What powers are vested in the Executive Branch?

Draft and enter into treaties with Senate Ratification

Question: What powers are vested in the Executive Branch?
Position‹4 of 4: Diplomatic and Military Powers (Article II, Section 2)
Argument‹2 of 3›: Draft and enter into treaties with Senate Ratification

This power requires approval by the Senate, indicating this power demands bipartisanship. This allows for the senate to both advise the President on matters of national interest as well as to check the President's power.

The argument

The president "shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur" (Article II, section 2). The 2/3s majority requirement indicates that the power is indicated for bipartisan decisions. This is further supported in the Federalist papers; "The operation of treaties as laws, plead strongly for the participation of the whole or a portion of the legislative body in the office of making them."

Premises

[P1]Article II, Section 2 grants the president the power to make treaties, but only with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senators present. [P2] That two-thirds threshold signals that treaty-making is meant to be a bipartisan act, a design the Federalist Papers reinforce by arguing the legislative body should participate in making treaties that operate as law. [C] Among the Executive Branch's diplomatic and military powers is the authority to draft and enter into treaties, subject to Senate ratification.

Counter-arguments

The clause is accurately quoted but the procedure is misdescribed. The Senate does not ratify treaties: it gives advice and consent, after which ratification is performed by the president, who may decline to ratify even a treaty the Senate has approved. The two-thirds threshold is likewise a supermajority requirement rather than a bipartisanship requirement — it says nothing about party, and a Senate in which one party held two-thirds of those present could satisfy it alone. The Federalist passage quoted also tells against the classification the argument draws from it. Its reasoning is that treaties operate as laws and therefore warrant legislative participation, which supports treating treaty-making as a power shared with Congress rather than as a diplomatic power vested in the executive. Practice reinforces this: the great majority of the United States' international commitments are concluded as executive agreements or congressional-executive agreements without any two-thirds vote, and presidents have withdrawn from ratified treaties without returning to the Senate. A power described as "draft and enter into treaties with Senate ratification" therefore captures neither the constitutional mechanics nor the bulk of how the country actually enters international obligations.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The quotation is accurate, but the Senate's constitutional role is advice and consent; ratification is the president's act, so describing the power as exercised "with Senate ratification" misstates the procedure. [Rejecting P2] A two-thirds threshold is a supermajority requirement, not a bipartisanship requirement, and the Federalist passage cited argues that treaties are law-like and so belong partly to the legislature — which tells against classifying the power as diplomatic authority vested in the executive.

Proponents cited

The US Supreme Court
“While no act of Congress authorizes the executive department to permit the introduction of foreign troops, the power to give such permission without legislative assent was probably assumed to exist from the authority of the President as commander in chief of the military and naval forces of the United States. It may be doubted, however, whether such power could be extended to the apprehension of deserters [from foreign vessels] in the absence of positive legislation to that effect”
President Jimmy Carter
“The United States Senate will soon be debating whether these treaties should be ratified. Throughout the negotiations, we were determined that our national security interests would be protected”
William Gibbs McAdoo
“Whatever may be the imperfections of the Treaty from a political or economic standpoint, Woodrow Wilson did not fail. The outstanding thing for which he fought, the thing that transcends political and economic considerations, is the permanent peace of the world.”