of chip, chip, chip of congressional oversight, they're so some on capitol hill to criticize whenever president including whether democratic like obama or republican like george w. bush and the press naturally turns to ever on the hill is going to criticize the president -- there is always

someone there among the members on capitol hill so you take the example of the bush presidency, he had a bullet to open an advantage whenever he was available the cameras were focused on him and get them writing down of his popularity over time admittedly partly due to the war and the economy etc. about was an also partly to to the effort especially on the part of congressional democrats over the last meeting of 2006 and the 2008 elections. don, would you be willing to start without? in allah be happy to come i think president obama is very much aware that the camera never blinks and that is why he used teleprompter is at is conferences. i work with john anderson for many years and we fought like mad to get the house floor televised and tip o'neill was mad because he didn't want congress seen in a bad light and finally we did get tv but to a

bonnet to control the tv and didn't want to get people sleeping in picking their noses around them. i think congress back then was battling against nixon who is able to command the airwaves when ever he asked to talk about his latest policy in vietnam and i think that is one of the reasons the democrats cameron and decided to tell -- televised congress but still is not able to speak with one voice and as you mention, of course, it also allows for all kinds of critics of the administration to have their say but i think the people at least for now as our other panelists have noted there is such good will for obama that they are irritated that the people are already complaining about the administration before his policies have had a chance to work to make anyone else want to respond on that price iraq i would just point out i think one of the many factors that makes this presidency and this current political situation unique is the president, the vice president and chief of staff are all former members of congress.

they have first hand experience across -- i mean, rahm emanuel basically delivered the democratic majority in the house. he is intimately acquainted with every single congressional district in the country. joe biden has been a senator almost as long as i have been alive and has been at the forefront of every major policy debate since the early '70s. of course, obama is the least amount of experience but nevertheless i think that's gives them an ingrained sense of what is possible, what their limits are. we have seen very little direction surprisingly little friction and given what is on the table so far i think in part because they are so sensitive to

how congress operates into the buttons you can and can't push in order to deliver out comes here and i think that is probably the least appreciated feature of this presidency noir. i also thing going back to something i mentioned initially, a lot of it depends on the sort of little interactions that add up so much overtime. the president has so far demonstrated his willingness. >> off immediately offer of policies that democrats don't like. for instance in this budget he proposed limiting the charitable deductions that while the taxpayers can take, that went over like a ton of bricks and he took it off the table almost read away. that is something that president

bush never.com president clinton never did. throws congress off his game. and like everybody, they are used to cycles and they're used to a relationship dynamic that just isn't there right now and so a lot of our -- we struggle to get our hands around what exactly is unfolding and what is this relationship about. a lot of it is you are recognizing a lot of what you are seeing. >> allowed to play devil's advocate and i may. chip and you made the argument that the president has certain advantages and you pointed out appropriately that already the president has passed major legislation on the hill, the stimulus in the budget etc. but for the most part in those instances he was highly differential with congress, they read the details of legislation. now something he put together in

the white house or omb put together and sent up there, he basically deferred to them. famously back in the 1990's the president's job was to attain the based that the public thinks of congress and the president's job is to provide the discipline to a non disciplined institution do harry reid and nancy pelosi thir barack obama? >> well, i do think that when harry reid says i don't work for president obama is a case of a thou dost protest too much because although the congress did break the details of that the president got what he wanted. and it is almost of those is delegated the hard work out there so that he can get -- you didn't do that because congress has some great power, he did because he knew that was the way to get a pass most quickly. their argument was in favor of something and then send it to the hill the hill would pick it over for months and would have a

stimulus bill even today so i thank you assembly is marra strategic decision to get his bill passed and everybody thinks of it as his bill passed as quickly as possible and let the guys on the hill fill in the details. >> will he do that on health care? >> i think to a degree he will have to because he wants to get a pass, but it will be his health care bill in the end. and he is somebody who doesn't have to have a every dotted i and frosty in his original plan. he was a health care plan even if it turns out to be 40 percent of what he originally wanted, he wants something that will be his bill. >> i think he is a student of the presidency and nose and mouth from people inside his administration that work for the clinton administration what went wrong with health care back then and that was it was all a engineered in a secret task force of the white house by hillary clinton and the only people they allowed in that room from congress for the legislative councils to draft

legislation. obama is going just about the opposite line and deferring. >> baucus for instance and kennedy staff and others to begin drafting the details but working closely with the white house staff and secretary of health and human services so he is consciously going about in a way letting congress work on the details but making sure that the general guidelines that obama has in mind are in place. >> okay, and the comments or questions? among the panelists? go ahead. >> use said one thing that struck me, the whole idea that presidents get groundout overtime and that brings up the whole discussion that has been going on at the white house among the press and blogs and such as to whether he is overexposed. he is out there everyday and there are what is the american

public someday just kind of says i am getting tired of him, i just don't like him as much as i used to hearing if they are in big trouble if that happens because they are using him to sell everything. >> let me just add on that point. i think the obama white house is aware of that change of the environment that includes, it is not the same one that we had during the '60s and '70s. i guess the '50s, '60s and '70s when the height of what has been called the rhetorical presidency where a president, there was an establishment in this country and establishment media in this country where you could go on tv and expect to be carried to the rest of the country and the whole idea was a big speech in this in turn even into reagan and that you could direct the passage of legislation. i think all that has changed and as far more complicated, the media is far more complicated.

shipp talked about the rest of the twittering earlier. there you have it, we have twittering and all kinds of the gadgetry. i could be listening to a baseball game probably right now and i brought the right technology with me. but i mean is that way so the country has a lot of people that get distracted in their own little cubbyholes and that is one reason i think that the of obama presidency is taking on so much so early on, i think they know they have an intuitive understanding that people's attention is going to really scatter. i would also say obama does have a streak of his rhetorical presidency and by the way i think he is enormously capable, this is one respect in which he differs from george w. bush. bush was okay and pretty good when he was given a written speech and to give it, he has some give to speechwriters' but in the day to day arguments of public policy he was just not very good. i hate to say that. and that was not where he

excelled or as obama is good and all of us. what is the story he told sanitarian that he has a good gift? gives meaning to give to persuasion he thinks he can talk his way in and out of anything i suppose. he could become as some point to be seen to be glib out there in the country and also can seem to be, come to be seen as to moralizing about some things. when he starts to call people, state certain things are shameful like the bonuses and so forth. maybe they are but we do -- do we want a president been in school all the time. it will be interesting how that plays over time and, of course, holzmann we have to see the a fax of these policies. if we're looking at a 2.10% inflation from a staggering economy that is not kind to be in very good recommendation for the democrats either in the

midterm when next time around if there is a second term effort too. >> terry, you raise a question and i'm not sure you answered in your initial comments about whether or not bush and cheney overplayed their hand in some sense the detriment of the energy in the executive. >> well, i was making notes of the criticism of jack goldsmith and others and i think there is a decent pair point to be made that in the pursuit of the preservation in data and enhancement of certain respects of executive power that they seem so preoccupied with that ended in a way that was imprudent that backfired so their hands came to be tied borelli's they came to be constrained by the network of laws and court decisions became about on these issues. i think that's like chips notion of a stop president because and

i quoted a couple of examples i think of that to illustrate how obama really reserved judgment on some questions, i don't think he has proposed the notion of authorizing one of these interrogation techniques he has thoroughly condemned because of the circumstances may arise going back to the point about version necessity, that is what presidents can't. it could happen. >> i just want to make an observation about the bush presidency often portrayed, bush and cheney both overplay their hands and national security front. but from the perspective of congress, they were basically invisible and an argument could be made in that they were almost irresponsibly hands off of in terms of how they manage congress or interactive with congress to the extent i think it really damaged or republican

party. all bush had to do was via a spending bill every now and then and it might have realigned conservatives, empower them coming given to the republican party is something briscoe to stand in favor of it the last election cycles. instead they had almost nothing to point to as really timmons the republicans could rally around and i think that president bush ultimately is of the person who is responsible for that because you are essentially the leader of the party. right now barack obama is the leader of the democratic party in meeting those troops off into the wilderness, we're not sure what it's going to look like, that president bush from all of the attention and authority exercised on national security i think was really coming up short on the domestic side of the party a lot in mack just about bush if i may say something, i

think his presidency was we are not dramatically changed after 9/11. in fact, it almost had it did seem to be almost out of gas and a certain sense in august and almost living at that point in the first year. he had expected the domestic side of the presidency, not a foreign policy presidency, that was the expectation. that is how placid things seemed when he was a lighted and, of course, we have a bill clinton complained you remember that he didn't have an opportunity for greatness because the circumstances weren't the during -- during the right time and not a windfall for him to take advantage to become great. but here is the thing about bush. if he has a claim to having done something important of the country and for having been a good president i think it is going to be in his decision to go forward with the surge in

iraq which was a lonely decision, just about the joint chiefs were not excited about this, lots of people around him are not excited, only a few staffers seem to be and i think secretary rice was not for it either. john mccain was as we know, but that only presidential position which showed firmness, one of the hamiltonian qualities of what a president is about, but showed it in that instance coming to a decision on that and caring for with that and will still have to evaluate the results not just now but five or 15 years from now. i think that is the kind of decision it is not going to affect party building that much and maybe not the kind of thing that you go out and count that much in the environment that we had. electoral environment. but i do think that he gets that to his credit and when the bush presidency is that a year since that is going to certainly be

something that will be watched and look back too. >> unless the panelists have a question or comment to direct at one another we are willing to open to the floor, questions from our audience. john? >> [inaudible] >> we have a microphone. questions? >> my question is kind of about a factor in government that i think we skirted around the size of the judiciary which we have maligned for reasons we won't go into i suppose but i want to talk about what is labeled in the elevators on the way up here, what role do think that the media plays in facilitating or impeding these branches of government borrowing in power? does the media play an active role in the development?