How Lame Ducks Work

lame duck president is. Lame duck president is basically any president that has already either not been passed over for election or has served the both of their terms. And basically they're just sitting around in office waiting to finish out the rest of their tenure before the next president takes over. Correct that is correct? And where did this come from? Lame duck? Do you want me to explain that part? Why don't you do that? Let me Basically, a lame duck original it was a financial term for

somebody who couldn't pay their debt. Our current use of that term has nothing to do with that anymore. As I said, it's it's a president who's finished out their term, and it can also refer to Congress. But there's an amendment in the Constitution called the lame Duck Amendment, and it is the amenment absolutely, uh, the twenty Amendment is the lame duck Amendment, and it was instituted in I

believe nineteen thirty three during the Hoover administration. Basically, what was going on was members of Congress had thirteen months in between the time they found out that they were not reelected and the time they actually left office. Thirteen months is a really, really long time to do a

lot of damage, basically robbing their constituency blind. Right. Well, you know, they have the opportunity to use the powers of office for uh, for all sorts of projects, and you know, once they're not once they don't feel like they owe the voters anything anymore. They can they can vote any way they want to, exactly. They could also pick the president under certain circumstances, those being you know, a tie in the electoral college, which frankly I don't

even want to get into. But um, Chris, it seems like there's somebody out there right now who's a lame duck. Their names slipping my mind. Can you refresh my memory. I think you're thinking of President George W. Buck exactly. That's who it was. Tell us a little bit about his lame duck status, will you. Well, you know, he's uh,

he's actually been fairly busy during his lame duck period. Um. You know, I saw that people have been talking about his presidency being entering the lame duck phase as early as the first part of two thousand seven. So you know, if if that's true. Obviously this is subjective thing, but he would have been a lame duck for you know, almost half of his second term in office. I heard that the Associated Press actually tagged him with lame duck in two thousand four. Wow, we'll see, you know, as

soon as you get elected for your second term. I guess technically you're you're him. Uh, your lame duckness starts. Um. But he's been he's been actually pretty active as of late UM worth the Economic Stimulus Package and UM recently to UH pushing for a permanent extension of his the UH Surveillance Package, pushing Congress to to extend that permanently instead of a temporary extension. He's been very vocal about

about doing that. So he's not he's not just sitting on his on his hands and waiting for his term to end. Now. Also one of those little balls with the raccoon tail that is battery powered and cats like the plue with that's also very active too. But I think that that has just about as much of a chance of pushing legislation through as George Bush does at this point. Uh, from what I understand and doing some research for this podcast, I found that, um, it's pretty

much open season on Bush. It seems like he's spent all of his political currency and uh, suddenly the wolves are at his door, as it were. I quote David from who's a former speechwriter, there's no possibility at all of the president advancing anything that is acceptable to both the Democrats and the Republicans. Talking about what he'll be able to do his last term, it looks like nothing. Chris,

what do you think? Well, you know, he's he's only so powerful anyway as president because the members of Congress are the ones who have to uh push the bills across his desk form to sign. So you know, there's there's only he He can talk all he wants, but if they don't give him a bill to sign into law. You know, he can't do anything whether he's a lame duck or not. Exactly two and I think, uh a further sign of the president's lame duck status that I

was really surprised to find this out. But Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, in July two thousand seven, flew to Syria to hold talks with the President of Syria, who Bush was ignoring at the time, going completely behind the residents back. Now, if that's not a sign that you're a lame duck, I don't know what is. How about you? I do think you have a point there. Okay, well, please please read how Lame is a Lame Duck President at how stuff works dot com.

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