The Modern Presidency

War Powers Resolution

Table of Contents

The main aim of the War Powers Resolution (P.L. 93-148) was to provide directions on how the presidency would exercise power when dealing with the armed forces and other government bodies for that case. Actually the war power resolutions of 1973 impended the exercise of the authority simply because of the contradictions there were brought forward.


Due to the constitutional powers that the president had, the US armed forces were turned into a total different thing as it was expected. The commander-in-chief by then developed some strategies that made the armed system somehow hostile. Declaration of the war was one of the key issues that the president introduced which made the entire place hostile and an environment not good for the people, (Pfiffner, 2010).


The president developed some national emergency which were aimed on attacking some prominent bodies of the armed forces or the territory of the country. Having discovered that the president was misusing power the Resolution enacted a strategy under which the president should follow when delegating authorities. According to the resolution act, the president shall not act alone when dealing with issues of the armed forces. There should be certain reports that need to be put forward whereby the president should consult with the congress on the intended action before it is implemented, (Warshaw, 2005).


Treaties

The president of any given country is the leader and head of the entire territory. This means that the office of the president is responsible for any given treaty that the country enters with another country. In most cases the president must ensure that the senate has concurred with the proposal of the treaty that needs to be signed. There are some occasions when the president does the signing without consulting other members which is a great risk. For any given secret agreements, I strongly think that the president has no mandate to make the signing even if other leaders are there in the process of bypassing the senate. The senate should at any given time know the treaties that the country is signing, (Pfiffner, 2010).


Without the senate body, the country in other words can be said is not fully represented. Although the government is the head or the representative of the country there are some duties that need consultation. Secret agreements require the intervention of the senate simply because there is always a risk that the country might enter into a risky agreement. I believe that the president should not sign secret agreements simply because the work of the senate is to evaluate terms and see the risky-ness of the agreements, (Warshaw, 2005).


Crisis in Vietnam

After Johnson becomes the president the only advisor whom was appropriate for the office was Eisenhower and not any person from the previous government. This was actually a good decision simply because their collaboration enabled the country achieve so many developments. One of the most difficult situations that affected the president and the advisor was during the Vietnam crisis. Now that President Eisenhower was much concerned with the communist he made a bad decision of freeing the elections simply because the country in one way or the other required some military help in order to ensure that the elections were fair, (Pfiffner, 2010).


For president Lyndon, things were different. To him the war in Vietnam was actually a must win thing hence the request of the more armed force power was not a problem to him. He made wrong decisions of allowing such requests simply because the government went a lot of loses which included men of war as well as military equipments. Johnson’s support in respect to the way mainly brought a lot of complications on the government side because what was expected was not true and at the same time the government incurred a lot of loses all together, (Warshaw, 2005).


French people

French people are a very good example of citizens simply because they tend to evaluate behaviors of their leaders. This actually creates a good forum simply because leaders actually manage to follow a good strategy of exercising their powers. For American history things are totally different simply because the presidential forces actually have some weakness although they provide good quality leadership strategies. In order to have a good system like that of the French people, we actually don’t have that need of dropping a hammer on our leaders. The best thing for this is to forgive them. In line with the forgiveness aspect we actually need to have some strategies which leads to the know-how of our leader’s weakness thus they get to change, (Pfiffner, 2010).


Since it is known that there are some weaknesses that are within the leaders, the best option is not to give them a hammer action force but rather we should forgive them and let them know which places they need to change. 


Reference:

Pfiffner, J. P. (2010). The Modern Presidency: Cengage Learning

Warshaw, S. A. (2005). The keys to power: managing the presidency: Pearson Longman





Is this your assignment or some part of it?

We can do it for you! Click to Order!



Order Now


Translate »

You cannot copy content of this page