One way in which a President leaves office is if they are not re-elected. The president serves a fixed-term of four years and then faces re-election. If he does not win the election then he will obviously not stay in office, for example Jimmy Carter (77-81) who only served one term and then was defeated by Ronald Reagan in the Presidential election. If the incumbent wins the election then he is President again for again the fixed term of 4 years. However after Roosevelt (33-45) the 22nd amendment (1951) was brought in which limited a President to two terms.
We have seen the rise of the ‘Hastert rule’ among republicans, which dictates that the speaker shouldn’t allow the vote unless the majority of republicans support it. Today members of congress are much more likely to vote along party lines, particularly when it comes to key, controversial issues. For example in 2009 no republicans voted for the fiscal stimulus package, and when it came to the American Taxpayer Relief Act in January 2013 (aimed at avoiding the fiscal cliff) an overwhelming majority of Democrats voted in favour, and almost all republicans voted against. Furthermore the republicans are almost unanimously united in opposition to Obamacare and
This can be seen when looking at the two most powerful Prime Ministers in the post war era; Thatcher and Blair were in differing ways removed from their parties. Both Prime Ministers won three general elections and aspired to stay in office longer than they were able to. Thatcher faced a leadership challenge from within her party and while Heseltine got less votes than her, her cabinet made it clear to her that she had lost authority and that she should resign. She went on to describe this as ‘treachery with a smile upon its face’. Slightly less dramatically, Tony Blair faced a large rebellion in September 2006 led by ministers such as Tom Watson that forced him to promise to step down after a year had passed.
The first five documents include; a data table from Historical Statistics of the United States: Part 2, a couple paragraphs from The American Pageant, “Andrew Jackson’s Bank Veto Message to Congress July 10, 1832”, “Andrew Jackson’s Letter to Congress December 8, 1829”, and “Letters written by Andrew Jackson to his wife regarding their Creek Indian son, Lyncoya”. The data table titled Methods of Electing Presidential Electors: 1816 to 1836 begins with 1816 having all by legislature or none for all states listed. In the year 1820, three states switched to being by people. Three more were switched the first year Jackson ran for president. Between 1824 and 1828, four more were switched to by people the year Jackson became president.
Are Second Term Presidents Invariably “Lame Ducks”? ‘Lame Duck’ refers to a President who is unable to get any major work done for a period of his time in office. But to what extent is this a term that can be applied to the whole of the Second Term of a President? It is clear that there are significant trends of second term presidents losing popularity, leading to it being difficult to enact policies in a more bipartisan congress. Furthermore, there is a tendency to look to the future in the second term.
There are 4 powers that the Vice President has according to the traditional constitution and one subsequent amendment has meant that there are now 5 powers. These are as follows; Counting and announcing the result of the Electoral College votes after a presidential election. This role is almost irrelevant for the vice president
Appointment by legislature was considered, as that was the method most states used to elect the governor; however, delegates feared it would upset the balance of the three branches of government by making the president beholden to congress (Johnson 12-13). They then considered a direct election by the people. This method was viewed as being the most democratic, but presented a myriad of problems. Most significantly, small state delegates were apprehensive to a direct vote by the people, as they worried votes in their states would be overpowered by votes in larger, more populous states (Johnson 12). With appointment by legislature considered a threat to the balance of powers, and a direct vote
A reason for a person deciding not to vote may be due to the fact that they haven’t gone that far though education. Statistically, high school drop outs are a lot less likely to vote than those with a post graduate qualification. This may be because when you go through the different stages of education you build a foundation of politics and are more likely to care about what goes on. It can be said that people that do get their post graduate qualifications go into jobs that are more affected by who is in power at that current time. In the Obama vs. McCain election of 2012, Obama’s victory was strengthened by the fact that there was a much higher turnout of the young voters and voters that are parts of minority groups.
For the United States in particular, scholars state that as polarization increases, confirmation rates of judges decrease. [58] In 2012, the confirmation rate of presidential circuit court appointments was approximately 50% as opposed to the above 90% rate in the late 1970s and early 1980s. [4] As parties in Congress have become more polarized, they have increasingly used tools to hinder the executive agenda and aggressively block nominees. [58][68] Political scientist Sarah Binder (2000) argues, “senatorial intolerance for the opposing party’s nominees is itself a function of polarization.”[58] By blocking judicial nominations, political polarization hinders the implementation of legitimate laws and impedes the confirmation of appellate judges, which results in higher vacancy rates, extended case-processing times and increased caseloads for
Contrary to what appears on the surface, the exit poll numbers from the 2008 election show the American “political culture” didn’t actually change all that drastically between the 2004 and 2008 elections, and it was more the American “opinion” and the want for “change” that shifted heavily and altered the vote and ushered the new Democratic president. It seems that a full political party “realignment” may not be as inevitable as some would assume, and based on numbers, it looks like just strictly popular approval (or lack thereof) in such key issues as the economy, the war in Iraq, the war on terror, foreign policy, and race, that caused the significant lean towards the left. Now this is not to say that the election of a liberal, African-American from the north was not groundbreaking, just that the election does not predicate the emergence of a new dominant party. One has to keep in mind that the 2008 election was one that involved a highly unpopular Republican