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The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office

2018; Oxford University Press; Volume: 105; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jahist/jay290

1945-2314

Kendrick A. Clements,

Political and Economic history of UK and US

Occasionally, an author distills and clarifies the essence of an era. In 1973 Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. did that in The Imperial Presidency, pointing to an overblown executive as the source of the disaster in Vietnam and much then-recent domestic turmoil. Readers found the argument persuasive, but even as they wondered what to do about the problem, the Watergate scandal forced President Richard M. Nixon's resignation, and it appeared that constitutional checks and balances had restrained an out-of-control presidency. Watergate makes only a cameo appearance in Jeremy Suri's The Impossible Presidency, buried in a line at the top of page 259. As Suri sees it, presidential power has grown steadily from the time of George Washington to the administration of Donald J. Trump. Presidents contributed to this growth by actively seeking power, but the underlying driver is public demand for government management of a growing economy and a complex world, particularly in times of crisis such as war and economic depression. The Watergate scandal was a momentary perturbation in this pattern, not a reversal of it.