The person who occupies the Oval Office has a lot on his or
her plate (or should I just use the now-acceptable genderless singular pronoun
‘their’?). We all know that this person
is “The Most Powerful Man Person in the World” but what does that
entail?
We know what the big, overall issues are. The economy, foreign affairs, defense, taxes,
etc. But these are complex, interwoven
issues that are made up of a near infinite number of smaller issues that range in
size from personal issues to ones of global scope.
To deal with these things, the federal Executive Branch is
headed by the President and aided by his Cabinet Secretaries. Established in Article II, Section 2 of the
Constitution, the Cabinet's role is to advise the President on any subject he
may require relating to the duties of each member's respective office. The
Cabinet is divided into the following Departments:
- State
- Treasury
- Defense
- Justice
- Interior
- Agriculture
- Commerce
- Labor
- Health and Human Services
- Housing and Urban Development
- Transportation
- Energy
- Education
- Veterans Affairs
- Homeland Security
The President also directly oversees, among others, the
Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Management and Budget, US Trade
Representative, US Mission to the United Nations, Council of Economic Advisors
and the Small Business Administration.
Having a Cabinet means the President, thankfully, doesn’t
have to be an expert in all of these things, which is good because nobody can
be. But the duties of the Chief
Executive requires them to be at least conversant in all of these areas because
the direction in which those Departments head is set by the President.
Despite being “The Most Powerful Person in the World” the
direction in which the President takes the country is constrained by the
Legislative Branch. Congress writes the
laws that govern the country and it’s the Executive Branch’s job to administer
those laws – to execute them, hence,
the name.
There is frequent dialog between the Legislative and
Executive branches. The lawmakers
sometimes need the executive’s overall perspective when writing laws, and
sometimes the executive sees a need for a new law or a revision to an existing
law. There can be a lot of give-and-take
and deal-making, but sometimes this works out well for both sides and as a
result, the American people benefit.
This never makes the news because why should good governing be covered
by the media? It’s when the legislative
and executive viewpoints are at odds with each other that we hear about
it. The media seem to love the political
and bureaucratic catfights and pissing matches.
The process takes time and the more rancorous it is, the more time
consuming it is. The President may not
be directly involved in those negotiations but still has to direct them.
With all of these areas of oversight, here a very small sample
of the specific issues that the President must deal with:
- The federal budget
- Money laundering by organized crime
- Bank regulation
- Fish hatcheries
- Highway safety
- Outer space
- Children’s television
- Phone service for the disabled
- Internet service for the disabled
- Phone and internet service for the rest of us
- National forests
- Puerto Rico: Nation? State? Leave it where it is somewhere in between?
- Indoor air quality
- Outdoor air quality
- Oil spills
- Fracking
- Groundwater
- Coastal water
- Water resource development
- Tariffs
- Tax-free retirement plans
- Civil service pay reform
- Major crime
- Minor crime
- Moderate crime
- Price fixing
- Immigration
- Science, technology, engineering and math education
- Vocational education
- All other education
- Job training (which is not part of education)
- Public health
- Personal health
- Family planning
- Head Start for when the family planning doesn’t work out
- Nutritional labeling
- Aging baby boomers
- Social Security
- Aging baby boomers bankrupting a Social Security system that didn’t foresee a Baby Boom
- Rural development
- Urban development
- Suburban development
- Energy
- Utilities
- Interstate commerce*
Notice that I only listed domestic issues above. The President is also given the duty of
conducting foreign affairs by the Constitution.
There are 267 “world entities” according to the CIA World Factbook. How the United States of America deals with
all of them, friend and foe alike, and how it reacts to how they deal with each other, rests on the shoulders of one person.
To imagine how complicated this task is, let’s use just one
example: North Korea. Global
intelligence think tank Stratfor describes North Korea’s global strategy as
being three-pronged: ferocious, weak and crazy.
There are no right answers to North Korea, only less bad ones, but the
three prongs guarantee that it’s impossible to really tell which ones those are. Whichever wrong answer is selected – and it
will always be wrong – the President of the United States selects it.
And then what do you do when two friends have a significant
problem with each other? We like Turkey
and we like Greece, but they do not like each other and have some serious
issues over Cyprus. India and Pakistan
constantly tussle over Kashmir, occasionally getting into skirmishes and even small
wars over it. But they now both have
nukes. In 1982, two allies went into an all-out
declared war when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and Great Britain
said, “Oh, I don’t fucking think so.”
So all of this, all of these decisions, and much, much more rests
in the hands of the President of the United States of America. Sometimes the responsibility to make a history-altering
decision occurs at the exact same time as all the ones I’ve listed above. And here’s the hell of it: ALL of these
decisions MUST be made. The President
must provide an answer to each and every question. Some answers are easier, and some decisions
are less important, but the President can’t walk away from any of these
questions. Ever. Even if you don’t like the questioner.
Are you reading this Mr. Trump?
*List adapted from fellow native Toledoan P.J. O'Rourke's brilliant attempt to explain government, "Parliament of Whores"
