Toward a more responsible and effective presidency

Event Details

The Miller Center convened leading experts on the American presidency—senior officials of Democratic and Republican administrations, along with top scholars and journalists—to discuss a paradox.

On the one hand, experts across the political spectrum agree that presidential power has grown across administrations over the last four decades. Presidents from both parties have set the agenda with Congress and also used their executive powers unilaterally. 

On the other hand, despite growing power, presidents have found it harder to bring the country together. Presidents have struggled, as measured by public opinion and their ability to forge bipartisan compromises.

The two-day meeting examined the causes of this paradox and then evaluated a series of proposed reforms.

October 19 - Day One: Diagnosing the problem

Session I: Framing the Problem

• How responsible? Executive action and the administrative state
• How effective? Performance successes and failures

Session II: Presidency and Congress

• Presidency v. Congress: What’s working and what’s not?  

Session III: Presidency, the Courts, and the People

• Presidency and the courts: Who judges a president? Who enforces the law? 
• Do presidents drive polarization or vice versa?

October 20 - Day Two: Exploring solutions

Session I: Rules, norms, parties, and the selection process 

• Understanding previous reforms: the evolution of rules, norms, practices
• Fixing parties and presidential selection process

Session II: Repairing presidency-Congress relations: Legislative outcomes and confirmations  

• Encouraging greater legislative effectiveness and executive-legislative collaboration 
• Resetting the appointment bottleneck: navigating vacancies and acting appointees

Session III: Emergency powers and presidential constraint 

• Fixing emergency powers: Can we balance the president's needs with congressional and judicial oversight?
• Fixing presidential accountability: Who should police the president?

This conference was part of the UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy's Democracy360 festival.

ROSTER OF SPEAKERS AND PARTICIPANTS