OBSERVER Photo by Sara Holthouse Melody Barnes, former assistant to President Obama, discusses the power of the presidential voice during her lecture at Chautauqua Institution on Thursday.

CHAUTAUQUA — The American presidency is a critical issue for the lives of Americans, but one that Melody Barnes said is surprisingly not always on the top of everyone’s mind.

Founding executive director of the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, assistant to President Barack Obama and former director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Barnes has had over 25 years of experience in crafting public policy. Barnes shaped her lecture on Thursday morning at Chautauqua Institution on the evolution of the modern presidency, continuing on with the theme of the week, and how the presidency can shape lives.

“On this morning of the first presidential debate, we must ask the question ‘why’?” Barnes said. “While often misunderstood and sometimes maligned, make no mistake the presidency and executive branch have in some way touched everything.”

Barnes gave examples of things the presidency has touched including coffee makers, roads and people that others engage with in the office or apartment buildings and food. She said the power in the office of the president can and does profoundly shape lives.

Barnes talked about spending the first three years of Obama’s administration in the White House, talking about calling her parents with the news, to which they were excited about but also confused about.

“It was clear to us anyway when we went into the White House that it could be a confusing place for people,” Barnes said. “We often drew a direct line between our jobs and the jobs of Leo and CJ and Josh of the popular TV show, ‘The West Wing’. That’s how we understood what we did.”

Barnes said the office surrounding the presidency often feels opaque and less accessible to regular people. She continued by saying the topic of the American presidency is currently a timely one as the country heads towards one of the most controversial elections ever and people continue to lose faith in the federal government. She said only 20% of Americans trust the government, which makes it difficult or almost impossible to solve problems. Barnes added that 1964 was the high watermark for when people trusted the government the most. 69% of people blame this mistrust on irresponsible leaders who do not protect democracy and want power at any cost.

Barnes said this leads to people questioning if their vote matters, specifically for young people and people of color. She said the public opinion of Congress also continues to decline, quoting Stephen Colbert who said “Congress is less popular than colonoscopies.”

Public discontent has often in the past called for an abolishment of the electoral college after two presidential elections in our lifetimes presidents were elected without majority votes. While the electoral college does not appear to reflect the public, Barnes said she understands wanting to abolish it but wonders if it might also lead to exasperating issues.

“Americans are discontent with representation, even as we expect a great deal from our president,” Barnes said.

Barnes asked the audience to consider how the presidency has evolved over time in the face of competing demands, why this matters, and more specifically what is and should be the purpose of the president, what is the role when advancing an agenda that addresses the nation’s needs and does the 21rst century presidency work?

Barnes answered these questions with a look back in time to some of the earlier presidents, going back to those who helped write the Constitution such as Alexander Hamilton, and the roles presidents such as George Washington, Teddy Rosevelt and Lyndon B Johnson played in establishing presidential authority.

Sometimes, while working with Obama’s administration, Barnes said they would get told to be more like Lyndon B Johnson, who she described as someone who turned American life upside down during his five years as president, and who believed that the government should be an agent on behalf of the people. This is something she said Obama shared with Johnson, giving examples of Obama looking at letters from constituents every day, interacting with kids, and passing the Affordable Care Act.

“By 2008 almost every president for 60 years had attempted to advance world healthcare legislation and had failed,” Barnes said. “President Obama, urged by the American public against the backdrop of a healthcare accessibility crisis, decided to use his political capital to do so. There were times along that path where we debated and questioned whether or not we should try for comprehensive reform.”

Barnes said Obama said to her colleague that if he listened to them it would happen in small parts and take a long time, and that they were going to do it now.

The rest of Barnes’s lecture focused on the president’s executive authority and how presidents decide to use it. She said the power of the presidential voice and how that was relayed to the public changed with the introduction of the television and radio. She also discussed the evolution of technology and social media and how social media allowed for both President Obama and President Trump to embrace this technology and use it to reach people in new ways.

Barnes said a lot of the problems that the president is blamed for are actually problems with Congress, and to fix the presidency Congress needs to be fixed first. In order to work effectively, Barnes said the presidency needs a working Congress.

Barnes ended with one more example of the power of the presidential voice, citing Lydon B Johnson’s speech after the assassination of John F Kennedy.

“Every president has to inspire the confidence of the people,” Barnes said. “Every president has to be a leader. And to be a leader you must attract people willing to follow you. Every president has to develop a moral underpinning to his power or soon discovers that he has no power at all.”

Barnes said the presidential moral authority is directly related to the topic of the evolution of the presidency. Presidents committed to the goal of touching people’s lives and meeting their needs will sometimes find themselves in positions of tension within the federal system, but Barnes said that tension can be productive.

“Those productive tensions even within the presidency itself might just be what the framers of the Constitution had in mind as they set in motion a system of collective self-government aimed at the common good,” Barnes said.