What does Article II say about the powers of the president?

0:03There are really two debates or questions involving Article II. The first debate was the debate that really occurred at the Constitutional Convention. That debate was whether we shall have a single president or a plural presidency, more than one president. After all, a single president looks like a king, or has the potential to be a king. Edmund Randolph who refused to sign the Constitution, at the end, he was at the convention and he said that a unitary executive, a single executive, a single president, is the foetus of monarchy. It is the germ that might create a monarchy. This was the debate. On the other hand, having a plural executive is also problematic because it divides responsibility. If it divides responsibility, who's accountable? You can think about the time when the Romans had two consuls.

1:03Well, if something went wrong, a consul, this leaders of the Roman Republic could point to the other guy, well, he wanted to do it and I didn't want to do it. That can be very problematic. If you divide power, you divide responsibility. If you divide responsibility, you divide accountability, you hide accountability. What the framers tried to do was they said, "Look, we have to have a single executive." That's what they resolved in Article 2, Section 1. The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. Article II, Section 1 tells us there is one president. How do we guarantee that, that one president who's accountable because he or she is a single individual. Well, you must give that president less power than the king, than the royal monarch had in England,

1:57you must check imbalanced the president's power. How does the rest of the Constitution do this? The most important way it does this is when you actually look at the enumeration of power in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. A lot of people think that this was intended to limit the scope of the national government, create a limited enumeration of national government powers.

2:18It's true that it has that effect. It was probably the intent by doing so to limit the president's power. How do we know this? Because more than half of the powers that are listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which again are given to Congress, were historically royal power. They were historically prerogatives or powers that belonged to the royal monarch.

2:41How does our constitution create a single, powerful and energetic executive while making sure that the president will not be a king by giving most of the royal monarch's power to Congress. This then raises the question, well, what powers does the president have? If a lot of the world powers have been given to Congress. Well, the two big ones are the executive power. That is the power to execute the laws.

3:08The president cannot make up law. The President cannot be a lawmaker. Congress makes the laws. The president gets to enforce the laws. The second really important power is the commander-in-chief power. Congress gets us into war. Congress has the declare war power. Although modern presidents tend to ignore this, the president cannot just send troops without congressional authorization. The president cannot unilaterally declare war. Congress can declare war. The president, however, then gets to be commander-in-chief. Congress provides a navy. Congress supplies an army. The president can only effectuate a war that is declared by Congress. The president can only effectuate that war with whatever Army and

3:54Navy and Air Force or Space Force that Congress has given the president. That's a tremendously important power. But it is limited. Again, historically, the monarch could declare war. The monarch could raise armies, the monarch could raise navies. Not under our constitution. Congress does all of those things. Congress makes the law.

4:14Congress declares war. Congress decides what kind of army, navy we have. The president executes, carries the line of execution and his in commander-in-chief of the armed forces.