In the recent State of the Union message by President Bush discussing US policy, I presume that the speech writers are receiving policies from a higher authority. It seems to me that there must be an inner circle including Bush who determines our policies.
If I’m correct, currently who participates in policy making from which the speech writers produce the profound words we hear? And who besides Bush and Cheney have the most influence as members of the inner circle?
In any discussion group there is almost always a diversity of opinion when various issues are discussed. Does Bush himself determine the final draft to turn over to the writers? I would appreciate some enlightenment on the above. issues.
Yes, the President has final say over what US Policy is. He has a circle of ‘official’ advisors in the Cabinet and a few others. These would be:
The Cabinet Secretaries
The Vice President
The National Security Advisor
The US Trade Representative
The Director of the CIA
and a few others. There will also be some unofficial or ‘kitchen cabinet’ advisors like
The White House Chief of Staff
The Press Secretary
Various Political Advisors
The leadership of the President’s Political Party
Given the current administration I’d have to say the top advisors are the Political Advisors, then Defense and State. The others come into play when their fields are needed. I’d say Treasury but that’s been a mess lately.
The cabinet or parts of it meet and advise the President. But the final say is his (barring conspiracy theories) in what policy gets implemented. The speechwriters consult the President (with the Press Secretary) and write up what he wants to say in a politically acceptable way.
Well, sort of, Jonathan. The president has next to final say, Congress has the true final say. They just have a tendency to go along with things.
For foreign policy, the National Security Council tends to have the most say. Political advisors tend to have more influence on domestic policy. But in the end, the president has final say on what the administration’s position is and Congress has final say on what the national policy position is.
No, I disagree. The President has the power to set policy. Congress simply decides to fund it or not. But the nature of things is that the funding is by nature reactive. By the time Cognress can weigh in the policy course is set.
Yes, Congress can create laws. But by and large the president sets the priorities for the enforcement of those laws.
As someone who does this sort of thing at the State level, I can tell you from experience that agency staff also have a tremendous amount of influence on what becomes policy. Given that staff tends to be in it for the long haul, and are the actual implementors of those policy decisions, lower level staff may actually have a more practical effect on policy than the President.
To be more specific, Bush stated the US will spend about 15 Billion in Africa to fight aids. I’m not going to argue whether I agree or disagree with this decision. But hypothetically if Bush was strongly in favor of this and the bulk of his advisors were not, would Bush be likely to against the inner circle on this or similar situation?