While presidents can exercise the veto to influence Congress, does the use of veto power signal executive weak

Question

While presidents can exercise the veto to influence Congress, does the use of veto power signal executive weak

Answer 1

no

Answer 2

The use of the executive veto can be seen two way, one is more historically true, the other is a more modern view.

1. It used to be that the Congress was the most powerful branch, far bigger and more powerful than either the Executive or the judiciary.  Thus, the President would make a political enemy of those who paid his salary if he used the veto too much.  However the strongest executives, are in some quarters, view as those who simply took a position and stuck their ground.  Usually presidents only vetoed in extraordinary circumstances.

The few occasions in which an executive stood their ground generally did not end well, but it did bolster the presidents power.  For example, Andrew Johnson used the veto power copiously but irritated the congress enough that they passed the Tenure of Office act, and impeached him.  In contrast Grover Cleavland took a hardline against the Senate and tried to get them to repeal the Tenure of Office Act.  He delayed appointments favorable to Senators and brought the government to a screeching halt until the Senate gave in.  In bring government to a halt, Grover set an almost all-time high usage of the veto power.

2. For most of the 20th century, the political parties have dominated politics.  This means that a strong executive had a favorable public opinion and was usually able to get his own party into power.  Consequently under the modern-election oriented approach, a strong executive does not need to veto since he can either compromise with the other party, or get his own party into office.  In this view a high number of vetos is bad because it means the president is not persuasive enough to get the public, the opposing party, and his own party to a consensus.  The correlating number, the number of overrides, is also of key importance.  This election oriented viewpoint turns on public opinion and uses the vary strength of the partys in Congress as measuring stick of public opinion.  If a president makes a lot of vetos, but is not overriden a rough estimate might mean that less than half but more than a third of the public agrees with the president.  If he gets overriden alot, that would tend to indicate that less than 1/3 of people agree with him.

The modern viewpoint turns on the idea that a republic ought to represent the view of the people.  That means that the Grover Cleavland approach of bring the government to a halt is viw as bad and unproductive.  From the older institutional persective halting government is not a bad thing since it equal a balance of power that approaches even.

In short, the answer to your question is, depends on who is asking.

Answer 3

NOT AT ALL.  It should be used more to control spending and cutting off earmarks