OK so presidential candidates have extensive plans and policy packages that they run with. But we have separation of powers. Obama can’t just go in and declare all of his policies as the new law of the land. So what actual actions can he take in furtherance of his goals?
As CIC of the armed forces there is a lot he could do. Close Gitmo, for one thing. He could even (but he won’t) just unilaterally withdraw from Iraq and redeploy forces to Afghanistan. He could rescind literally dozens of executive orders that have the effect of undoing various environmental policies. He (in the person of his Attorney General) could have various members of the Bush administratin arrested for implementing torture. He could stop the trial of (IIRC) Omar Khadar who is accused of murder (for killing a soldier during a war) that is supposed to begin on Jan 26 and will include hearsay evidence, “evidence” gathered under torture and so on. He could file all of Bushes “signing statements” in the circular file where they belong. His Treasury Secretary could redirect some of the $700 billion to helping out with foreclosures.
I am sure there is more, much more, and his transition team is working hard on it now.
He could order Don’t Ask Don’t Tell stopped. I think there will be FAR less of a hue and cry than there was 16 years ago when Clinton wanted to remove the ban.
There’s a LOT a President can do with executive orders. Most people don’t realize exactly what those are or how powerful they can be.
Care to elaborate?
Not only executive orders. President-elect Obama can also direct the executive agencies within their congressionally-mandated spheres of operation. For instance, where President Bush de-emphasized the environmental protection aspect of the EPA in favor of the “collusion with polluting industries” aspect, P-E Obama can reassert the environmental protection focus, in part by his appointment of an EPA director and in part by blazing a path in the direction he wants to go through policy papers and public speeches.
No he can’t. DADT is based on a statute passed by congress.
I’ll admit that I was only a little baby political junkie back in the first Clinton admin, but how did that happen? Truman integrated the military with an executive order. How is it that Congress somehow seized that power from the president in 1993? And if it did happen that way, why did Clinton let them?
There is a bill called the Military Readiness Enhancement Act currently in committee in the House to overturn that, though. I can’t see it failing, especially given the Pentagon’s current recruiting problems.
Prior to DADT, the rule was “no gays, period”. Clinton wanted a completely nondiscriminatory policy, but DADT was as close as he was going to get.
I know that part…I was a metaphorical little baby political junkie in 1993, not a literal one. And I understand that Clinton was running into major opposition from the general staff and from Congress (I particularly remember Sam Nunn standing in that metaphorical doorway like a modern-day Orval Faubus). But I’m certain that Truman got the same pushback when he integrated the military…and yet it happened. By EO.
Why didn’t the Congress of 1948 pass a law retaining segregation in the face of Truman’s EO? Why did Clinton let the Congress of 1993 do something that Truman apparently didn’t let the Congress of 1948 get away with?
Ah. I see where you were going with that. I don’t rightly know.
However, Truman was a war President, and Congress almost invariably grants much wider latitude to Presidents during wartime than peacetime, especially with regard to the military. That’s why almost nobody made so much as a peep when W announced that he was going to start tossing prisoners into various secret and not-so-secret military jails.
You’re probably right, but that explanation just feels unsatisfactory. (Not your fault…I know it’s probably the closest explanation to reality…it just feels like it’s inadequate.)
YES HE CAN!
Sorry.
That’s what an executive order is.
Does anyone know what kind of discharge a gay gets when he (or she) comes out? I saw the DADT policy as a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card.
At the end of WWII, a dishonorable (or a discharge under other than honorable conditions) was severe since every employer wanted to see your discharge, but I assume that doesn’t happen any more.
Honorable. Some of the anti-gays-in-military types claim it’s been used by non-gay servicemen/women to get a free pass out, but I don’t think there’s any evidence of this.
Congress didn’t overrule Truman’s desegregation order by legislation, although it could have. IIRC, the only folks demanding that the order be reversed were in the Deep South, and there was otherwise either broad support for the order or tepid enthusiasm for reversing it. Clinton, on the other hand, ran into a buzzsaw of popular opposition to lifting the ban on gays in the military, and Congress leapt to check him. He then did the best he could with the hand he was dealt. I suspect DADT will fall, if not this year than in the next decade, especially given the recruiting and retention difficulties the Pentagon is now having.
IIRC, prior to 1993, gays were dischargeable from the military pursuant only to Defense Department policy, not statute. Clinton’s promise to reverse the policy provoked unexpectedly intense opposition from Congress and seriously derailed the early months of the Clinton White House. The Clinton folks considered this a minor promise, but it brought about an impasse that came to consume a huge amount of public and press attention in the earliest months of the new administration, killing momentum and Congressional goodwill for other policies they were more invested in.
They simply wanted the issue gone, so by the middle of 1993, they gave in. The ban on gays in the military was strengthened by the passage of a statute, and the Administration retained only the same prosecutorial discretion every administration has ever had to pick and choose which cases to pursue and which not to. The Clinton administration, to save face, characterized this capitulation as a “compromise.” It announced that its policy would be “don’t ask, don’t tell,” i.e., keep quiet and we’ll leave you alone. Again, this was largely the same policy that had always been in effect, but it was portrayed as something new.
Obama presumably could order the SecDef, as a discretionary matter, to cease all prosecutions and discharges of gays, i.e., to stop enforcing the statute, but he can’t change the underlying law.