Yuval Levin explores the impact of the growing power in the office of the presidency.
The story of modern American government is a tale of ever-growing presidential power. For well over a century now, as the economy has expanded in scope and complexity, as America’s global footprint has enlarged, as new technologies of communication have focused attention on Washington, and as both the size of the federal government and the public’s expectations of that government have swelled, all eyes have turned to the White House. But as the president’s power and prominence have increased, has the stature of the office and its capacity for statesmanship grown too? Or does presidential statesmanship depend upon some boundaries for the chief executive?
The latter possibility hardly seems to occur to our presidents now. For decades, federal chief executives have behaved as though asserting more authority will inevitably also provide them with more standing. “I alone can fix it” might as well be the motto of the second branch in our time.
But the framers of the office, even those with an expansive view of the president’s role and importance, tended not to see power that way. …
… Hamilton had a point. Getting bogged down in parochial minutia really does tend to undermine the dignity of the national government, and to leave it less capable of the sorts of high statesmanship that he hoped might occupy its most powerful officials. And this is particularly true of the presidency, which inevitably takes on the stamp and character of its occupant. It matters if the individual vested with the executive power in our government is inclined to serve as chief clerk of the administrative state tending to “the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature,” or a statesman who feels called to grand exertions in “commerce, finance, negotiation, and war.”
Our presidents have become more of the former, not entirely by their choosing. The greater reach and scope of federal power have meant that the president has far more minutiae to administer.
