Pulitzer Prize winner and Stanford University Professor, David M. Kennedy, spoke to students on the role of the Presidency in the United States government.
“The American Presidency: A Truly Peculiar Institution”, the lecture was held in Pottle Music Building Auditorium on Wednesday, Oct. 10. Being a Historian, Kennedy looked to the past to help students more understand the present.
Kennedy briefly discussed influential Presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. He often referenced the President’s role, as stated in the United States Constitution, throughout the forum.
“We live in a constitutional system that constrains and jackets and contains the President’s power in some very significant ways,” said Kennedy speaking on the limits of the President.
He then referred to the President’s position as a “peculiar institution” saying, “The President is 1 of 536 elected officials who do their business in Washington D.C.”
When asked how important it was for the President to be subordinate to congress, Kennedy said, “In the 20th century, more and more Presidents tried to assert equal power with congress, but the congress, if the congress really unites, has significant residual power.”
Finishing up his points on the traditional role of the President, Kennedy began speaking of the gradual influence of the media and how Presidents have used it to their advantage.
Citing John F. Kennedy as the first President to take television by storm and later President Reagan, who Kennedy states “took it even further”, he noted that these renowned moments do not happen often in American culture.
“Despite all these innovations, especially in the use of media, and innovations in the primary system to make the President more directly engaging with the people at large, despite all of that, the instances, the moments, in American history when the President can really, effectively move the needle, change the system, build a new institutional landscape, achieve in its fullness a Presidential platform. Those moments are really rare.”