The Power of the United States Presidency.

Many Americans often portray the president as one of the most power people in the world. This may not be exactly true, but how much power the president really has is a subject that has drawn the attention of many observers. Clinton Rossiter, Richard Neustadt, Thomas Cronin, Michael Genovese, and Aaron Wildavsky are all political scientists who answer the question "How powerful is the presidency?" with their essays on the topic.

Clinton Rossiter's essay entitled "The Presidency - Focus of Leadership" clearly shows that Rossiter believes the president has an overwhelming amount of power. Rossiter stated that the president is leader of the Executive Branch, the forces of peace and war, Congress, his political party, public opinion, and the rituals of American democracy. The president has the power to influence Congress, the power to sway the public's standpoint on things, and the power to partly control war. If Rossiter was asked "How powerful is the presidency?", he would surely answer like many Americans do, that the president is the most powerful person in the world. Rossiter wrote that the president is also the leader of the free nations. This is so because as long as America stays rich and powerful, the president's words will have a large effect on other countries that may be involved with America, giving the president some "world-wide" power along with the large amount of power he already has just over his nation.

Richard Neustadt states that the president's power is actually his influence in his essay, "Presidential Power". He wrote that the president gets many demands from many people from different groups and that he has a responsibility to listen and try to comply with those demands. But even with all these demands, the president is not guaranteed or even assured that people will agree with him or support him. This weakens his power because he can not put the pressure Congress to get the things he wants done because if the public isn't behind him then