What Exactly Will the President Do?

In this Politico article, Andrew Glass details the powers that the framers of our Constitution granted our President and it contains a brief but good discussion of the powers that the President will and won't have. He writes,

Once in the White House, neither Barack Obama nor John McCain will have the capacity to raise or lower taxes. Under the Constitution, revenue measures must originate in the House. The new president will need to negotiate with that body, which almost certainly will be under firm Democratic control.

Similarly, neither presidential candidate will have absolute power to appoint members of his Cabinet or other top agency heads, Supreme Court justices or other federal judges. To serve, all such nominees must be confirmed by the Senate.

The Constitution also gives the Senate the sole power to approve, by a two-thirds vote, treaties hammered out by the president and his entourage. Over the years, many treaties have died in committee or have been withdrawn by the president rather than face an ignoble defeat. There’s no reason to believe this would change in an Obama or McCain administration.

He goes on to explain that for these reasons, the thing that we really need to be looking for in a President is someone with good judgment - someone who can assemble sources of solid counsel on to advise him on current and potential crisis situations, and someone who will be able to elect competent members to assist him in the executive functions.

This is exactly the reason why I believe that in the big scheme of things, this race is not about issues. If we are honest with ourselves, we'd admit that most of the issues that we get so worked up over today are very important - but important as they are, they are not issues that the next President has much power to alter or impact in law. That does not mean that the issues are irrelevant. On the contrary, a candidate's position on the issues - and his or her ability to articulate the position and rationale behind the position - tells us a lot about his or her ability to reason clearly through the issues.