Stuff You Should Know - How Lame Ducks Work

Episode Date: April 17, 2008

In U.S. politics, a lame duck is a president who will not be re-elected because he or she has been passed over for election, or already served the maximum two terms. Learn more about the origin of lame duck presidents in this HowStuffWorks podcast. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. You're getting smarter. Hey there and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com with me as always is my trusty editor Chris Palette. Chris, today I want to talk about lame duck presidents. Agreed? Absolutely. Okay, let me give a little background first on what a lame duck president is. A lame duck president is basically any president that has already either

not been passed over for election or has served 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. Okay. Basically, lame duck originally 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 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 20th amendment. Absolutely. The 20th amendment is the lame duck amendment and it was

instituted in, I believe, 1933 during the Hoover administration. Basically, what was going on was members of Congress had 13 months in between the time they found out that they were not re-elected and the time they actually left office. 13 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 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 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 Chris, it seems

like there's somebody out there right now who's a lame duck. Their name's slipping my mind. Can you refresh my memory? I think you're thinking of President George W. Bush. Exactly. That's who it was. Tell us a little bit about his lame duck status, will you? Well, you know, he's actually been fairly busy during his lame duck period. 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 2007. So, you know, if that's true, obviously, this is a 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 2004. Wow. Well, see, you know, as soon as you get elected for your second term, I guess

technically your lame duckness starts. But he's been actually pretty active as of late, worth the economic stimulus package, and recently, too, pushing for a permanent extension of the surveillance package, pushing Congress to extend that permanently instead of a temporary extension. He's been very vocal about doing that. So, he's not just sitting 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 to play 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. From what I understand in doing some research for this podcast, I found that it's pretty much open season on Bush.

It seems like he spent all of his political currency, and suddenly the wolves are at his door, as it were. I quote David Frum, 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 in his last term, it looks like nothing, Chris. What do you think? Well, you know, he's only so powerful anyway as president because the members of Congress are the ones who have to push the bills across his desk for him to sign. So, you know, there's only, 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, too. And I think a further sign

of the president's lame duck status, I was really surprised to find this out, but Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, in July 2007, flew to Syria to hold talks with the president of Syria, who Bush was ignoring at the time, going completely behind the president's back. Now, if that's not a sign that you're a lame duck, I don't know what it is. How about you? I do think you have a point there. Okay, well, please, please read How Lame is a lame duck president on HowStuffWorks.com. It'll change your life. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast.housestuffworks.com. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.