P SC 1113 1st Edition Lecture 3 Outline of Last Lecture I. State of the Union AddressII. Today’s President…III. The Compromise PresidencyIV. The ProV. Early QuestionsOutline of Current Lecture I. After the State of the Union AddressII. The Dormant Presidency RevivedA. LiteralistsB. StewardsIII. Congress: Undermining Itself?IV. Checks and Balances in 2015V. FederalismCurrent LectureI. After the State of the Union AddressA. Major take-aways?a. Most SOTU addresses are largely disposableII. The Dormant Presidency RevivedA. Many 19th century presidents were literalists, that is they were very reactive instead of proactive and had the “I can only do what the constitution says I can do specifically” mindseta. Lincoln was an exception to this rule across the first 100 years or soB. Stewardsa. Proactive, defined what a president could beb. “If the constitution says I can’t then I won’t but if it doesn’t say anything about it then I’ll try to do it.”These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.c. Theodor Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt: used public as a weapon to reinforce questionable actionsII. Congress: Undermining Itself?A. The Great Depression (and early failures to turns things around) led to a panicked federal governmentB. FDR offers active presidency and ideasa. Congress jumps aboard with manyC. Brownlow Committee (1937): “The president needs help”, sought changes to the executive brancha. Congress funds the executive office of the president. Think of this as millions of dollars spent on people whose job itis to bolster the presidentD. Another issue: world becomes more complicated and congress punts on details within lawsE. Bureaucracy with greater discretion, under presidential umbrellaF. Second half of the 20th century/ early 21st century: congress struggling to find its footingIV. Checks and Balances in 2015A. President Obama may have the “shopping list”, but what will end up in the “pantry”?B. Items in the SOTU Addresses become bills BUT bills rarely become lawsC. Check: A republican congressD. Check: middling approval. FederalismA. Idea: Government’s powers are shared by the national government and the statesB. Reality: Power shared by many, many entitiesa. The 89,000 or so governments (about 1,900 in Oklahoma)i. 1 federalii. 50 states + D.C.iii. 3,000+ Counties (77 in OK)iv. 19,500+ municipalities (594 in OK)v. 16,000+ townshipsvi. 37,000+ special districts (642 in OK including emergency medical centers, airports, water & sewer, etc.)vii. Nearly 13,000 school districts (567 in OK)b. Pros:i. Deals with the largeness of our nationii. Experimentationiii. Respects subculturesiv. Opportunities for citizens to get involved & have accessc. Cons:i. Small units potentially dominated by factionsii. Laws not uniform from one place to the nextiii. Legal red tape (more governments means more laws, possibly difficult to get things accomplished)iv. Confusion for citizens over where tot urn to solve
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