Luke Skywalker
Super Moderator
{vb:raw ozzmodz_postquote}:
President Obama signs an Executive Order on greenhouse gas emissions in the Oval Office on March 19, 2015.(Photo: Ron Sachs, Getty Images (Pool photo))
WASHINGTON<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— President Obama, often criticized by Republicans for constitutional overreach for his use of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>executive orders to get around Congress, signed the 254th executive order of his presidency Friday —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>allowing the Peace Corps to change its logo.
In his seven years in office, he's also<span style="color: Red;">*</span>used executive orders to change the name of the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>National Security Staff<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to the National Security Council staff, to allow the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports to also consider the role of nutrition,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and to prohibit government employees<span style="color: Red;">*</span>from texting while driving.
And, showing that executive orders can attend to even<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the smallest details,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Obama<span style="color: Red;">*</span>signed an executive order in 2014<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to correct<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a typographical error in a previous executive order — which<span style="color: Red;">*</span>governed<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the format of executive orders.
Executive orders are often thought of as the most muscular form of presidential authority. And in some cases, they are. Executive orders can<span style="color: Red;">*</span>declare national emergencies,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>impose sanctions on other countries,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>set federal purchasing policies, and dictate the working conditions for 3 million federal employees.
But more often than not, they deal with more mundane matters of bureaucracy.
"Particularly since Bush, this notion that every executive order constitutes an imperial power grab by the president<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— it just<span style="color: Red;">*</span>doesn’t match up with the facts<span style="color: Red;">*</span>on the ground," said William Howell, a University of Chicago professor and<span style="color: Red;">*</span>author of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Politics Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action.
"It’s not all power grabs. A lot of it is clearly trivial stuff," he said.
That's one reason why simply counting the number of executive orders issued by a president is a poor measure of how sweeping his use of executive power is. So while President Obama has noted that he's<span style="color: Red;">*</span>issuing fewer executive orders than any president in 100 years, it's debatable how many of those executive orders encroach on the power of Congress.
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"It is not so much the number of executive orders but executive orders that are in direct violation or in opposition to the intent of the Congress," said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., in a debate over the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison last year.
To figure out how many executive orders are truly significant. Howell has looked at mentions of executive orders on the front page of The New York Times,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in court decisions and the congressional record.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>He estimates that only 10% to 15% of executive orders have significant public policy implications — a proportion that's increasing over time as presidents issue fewer executive orders overall.
And most executive orders —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>perhaps 60%, according to a study by Bowdoin College professor Andrew Rudalevige<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— aren't even written by the White House.
“A lot of these orders are formulated in a department or in an inter-agency process, and they make their way up rather than down,” Rudalevige said. “Often the departments are ordered to do things that they’ve asked to be ordered to do.”
The Peace Corps logo.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Peace Corps)
That appears to be the case with the executive order Obama signed Friday. Under a<span style="color: Red;">*</span>1979 executive order by President Carter, the president alone has the authority "to adopt and alter an official seal or emblem of the Peace Corps." So unless Obama wanted to personally sign off on the new design, the Peace Corps needed to ask for<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the legal authority to do it themselves.
In a report to Congress Friday, the White House said the Peace Corps<span style="color: Red;">*</span>executive order would allow<span style="color: Red;">*</span>"more robust brand protection as the agency pursues communications and volunteer recruitment campaigns and future strategic partnerships."<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Peace Corps Press Director Erin Durney said the agency was looking forward to making changes in the emblem in the future.
USA TODAY
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Presidents use executive orders to make minor changes in policy only because the previous policy was set by executive order.
[h=3]Of marginal importance[/h]One extreme example comes from the executive orders governing executive orders themselves.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>In 1961, President Kennedy signed Executive Order 11030, which governed the process for writing and approving executive orders. He dictated that the left margin<span style="color: Red;">*</span>on executive orders be from 1½ inches.
When President George W. Bush updated that order in 2006, he reduced the margin<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to 1 inch, but left "inches" plural.
And so when Obama updated the procedure again in 2014, the first thing he did was to change "1 inches" to "1 inch."
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