Stuff You Should Know - How Lame Ducks Work | Текст песни

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Announcer

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from howstuffworks.com.

Josh Clark

Hey there, and welcome to the Podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at howstuffworks.com. With me always is my trusty editor, Chris Pollete. Chris, today I want to talk about lame duck presidents, agreed?

Chris Pollete

Absolutely.

Josh Clark

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 swerved 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?

Chris Pollete

That is correct.

Josh Clark

And where did this come from, lame duck? Do you want me to explain that part?

Chris Pollete

Why don't you do that?

Josh Clark

Let me.

Chris Pollete

Okay.

Josh Clark

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 debt anymore. As I said, it's a president who has 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 -

Chris Pollete

Twentieth Amendment.

Josh Clark

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 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.

Chris Pollete

Well, you know, they had the opportunity to use the powers of office for all sorts of projects and once they're not - once they don't feel like they owe the voters anything anymore they can vote any way they want to.

Josh Clark

Exactly. They also could pick the president under circumstances. Those being, you know, at the time, electoral college which frankly I don't even want to go get into, but Chris, it seems like there's somebody out there right now who's a lame duck. Their name is slipping my mind, can you refresh my memory?

Chris Pollete

I think you're thinking of President George W. Bush.

Josh Clark

Exactly. That's who it was. Tell us a little bit about his lame duck status, will ya?

Chris Pollete

Well, you know, he's actually been fairly busy during his lame duck period. 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 if that's true, obviously that's a subjective thing, but he would've been a lame duck for almost half of his second term in office.