Lesson: How much power does the president really have?
Conversation
Answer the following questions. You might be asked to write them down or answer them out-loud.
Vocabulary
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Video
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Reading practice
Read the following transcript then do the associated reading comprehension exercise.
- A lot of people want the president of the United States to save us from our enemies, from the economy and other really big things. So we´re trying to figure out, what kind of power does the president really have? To answer that question we sat down with George Edwards, distinguished professor of political science and a leading scholar on the presidency. GE: The president has much less power than people think and they have much less power than you would think from what you hear candidates promise on the campaign trail. And I don’t mean that promises aren’t sincere because almost always they are. But presidents want to take off ****pretty hard realities. And the first reality is that they rarely connect in *** they share power primarily with congress and congress often, in order the American politics, is populated with the opposition as it is right now. And so president come in and think that after two years of campaigning they must be pretty persuasive fellows after all they won the big prize in politics and they´ve been basically doing nothing but *** for two years. But that´s a bit different because you´re simply drawing a comparison with another candidate and that´s different than convincing people to support a particular piece of policy. And it´s almost always the case that the public doesn’t move in the president´s direction or it actually moves a little bit in the opposite direction. So presidents generally fail in their effort to win therefore they don’t have the kind of * they want in moving congress. - So if we can expect the president just fly in and save day, how do we get anything done in this country? GE: The founding ** they knew what they were doing they divided power, they decentralized power, they specifically designed an inefficient system and that forces deliberation and it forces compromising. So, if there´s no people in the middle, there´s no people with whom you can *cut a deal and if compromise becomes a dirty word and your ** as a ** to your party, then is very little chance of doing something. I´ll give you an example, senator Lindsey Graham, a very smart guy and a long time *clear conservative and he found that just by ** to the white house and trying to work out * is a climate change and on a immigration that he was condemned by his own party. That´s just an example of the kinds of problems that you face. When everyone must be * the opposition party are untrustworthy and therefore you can´t compromise with them. So to bring * change you have to compromise, that´s a good thing in my mind. And voters have to support candidates who are willing to compromise, you have to be willing to give up something. You can´t argue that I should get everything I want and the other side can´t have nothing*. And you got to support who are willing to talk to the other side sincerely and compromised and I don’t know any other way to actually deal with a bunch of problem that we face. - All right, thanks for chatting with us. GE: Thank you, bye bye.
Writing practice
Write a couple of paragraphs ---->>>> instructions <<<<-----. Make sure to use words you learned from the text and try to make it as long as you can. This is your opportunity to show off your writing skills.