Dick Cheney is said to have the ambition to restore the powers to the Presidency that were lost during the Nixon Administration. While most of us believe that Nixon fell from grace because he exceeded his power as President, Cheney feels that Nixon was brought down by a hostile Press and a hostile, partisan Congress.
There are numerous articles about things that George Bush has done and is doing to enhance the power of the Presidency. One of these things is his innovation of the Signing Statement, in which he declares which parts of a law that he has just signed he will not enforce. If this innovation becomes settled law, future Presidents will have an absolute veto of any part of a law that they do not like.
This effort to restore the "lost powers" of the President remind me of efforts by a previous George, namely King George III of England, to regain powers that his predecessors had let lapse.
George III was the third monarch of the Welf or Hanover dynasty. The first was George I of England or George IV of Hanover. This George was selected to be King after the death of Queen Anne Stuart. She outlived all her children and there was no close relative to claim the throne. Parliament selected a successor: the Elector of Hanover, who became George I. He spoke no English and came to England only once, to attend the coronation ceremony. After he returned to Germany, the Monarch was represented by a regent. The regent did not have the traditional powers of a monarch, and the actual decisions about running the country fell to the Prime Minister. In the days of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, the Prime Minister and other officials of the King's cabinet were selected by and were responsible to the King or Queen, much as in the United States today. The absence of the true King led to the development of the Parliamentary system of government in England.
The next Welf/Hanover monarch was George II. He was equally interested in England and in Hanover. He was a patron of the musician George Frederic Handel. He founded the German university in Goettingen. (Its official name is the Georg August Universitaet.)
His grandson became George III. He was interested primarily in England and in regaining the powers that monarchs had wielded during the previous Stuart and Tudor dynasties. He insisted that his Prime Minister be responsible to him and not to Parliament. A long struggle ensued between the king and the elected assembly. The resulting mismanagement of the American colonies was one of the causes of the American Revolution.
So, today we have still another George seeking to recover lost powers. The difference is that history and tradition do not justify the doctrine of lost Presidential powers. George III could point to previous monarchs, such as Henry VIII and Elizabeth, who exercised absolute vetoes and appointed and sacked ministers without worrying about what Parliament thought. No American President has ever had such powers. Although cabinet ministers are named by the President, they must be confirmed by the Senate. The President's veto can be overridden by 2/3 votes in each chamber of the national legislature.
Dick Cheney is simply wrong about the "lost" powers of the President.