Austins Atheism Blog Presidential Power, Presidential Supremacy (Book Notes: How Democratic Is the American Constitution?)
Presidential Power, Presidential Supremacy (Book Notes: How Democratic Is the American Constitution?) Sunday October 29, 2006 #spacer{clear:left}#abc #sidebar{margin-top:1.5em}zSB(3,3)It has become common for presidents to claim to have a mandate from the people and to represent the will of the entire American public. They use such claims in order to justify pushing their ideas through Congress – presidents can’t make law, so they exert moral pressure on those who can. Just how reasonable are claims about a mandate, though? In How Democratic Is the American Constitution?, Robert A. Dahl writes: However deftly Jefferson steered the Congress as he rode the tide of the democratic revolution, he never publicly challenged the standard view that the only legitimate representative of the popular will was the Congress, not the president. Nor did
