Lesson: How much power does the president really have?/ExerciseD1

Listening Exercise

Watch the video and complete the text according to what you can understand. - A lot of want the president of the United States to us from our enemies, from the and other really big things. So, we're trying to figure out: what of power does the president really have? To that question we sat down with George Edwards, distinguished of political science and a leading scholar on the presidency. GE: The president has much power than people think and they have much less power than you think from what you candidates promise on the campaign trail. And I don't that promises aren't sincere because always they are. But presidents, once they take office, run into some hard realities. And the first reality is that they connect unilaterally. They share power primarily with congress and congress, , in modern American politics, is populated with the opposition, as it is now. And so presidents in and think that after two years of campaigning they be pretty persuasive fellows, after all, won the big prize in and they've been basically nothing but talking for two years. But that's a bit because you are simply drawing a comparison with candidate and that's different than convincing people to support a piece of policy. And it's almost the case that the public doesn't move in the president's or it actually moves a little bit in the opposite direction. So, presidents fail in their effort to win the and, therefore, they don't have the kind of leverage that they want in moving congress. - So, if we can't the president to just fly in and save day, how do we get done in this country? GE: The founding fathers, they what they were doing, they divided power, they decentralized power, they specifically designed an inefficient and that forces deliberation and it compromising. So, if there's no people in the , there's no people with whom you can cut a deal and if compromise a dirty word and you're viewed as a traitor to your party, then is very little chance of doing . I'll give you an example, senator Lindsey Graham, a very guy and a long time clear conservative. And he found that by talking to the white house and trying to work out issues on climate and on immigration that he was condemned by his party. That's just an of the kinds of problems that you face when must feel that the opposition party are untrustworthy and, therefore, you can't compromise with them. So, to bring about 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 have nothing that they want. And you got to support candidates who are willing to talk to the other side sincerely and to compromise and I don't know any other way to actually deal with the kinds of problems that we face. - All right, thanks for chatting with us. GE: Thank you, bye bye.