Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Powell Out, Rice Promoted In Cabinet Reshuffle, 11/17/04
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec04/cabinet_11-17.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is the president's Cabinet?

2. What kind of advisors does the president have?

3. If you were president, who would you look to for advice on policy and issues? Why?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What significant Cabinet shift happened this week?

President Bush has nominated national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to replace resigning Secretary of State Colin Powell in a Cabinet shake-up that will help define the next four years.

2. What does Condoleeza Rice bring to the Cabinet that her predecessor didn't have?

Long a close friend to the president, Rice's promotion is seen as a victory for conservatives who often clashed with Colin Powell on foreign policy.

"The one thing she would have going for her that Secretary Powell didn't have … is that direct line to the president. There would be no equivocation or confusion about whether she spoke for the president of the United States," explained Alexis Simendinger, a reporter who covers the White House.

3. What patterns do political experts see in second-term Cabinets?

Political experts agree that changes like these are not uncommon and often express a second-term president's desire to reward loyal friends as well as create a more harmonious and effective executive branch of government.

"I think second-term presidents tend to tighten their control and basically say, 'I know what I'm doing, I know where I'm going and I want people at the Cabinet departments who are going to follow my lead,'" Paul Light of the Brookings Institution told NPR.

4. What was unusual about President Nixon's second Cabinet?

Even though more resignations are expected (staggered to avoid the appearance of a mass exit), it looks as though President Bush won't follow the lead of Richard Nixon, who notoriously demanded that all his Cabinet members submit their letters of resignation prior to the start of his second term in 1973. Nixon also tried to enforce loyalty by having Henry Kissinger serve as both national security adviser and secretary of state.

5. How long have U.S. presidents had Cabinets? What is their purpose?

The Cabinet has been a staple of American presidencies since George Washington held the first recorded meeting in 1791. According to Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, the purpose of the Cabinet is to advise the president.

The president "may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices."

6. How has the power of the Cabinet shifted over time?

However, the power of Cabinet secretaries is declining, according to a panel of experts who study government decision-making at the Brookings Institution. Decision-making has become more centralized due to the complexity of the modern world.

The experts also remarked that it is important to distinguish between the inner Cabinet -- State, Defense, Treasury and Justice -- and the outer Cabinet of less critical departments. Agriculture is a key part of U.S. industry, experts agreed, but to have the Agriculture secretary at all important meetings is something of an anachronism.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Much has been said of Condoleezza Rice's close friendship with President Bush. How might this relationship be both an asset and a liability for both her and the president? Explain your answer with examples.

2. Why do you think that the founding fathers included a provision for cabinet secretaries in the Constitution? How do you think the complexities of the modern world have shaped changes in cabinet secretaries' roles today?

Write a 500-800 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.