Title: How Has the Presidency Changed Most in the Last 30 Years? | History News  Network
Headings: 
How Has the Presidency Changed Most in the Last 30 Years?
Mr. Shane is the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law at The Ohio State University.

Content: Under this theory, the conventional legal understanding just described is wrong. “ Unitarians” believe the President is entitled to command all administrators in the exercise of their discretionary powers. Contemporary presidentialists believe, in other words, that authority explicitly granted by Congress to agency heads is power actually delegated to the President. This is not just a matter of what Congress wants. It is what the Constitution compels. Congress could not provide otherwise. The Clinton Administration did not adhere to this constitutional theory, but it embraced its operational equivalent. It interpreted all of Congress’s regulatory statutes, except those directed at independent agencies, as approving the presidential direction of rulemaking activity. Congress may not have been constitutionally compelled to defer to the President so strongly, but it has. And so, for President Clinton, as for the Republicans, presidential commands to regulatory agencies were appropriate.