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The Return of the Imperial Presidency? The Return of the Imperial Presidency? One lesson of American politics since September 11 is that some tensions between presidents and Congress spring from a deeper source than the partisan passions of the moment. by Donald R. Wolfensberger oments after President George W. nine months earlier Beschloss had described MBush finished his stirring antiterrorism Bush as “the first post-imperial president” speech before Congress last September, presi- because, for the first time since the Great dential historian Michael Beschloss enthusias- Depression, “we were not electing a president tically declared on national television that “the under the shadow of an international emer- imperial presidency is back. We just saw it.” gency like the Cold War or World War II or an As someone who began his career as a economic crisis.” Then came September 11. Republican congressional staff aide during the Still, it’s hard to join in such a warm welcome turbulence of Vietnam and Watergate in the late for the return of an idea that was heavily bur- 1960s and early 1970s, I was startled by the dened just a generation ago with negative asso- buoyant tone of Beschloss’s pronouncement. ciations and cautionary experiences. Presi- To me, “imperial presidency” carries a pejora- dential scholars understandably become tive connotation closely tied to those twin admirers of strong presidents and their presi- nightmares. Indeed, Webster’s Unabridged Dic- dencies. But a focus on executive power can tionary bluntly defines imperial presidency as “a become so narrow as to cause one to lose sight U.S. presidency that is characterized by greater of the larger governmental system, with its power than the Constitution allows.” checks and balances. To invest the idea of the Was Beschloss suggesting that President imperial presidency with an aura of legitimacy Bush was already operating outside the Consti- and approbation would be a serious blow to tution in prosecuting the war against terrorism, America’s constitutional design and the intent or did he have a more benign definition in of the Framers. mind? Apparently it was the latter. As Beschloss It was historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., went on to explain, during World War II and the who popularized the term imperial presidency Cold War, Congress deferred to presidents, not in his 1973 book by that title. Schlesinger, who just on questions of foreign policy and defense, had earlier chronicled the strong presidencies but on domestic issues as well. Whether it was of Andrew Jackson and Franklin D. Roosevelt President Dwight D. Eisenhower asking for an in admiring terms, admits in The Imperial interstate highway system or President John F. Presidency his own culpability in perpetuating Kennedy pledging to land a man on the moon, over the years “an exalted conception of presi- Congress said, “If you ask us, we will.” Without dential power”: such a galvanizing crisis, the president would not be able to define the national interest so com- American historians and political scientists, pletely. “Now,” continued Beschloss, “George this writer among them, labored to give the Bush is at the center of the American solar sys- expansive theory of the Presidency historical tem; that was not true 10 days ago.” In fact, just sanction. Overgeneralizing from the [pre- 36 Wilson Quarterly “A Senator Fulbright to see you Sire. Seems he can’t reconcile himself to your infallibility,” reads the caption of this Vietnam War-era cartoon. World War II] contrast between a President foreign policy soon began to pervade and who was right and a Congress which was embolden the domestic presidency.” wrong, scholars developed an uncritical cult The growth of the imperial presidency was of the activist Presidency. gradual, and occurred “usually under the demand or pretext of an emergency,” Schle- The view of the presidency as “the great singer observes. Further, “it was as much a mat- engine of democracy” and the “American peo- ter of congressional abdication as of presidential ple’s one authentic trumpet,” writes Schle- usurpation.” The seeds of the imperial presidency singer, passed into the textbooks and helped were sown early. Schlesinger cites as examples shape the national outlook after 1945. This Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 imposition of martial faith of the American people in the presidency, law and his suspension of habeas corpus, and coupled with their doubts about the ability of William McKinley’s decision to send 5,000 democracy to respond adequately to the totali- American troops to China to help suppress the tarian challenge abroad, are what gave the post- Boxer Rebellion of 1900. It is a measure of how war presidency its pretensions and powers. much things have changed that Theodore “By the early 1970s,” Schlesinger writes, “the Roosevelt’s 1907 decision to dispatch America’s American President had become on issues of war Great White Fleet on a tour around the world and peace the most absolute monarch (with was controversial because he failed to seek con- the possible exception of Mao Tse Tung of gressional approval. Then came Woodrow China) among the great powers of the world.” Wilson’s forays into revolutionary Mexico, Moreover, “the claims of unilateral authority in FDR’s unilateral declaration of an “unlimited Spring 2002 37 The Imperial Presidency national emergency” six months before Pearl actions as one of several causes of the Harbor, and Harry Truman’s commitment of decline. U.S. troops to the Korean War in 1950, without As one who worked in the House of congressional authorization, and his 1952 Representatives from 1969 to 1997, I have long seizure of strike-threatened steel mills. been puzzled by such complaints. They have never rung true. What I witnessed during those n 1973, the year The Imperial Presidency years was the continuing decline of the legisla- Iwas published, Congress moved to reassert tive branch, not its ascendancy. Even Congress’s its war-making prerogatives during non- post-Watergate efforts to reassert its authority declared wars by enacting the War Powers look rather feeble in the harsh light of reality. The Resolution over President Nixon’s veto. The War Powers Resolution has been all but ignored following year, prior to Nixon’s resignation by every president since Nixon as unconstitu- under the imminent threat of impeachment, tional. They have abided by its reporting Congress enacted two more laws aimed at clip- requirements, but presidential military forays ping the wings of the imperial presidency and abroad without explicit congressional authority restoring the balance of power between the two continue unabated. Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, branches. The Congressional Budget and Somalia, and Serbia come readily to mind. Impoundment Control Act of 1974 was The congressional budget act has been used designed to enable Congress to set its own by every president since Ronald Reagan to spending priorities and prohibit the president leverage the administration’s priorities by using from impounding funds it had appropriated. budget summits with Congress to negotiate the The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974 was terms of massive reconciliation bills on taxes and supposed to eliminate the taint of big money entitlements. The independent counsel act has from presidential politics. Subsequent years been allowed to expire twice—though, in light witnessed a spate of other statutes designed to of the unbridled power it gives counsels and the right the balance between the branches. The potential for abuse, this may have been wise. National Emergencies Act (1976) abolished Federal funding of presidential campaigns has scores of existing presidential emergency pow- not stopped campaign finance abuses. And ers. The Ethics in Government Act (1978) congressional oversight of perceived executive authorized, among other things, the appointment abuses has met with mixed results at best. of special prosecutors to investigate high-rank- In the meantime, presidents have been rely- ing executive branch officials. The Senate, in ing more heavily than before on executive 1976, and the House, in 1977, established agreements to avoid the treaty ratification intelligence committees in the wake of hearings process, and on executive orders (or memo- in 1975 revealing widespread abuses; and in randums) of dubious statutory grounding in 1980 the Intelligence Oversight Act increased other areas. Administrations have defied Congress’s monitoring demands on intelli- Congress’s requests for information with gence agencies and their covert operations. increasing frequency, dismissing the requests Since those Watergate-era enactments, pres- as politically motivated. And they have often idential scholars have decried the way invoked executive privilege in areas not previ- Congress has emasculated the presidency. ously sanctioned by judicial judgments. As recently as January of last year, political sci- entist Richard E. Neustadt, author of the he most recent example is Vice President classic Presidential Power (1964), lamented TRichard Cheney’s refusal, on grounds of that “the U.S. presidency has been progres- executive privilege, to turn over to the General sively weakened over the past three decades Accounting Office (GAO), an arm of Con- to the point where it is probably weaker gress, information about meetings between the today than at almost any time in the preced- president’s energy task force and energy execu- ing century.” Neustadt cited congressional tives. The controversy took on added interest with >Donald R. Wolfensberger is director of the Congress Project at the Wilson Center and the author of Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial (2000). He retired as chief of staff of the House Rules Committee in 1997 after a 28-year career on the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives. Copyright © 2002 by Donald R. Wolfensberger. 38 Wilson Quarterly Uniforms redolent of imperial pomp briefly appeared on White House guards in the Nixon administration, only to vanish after a public outcry. the collapse of Enron, one of the energy com- the South and West, which has given a more pop- panies that provided advice to the task force.
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