government and cutting spendin and the like is what mike needham represents much more. republicans are getting some big defeats. we and the year with gay marriage being illegal in utah. that is a big part of this. they look at what is happening on the ground. i do not know if asserting themselves again, is a question of persuasion. >> we have a minute left. we do have the budget again, the standoff between the parties on federal spending. next yearu see the being like? we are arty talking about 2016. is this basically in a holding pattern until the next big election? >> the terms of engagement have been set. theynot see how anything

can happen between now and then. think it will be small and incremental. looking toward a post-obama time of 2017. he said that about the health care act. there is those looking well beyond the legislation termed toward the home new era. thanks to both of you for being here. thank you for your questions. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> today on c-span, and look at presidential power with david edelman. then start of investors from this year's tech crunch conference. later, our series on first ladies continues with highlights of first ladies in the 20th century.

>> we started looking at the data. out.hing strange popped when you look at a map of europe come easy germany, france, ireland, italy. data on where the the profits are, italy, france, it is a hugelyd, disproportionate amount was in ireland. that is one indication that something was going on. >> more with marty sullivan, chief economist for "tax analysts." tonight at 8:00 on q and a. andext, journalists historian david andelman discussed the history of the imperial president and the changes in power to democratic leaders around the world. bard college and "foreign affairs" magazine hosted this

hour-long event. >> david andelman has a biography that i can't possibly do justice in my typically short probably not short enough -- introduction. in brief, he is the author of the book "a shattered peace: versailles in 1919 and the price we pay today." he is the former president of the overseas press club, where we have students interning, as well as the world policy institute. he is the former executive editor of forbes.com, has been a domestic and foreign correspondent for "the new york times," a paris-based

correspondent for cbs news, a correspondent for cnbc, and has written for "harpers," "the atlantic," "the new republic," and a list of others we won't go through now. i just named the ones i read. today his talk is titled "imperial presidency: gone and all but forgotten." he will speak for 25 minutes or so. i don't generally interject unless things take a terrible turn. we will have time for q&a at the end. it is my pleasure to turn over the podium to david andelman. [applause] >> thank you. i have to say that this is a particular honor delivering the james clarke chace lecture. he was my predecessor and the great mentor as well when at the debut of my career i had approved us the privilege of writing for him at "foreign affairs," one of our worthy competitors. let's begin. there was a time in the not-too- distant past when the office of the president carried with it all but unprecedented powers, not unlike the great emperors of old. distant past when the office of the president.

unprecedented powers none unlike the great emperor even changed the course of history in the democracy or oligarchy and the political systems removed in every other respect from the traditional dictatorship the president still have unfettered power. i like to call this imperial presidency. the can launch wars in algeria and indochina with a gesture to the national assembly that met regularly and across from the palace where he presided. today he must turn to the deeply fractured parliament for approval in every major political decision. in london where winston churchill and the cabinet could join american allies in defense of the empire with barely a nod to the house of commons just down the block today's successor david cameron bows down after seven hours shouting down as evers deutsch to join the same

american military and syria middle eastern state with nuclear ties to the british commonwealth. rarely have the chiefs of state or government then has the of war today in the power of the electorate to barely able to keep a single one blinked on and on how history might treat them. the presidency and terri hail or not is in the one position of the government to pay for which all power flows down to the rest of the government and at the same time in the best of circumstances upward from the people. but all too often in just one direction. and this feeling is most central to our understanding of how the rulers rule and how people are different today. in august of 1983 there was a panic across the stretch of africa the libyan dictator was contemplating an invasion of his neighbor to the south who was a nation that of course traveled the desert of the martha jungle on the south and the forces had a clearly direct shot for the process into the heart of chad.

the french who were controlled as part of africa still maintain close economic political and cultural ties with their former colonies so it was hardly surprising the attachment of the french legion would find its way to the capitol as a show of force. at the same time though, the ruler put somewhat more any brank dictator but also president now the democratic republic of congo. if there were ever an imperial president, for 32 years he presided all but the challenges of the ruler of the nation that he had renamed unmasking the vast personal fortune that seat in 1984 about time i got there was estimated at $5 billion, that is $11 billion today, was known to charter a supersonic jet for shopping trips to paris and the power at home and across the broad stretches of the content was all but unchallenged

to rate the president of chad was an aspiring character from the same cut of cloth she attempted power before i got there and moved to hold the self-proclaimed president partly elected. he was using a secret police organization that he used to greet the power and the documentation and security directorate included gas into the eyes and years and knows of his opponent on to the exhaust pipes of running cars and a technique of waterboarding that few ever managed to survive. now he was hearing the arrival of tanks and the power that she had very little ability to neutralize so it was hardly surprising that his recently arrived and hardly democratically elected president might want to seek some backup from the national leader who might be somewhat compliment to those than the socialist president who he hardly trusted

3,000 miles away. on saturday morning of august 20, 1983, the presidential jet touched down in the airport and both presidents had anticipated the world press turnout. this was going to be a show. just the ticket they felt to show them just what they would be up against. the team turned out quite a respectable crowd thousands lining the route from the airport to downtown and clearly the doors opened and out stepped in his signature libertas can toga and his some pluses he was confident the down the steps, have a customized jeep with tires higher than his shoulders, grasped the staff with a gold figurehead and signaled the vehicle to move slowly down the

past. running ahead of its they speak on the jungle drums it was all inspiring and frilling and in a demonstration of power as i have ever witnessed. incidentally such dictators still exist in many corners of the world since the independence of mind before the former soviet republic of belarus has never known any president but the alexander lucas who maintained an iron fist control over the nation not to mention influence over the major industries including finance, media and every every aspect of life and what is effectively the latter-day in the tiny indian ocean its president he hung on to the office in 30 years and years to be pulling strings as his nation seeks to merge to

words and azo ones of the democracy. now we have accumulated little wealth on the skill who served as the president since august of 1979 central to the personal network but still somewhere around $600 million. these and a host of other leaders while bearing the title of president maintained many of the trappings of the kind of hereditary monarchs. each rules as he will with barely a nod to those that he or she holds because there are very few female dictators in the strike. for instance they stand between his people and utter instability, brought the property and the stretches of the soviet union and the deprivations of the powerful families all of which was true but at what cost?

so these serve as one extreme. today france is perhaps the other. it's a far cry from the last socialist president's and the means take a leader and control of every word spoken by anyone in the administration. every action from the palace in so many respect when it came to the sense of how the president should rule and where to put everyone to achieve maximum even as the power of the office was slipping away from the hold exerted by charles deval to slow the process. one late afternoon the foreign minister concluded a particularly sensitive diplomatic negotiation and was xm in the foreign ministry running the gauntlet of the french and western journalist. i was there for cbs and i trust my microphone in front of him and asked him a question in english to which he replied in

his impeccable english and disappeared into the french counterpart. each evening at the palace they would convene a group of ministers and counselors to watch the turnout at the o'clock evening news. that particular evening the french national television was compelled to use the sound bite in english subtitles and french. what an embarrassment. a french minister speaking in english and french television. imagine. trust me, it never happened again. after that it became impossible to obtain an english sound bite from a member of the government. but it wasn't something cosmetics. was every aspect of politics, society, economics that the small band councilors control over 14 years. the longest in the french president would ever likely ruler gentry the reason for that in the year 2000, the constitution was amended and

provided a maximum of the twofive-year terms rather than seven year terms when he came to power. now, three presidents later war has changed. she finds himself in a pickle that is reflective of many fellow presidents but fared less room to maneuver to get his dilemma is terrible the burden editorial list writes because recognizing his strategic office he undermines his presidential credibility. but continues to function. he may have all presidential powers, but they would assert themselves as a leader. the immediate context she was talking about of course was france growing economic crisis. standard and poor's dropped to the credit rating from aa plus and in just this year after it died after it lost its aaa rating.

out of the despair the predecessor sarkozy himself to be this imperial presidency is a question of atmospherics. in this multipolar world where the populations are bombarded with a host of stimulus and a range of voices clamoring to the earth each offering appealing solutions ka presidential leadership in the leadership of any stripe. when i arrived in 1980 for the debut of the presidency, in fact even by the time i returned to the united states seven years later there was still no internet in france or anywhere else. the national news broadcast on the television networks with the inner workings of the government and its ministers along with some sensational murders of the fashion stars and whether the next morning a half-dozen had

political persuasions owned by the french communist party and the liberal to the centrist. then was the president who was the lone stone of government when asked society, the homeland. today that is no longer the case in france or a lot of other places. indeed along with much of the civilized world it's been abolished by the forces competing for attention. the term as president was and how poured manifestation of a deeper transformation of the presidency across the globe. circumscribed term limits are now the rule rather than the exception and the only profoundly dysfunctional dictator leaders of belarus and ugonda both no term levels for the president's imagined only beginning in the world had no term limit to the presidents anymore. the offer an unlimited number of

terms to their president with fifer six years in a stretch. so you could go on for a very long time. they let their president hang around for seven years with a maximum of three terms and in theory and practice he has held office since 1994 and shows no signs of fading into retirement. the same open ended holds true for the president of italy but that is largely a ceremonial post and serbs pretty much the will of the parliament. the presidents of the republic of congo, rwanda, uzbeckistan and ireland, a large ceremony of vote reach out to seven year terms. i state this list because it demonstrates that today few democratically elected presidents have the same power and reach as their predecessors. the only remaining imperial presidents are those who usurp their authority to maintain the office. but the shift in the power

balance has led to some profound disconnect on the world stage and the ability to conclude any transformative initiatives. this past summer when the kuran elected a new and forward thinking president, the work rejoiced. rouhanni was a breeze compared to his knucklehead predecessors. the mckennon separated in the nazi holocaust that was and historical fiction. he was prepared to take president obama's phone call and chat for some minutes though a handshake at the u.n. may have been a bit of a stretch at the moment. now, the negotiators returned quickly to the bargaining table. we all know that when the members of the security council plus germany and effort to broker some progress to support the hold on that nation's nuclear ambitions while at the same time lifting the collection of sanctions the was strangling the of iranian economy. but here again cut sharply curtail the president's on both sides of the tail reasserted themselves.

on the iranian side, neither the president more the foreign minister had unfettered control under the existential issue as the nuclear program. when it comes to the foreign and strategic affairs, the nuclear aspirations a single individual involves the strings, the supreme leader, the grand ayatollah khomeini. of course on the of the side of the table there may be no other religious figure behind the curtain. but the ability of the president in u.s., france, china, russia, the british prime minister or the chancellor of germany are constrained when it comes to arriving at a bargain on the transfer but it issue a restraining the nuclear power program. president obama has problems with a broad swath of congress and fevers rather than loosening them and would prefer iran to return to the telephones and candles. the presidents of russia and china have their hands tied still as well. what is holding both back.

when president putin want them to be perceived by much of the world as effective pariahs. which brings us to the next set of the strings on the power of today's imperial presidency. the international image. in earlier times as possible for the leader to conclude the pact with no reference to the forces outside of the immediate entourage. at the conference that led to the treaty of versailles and a world war i, the leaders of britain, france, italy dictated the terms of the vanquished and the already ottoman empire. as i explored in my book a shattered peace, america's wealth largely went along as the means of achieving the principal goal of creation of the league of nations. though the failure to consult with congress led ultimately to the entire exercise. but a particular interest in the context of the delegation in

china generally wasn't seemed to be a focus and verso that they had a respect by the shadow figures by the last of the great member of an ancient royal family from the imperial city of kyoto in japan and equally from china. neither was ever seen in public and each confine himself from behind his respective curtain a loving his diplomats and politicians to my name in public of the world's the so carefully crafted. no power had very much in that at all. the stakes are much higher and far more nuanced they make commitments simply into the balance the have the effect on the course of the economic development and vitality. a way to manufacture that next generation of the electronic device, we to build that power project or prospect for oil and

coal or precious minerals. such decisions are based on a complex, less of the country risk. reliability and confidence and leadership at the top. and the consistency, honest and the continuity. russia with its leader heading into the third decade of all the fun challenge power is falling rapidly behind almost every score. putin is ostensibly the most powerful of every president today and the closest to function to the leaders of soviet russia. the true heir to the millennium of the war. who else among the leaders of the nation's in today's world has been able to leave and return while never for a moment even control over the nation? yet putin is as hobbled as any of the western counterparts with the forces within his own borders that are f. ebit as pernicious as those that are going at the foundations of obama. for russia the democracies are functional and oligarchy ruled by the powerful and and challenged president he is

crumbling as rapidly as any democracy. for putin to maintain his all but unchallenged power, she has to pay off those that helped him rise to the top and keep him there. they have the desired ability to the head of russia may have passed saudi arabia has the largest oil producer, the value of that rises and falls with the flow of the international crisis especially in the middle east oil belt. but even such are of diminishing value and a determinant of world demand. the united states, the leading consumer is now approaching self sufficiency while the number three consumer, china, makes its own side view in corners of the globe. so what is an oil poor oligarch? no longer a superpower russia has been, and reduced and the worst injury occasional spoiler in the world affairs. but above all a bad debt when it

comes to long-term capital intensive investment. in this vital respect, the only good president and today's context is one who can be counted on to maintain a certain modicum of consistency and intelligence see in the use or distribution of power over the judiciary, the legislature bureaucracy of the government he/she male lead. and the democracy of course is a concept of checks and balances designed by america's founding fathers to restrain the powers they were going to be still on the single feeder the president. indeed there is on power not a difference between the president and the other components of a space government read his or hers is the only branch whose powers are controlled by the single individual. in a sense when they arrived at the crux of the modern presidency. for a president in today's world that is no less true the problem of course is that in the ensuing centuries the forces inside the government have been chipping

away at the unitary power. but particularly on the economic front where power today ultimately reside. today this is the principal presidential currency where once the power of the president's rose and fell on the head and flow of the geopolitical and hires the maintenance of the lanes and the conditions in the colonies with the far corners of the globe remember the days the sun never sat on the tradition higher? off any more now is on the corporate titans and the presidents of the new empires they will build their new assembly plants and the will assemble their newest smart phones and the prospect for oil underwriting the pipelines. these are the currencies of power attracting those companies to his country or her country. take in india and china. india was an apparently functioning democracy and china

was an essentially planned government but both led by president. many chinese while laughing at some form of democracy in which they might play a role. there is a cacophony of competing interest with a bureaucratic fox living the infusion was real opportunities to accumulate any real wealth. the indians by contrast revel in their ability to act freely and choose their own leaders and rely on their families rather than the states to guarantee their well-being. but in the end, the international business has beaten the path to china's door with major investments, contracts and commerce to mark the nation and its leaders as a success in the modern world. china remains one of the rare occasions of the president who can fully considered imperial in the classic the modern sense. perhaps we need to reflect carefully on the value of such power wisely and honestly in the interest of the many rather than

a few. there is no rule in the modern world and the transparency and openness in the leaders of oligarchy at the same time there is a broad claim on the neutral ground where the why is rulers might exercise a broad range of authority and creativity so where do we go from here? how many presidents may reclaim his or her power and reassert a claim on history and shape the global dialogue that is very much open question in these days of diminishing the imperial power? appearances would suggest that the imperial presidency is on a permanent downward slope. still, all is not lost. and for a reason to the core of today's modern presidents in any form of a democracy to the president no matter how narrow a ryan ellis in office with a substantial reservoir of goodwill. i like to use the analogy of a

large barrel filled to the brim with fresh water that represents power and influence. it's accompanied by a legal for each of crisis, real opportunity, the president dips into the merrill removing a tiny dollop. on occasion the president may believe circumstances dictate far more than a legal and its tipped over quantities falling out and all too often eager to arrive at a quick victory a2 frequently debt into this and it empties before its time. how judiciously the president uses the reservoir suggests his or her power and reach. but there is one absolute constant. once the beryl is empty and can be replenished only by turning to the electorate for the new mandate whenever the constitution may provide. now in times of existential crisis the world war in the last

century and the missile crisis of 9/11 such a paradigm me be suspended as all to replenish whatever may be necessary to empower the leader in question with all the trappings of the imperial presidency. of course giants do still walk the earth if not in the form of marbles then in the form of the systems they represent. never before in history have so many people lived under a form of government that could be seen to represent what they truly desire. what is must compliment to their hopes and dreams for the rich and meaningful life. at the same time and material presidents are no longer able to dispense half of europe to the communist dictator with a stroke of a pen as roosevelt did or inslee of the regions under colonial servitude as the western powers decrease at the depue of the 20th century. today's curves on the power of the imperial presidency may produce fewer unilateral

certainly less dramatic transitions, but it is incumbent on each of us to choose wisely in designating whose hand should be allowed to wield the legal as it dips into the drum of power and influence. thank you. [applause] >> if you are called on for question, you should wait just a few seconds for the microphone to be put near you. it doesn't have to be -- you don't have to speak into it, but it will be somewhere near you, and that will be good enough that you will be heard. questions? yes. >> [indiscernible] terrific talk, david, but you failed to mention one name, the most mysterious president at the moment to me, mr. assad in syria.