VOA · America's Presidents
Intermediate · B1–B2learner speed6:462018-01-18public domain
America's Presidents profiles each U.S. president in order — their lives, decisions, and legacies. Consistent structure across episodes means your ear gets steadily faster at the recurring political and historical vocabulary.
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01VOA Learning English presents America's Presidents.
02Today we are not going to talk about any one president.
03We will instead talk about the presidency itself, what some people call the office of the presidency.
04That does not mean the room where the leader of the United States works.
05Here, it means the position and powers of the U.S.
06President.
07Sidney Milkus is part of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
08He and others at the Miller Center are specialists on U.S.
09political history.
10Milkus says that when it was created in the late 1700s, the U.S.
11presidency was unlike any other position in world history.
12For thousands of years before the American Constitution, people thought a strong executive power and a democracy, what Jefferson called self-government, were incompatible.
13Because how could a sovereign people delegate tremendous responsibility to one individual and still consider themselves a democracy, even a representative democracy?
14In other words, the idea of giving a lot of power to one person made sense if the country were a monarchy and ruled by a king or queen.
15And giving a lot of power to an elected group in a legislature made sense if the country were a democracy and voters elected representatives.
16But giving a lot of power to one person in a democracy did not seem to make sense.
17The writers of the Constitution understood this situation.
18They were concerned about giving one person too much power.
19Remember, the country's founders had just fought a war for independence against the British.
20The American colonists had not liked being under the control of a British king.
21They also worried that a strong executive could become a tyrant or corrupt, adds Harry Rubenstein.
22He is a curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.
23But the Constitution's writers had also seen the problems of a weak executive branch.
24Asking state legislatures to make national decisions took too long.
25And sometimes the problems were never resolved at all.
26Historian Sidney Milkes says that, as a result of these ideas, some of them conflicting, the writers of the Constitution argued about what the office of the president should be.
27There were people like James Madison and Jefferson who thought the president's power should be limited.
28And the term president meant preside.
29And Congress and the state should be the leading venues of American democracy.
30Other people who helped write the U.S.
31Constitution, such as Alexander Hamilton, thought the president should be what Milkes calls the anchor of American democracy.
32Hamilton thought the president should have enough power to direct large projects for the public good.
33So what happened?
34Well, in 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention found a unique solution.
35First, they agreed to make the president a one-person job.
36One person, they reasoned, could both make decisions more effectively than a group and be more easily held responsible for them.
37But they decided not to give the president too much power.
38The person would be elected for one four-year term at a time.
39And the president would share power with a national legislature and a Supreme Court.
40The delegates also decided some of the details about how the president would be elected and how to remove the person from office.
41And they said the president would have a number of duties.
42They include being the commander-in-chief of the military, nominating public officials, and giving Congress a report on the State of the Union.
43This list comes from Article II of the U.S.
44Constitution.
45But a lot of the job description was left open.
46It said, The president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
47Since it was written in 1787, That expression has informed discussions about what powers the U.S.
48president should really have.
49Historian Sidney Milkis says, Americans are still debating how much power the president should have.
50For most of the 19th century, he says, the powers of the president were more limited.
51But since the 20th century, the position has become more powerful.
52The president has moved closer to the center of American democracy.
53But in time, Milkis says, Americans may decide to limit the president's authority again and give more power to Congress and state governments.
54Milkis adds one more thing about the unusual invention of the U.S.
55president.
56It was unclear that the public would trust a national executive.
57But as our America's President series shows, for the most part, Americans respect the office of the president.
58Instead of fearing our great leaders, says Milkis, we honor them.
59I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
60I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
61I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
62I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
63I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
64I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
65I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
66I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
67I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
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