Imperial Presidency

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The Imperial Presidency is a term used from the 1960s and made popular by the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. to describe the modern presidency of the United States. It was based on a number of observations:

As late as the 1930s the Executive Branch of the president of the United States had few staff, most of them based in the Capitol, where a president traditionally has an office (it is no longer used except for ceremonial occasions, but nineteenth and early twentieth century presidents were based there with their small staff on a day-to-day basis). However, Franklin D. Roosevelt's leadership during the Great Depression and World War II changed the presidency. His charismatic leadership in the new age of electronic media, the growth of executive agencies under the New Deal, his Brain Trust advisors, and in 1939 the creation of the Executive Office of the President led to a transformation of the presidency.

Today the president has a large Executive staff, usually cramped in crowded conditions in the West Wing, or basement of the White House, or in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a building beside the White House that used to house the Departments of Defense and State. Such is the modern overcrowding in the West Wing that President Richard Nixon had the former presidential swimming pool covered over and converted into a press room.

[edit] Criticisms

The main criticisms of the "imperial presidency" are:

• As staff numbers grew, many people were appointed who held personal loyalty to the person holding the office of president, and who were not subject to outside approval or control.

• The White House Chief of Staff position has evolved into a powerful executive position when held by a strong-willed figure in an administration of a hands off president who left day to day governance to his cabinet and his Chief of Staff. Donald Regan as Chief of Staff and Ronald Reagan as president were seen as examples of this quasi-prime ministerial relationship.

• A range of new advisory bodies developed around the presidency, many of which complemented (critics suggest rivaled) the main cabinet departments, with the cabinet declining in influence. The National Security Council and the Office of Management and Budget are prime examples.

• The Senate does not "advise and consent" to appointments to the Executive Office of the President (with only a handful of exceptions), as it does with cabinet appointments. A corollary of this is that EOP personnel may act independent of, without regard for, and without accountability to Congress.

Some have suggested that the range of new agencies, the importance of the Chief of Staff, and the large number of officials created a virtual 'royal court' around the President, with members not answerable to anyone but the President and on occasions acting independent of him also.

Critics of the Imperial Presidency theory counteract by arguing that

• the Executive Office of the President makes up only a very small part of the federal bureaucracy and the President has very little influence as to the appointment of most members of the federal bureaucracy;

• the number of people within the EOP is small and there is no institutional continuity at all;

• the organization and functioning of most of the Federal government is determined by federal law and the President has little power to reorganize most of the federal government.

The presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were particularly described as surrounded by 'courts', where junior staffers acted on occasions in contravention of executive orders or Acts of Congress. The activities of some Nixon staffers during the Watergate affair are often held up as an example. Under Reagan (1981-1989) the role of Colonel Oliver North in the facilitation of funding to the Contras in Nicaragua, in explicit contravention of a United States Congressional ban, has been highlighted as an example of a "junior courtier's" ability to act, based on his position as a member of a large White House staff. Howard Baker, who served as Reagan's last Chief of Staff, was critical of the growth, complexity and apparent unanswerability of the presidential 'court'.

[edit] Further reading

• Rudalevige, Andrew. The New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power after Watergate. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
• Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. The Imperial Presidency. Replica Books. December 1, 1998. ISBN 0-7351-0047-0
• Wolfensberg, Donald R. The Return of the Imperial Presidency ? Wilson Quarterly. 26:2 (2002) pg. 37