Power of the presidency: How it has grown
From Washington to Trump, presidents have sought more strength for the office.
When the founding fathers wrote the U.S. Constitution, they designed the presidency as a counterweight to Congress. But they were cautious about giving the president too much power as they did not want to create an American monarchy, even accidentally.
This balance has been tricky to maintain over the past 250 years and the president has gained much authority over time.
While many Americans are concerned about Donald Trump’s efforts, his power grabs follow a long tradition going back to George Washington. From war to tariffs, authority has been transferred from Congress to the presidency.
For example, taxing and tariffs were the purview of Congress, according to the Constitution. But Congress has mostly ceded control of tariffs to the president. In another example, while the president is the commander of the U.S. military, Congress has the power to declare war. But that hasn’t stopped numerous presidents from sending troops overseas to participate in military actions that were not declared wars by Congress.
One example in recent memory was the Vietnam “conflict,” which started with the U.S. military supporting South Vietnam in its fight for independence from communist North Vietnam. The United States never declared war on Vietnam, but Congress did sanction President Lyndon B. Johnson’s military aims with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964. That “non war” lasted nearly a decade, while 58,220 U.S. servicemen were killed. In April 1975 the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam under President Gerald Ford.
These are just two examples of the way the power of the presidency has grown over the years. Did that atrophy of congressional power toward a stronger presidency lead to a vacuum that Donald Trump is working to fill in his second term? Will the nation be able to dial back the changes he has been instituting? I really don’t know the answers to these questions and I wonder if any Constitutional scholars know at this point. But they are watching closely, just like the rest of us.
The National Constitution Center, which is the museum of the founding documents, offers a long explanation of the ways the presidency has changed over the centuries since this nation was founded.
Much debate and many compromises led to a finite list of duties for the president in the Constitution, which also gave more power to the president than Congress. During the discussion, the founders even considered a triumvirate to lead the country but decided that system wouldn’t be as effective.
George Washington’s role
An essay on the Constitution Center’s website about the evolution of the presidency claims the founders were overly influenced by George Washington’s opinions about the role – Washington wanted a strong executive. They trusted him to be the first president, in part because he said he had zero interest in becoming king, and decided it was safe to give him what he wanted. Maybe they weren’t thinking about future presidents who may feel differently about the role and want even more power for themselves.
Thomas Jefferson wasn’t a big fan of the compromise the founders reached. According to the Constitution Center: Jefferson said the office was a “bad edition of a Polish King.” His aide said the Constitution would create a “mixed monarchy,” for despite “the humble title of President,” the office “would have greater powers than several monarchs have.”
Not an auspicious beginning. But there were checks and balances, including Congressional approval of appointments, as outlined in an earlier post.
Congress also controls the federal budget and the president is required by law to follow judicial decrees. I know these two truths are both being debated both inside the White House and around the country right now, so we can expect the Trump administration to test these limits. Propublica reported last week that Trump is ignoring or working around some of those court orders.
Scholars have depended over the years on the presidential oath, which is part of the Constitution, to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” as a bit of an insurance policy. This is certainly where the notion of a “Constitutional crisis” could come into play.
A lot has changed since our first president. Says the Constitution Center: “No one doubts that presidential powers have accreted over time. Where the office was weak, it is now strong. Where it was strong, it is stronger still.”
Some ways presidential powers have grown:
Wars: As mentioned above, the president’s military power has grown. In addition to the Vietnam example, Harry Truman led a “police action” in Korea and that president said no Congressional approval was required because there was no war on the Korean peninsula. When presidents since then have gone to Congress about a military campaign, it has mostly been to report on the conflict, not ask permission. It seems unlikely that Congress would need to be involved in declaring any kind of war at this point in our history.
Treaties and tariffs: Franklin D. Roosevelt captured negotiation power from Congress or rather Congress just handed these powers over. Now Congress just gives a rubber stamp blessing to treaties negotiated by the executive branch.
Executing laws: This was a key power of the president from the beginning. But Congress has handed over more authority to the executive over time, with legislation often instructing an agency to work out trade agreements and set regulations, for example. This can go beyond what most people consider treaties and into other jobs assigned to Congress, including spending the dollars that the U.S. takes in. For example, during the early 1980s recession, President George W. Bush stepped around Congress to bail out General Motors and Chrysler, even though Congress had already passed its own automobile company bailout bill.
The ushistory.org website lists how different presidents clawed more power to the office. Andrew Jackson set the example of rewarding loyal followers with presidential appointments. He also gave the veto a workout, vetoing more bills than the six previous presidents combined.
Even Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln jailed people suspected of disloyalty. He ignored Congress and grew the army and also ordered blockades of southern ports during the Civil War without the consent of Congress.
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson both strengthened the president’s role in international relations and gained related power along the way. Franklin Roosevelt captured economic authority during the Great Depression and World War II. Wartime presidents are most known for expanding their powers and recent presidents have used emergencies like the 9/11 terrorist attacks to also grow their powers, in particular, detaining “enemy combatants” at the Guantanamo Bay detention center without trial. Those terrorist attacks also led to an increase in domestic surveillance. And these actions were not just by Republican presidents.
Noah Feldman, a constitutional law scholar at Harvard, said in 2019 that Donald Trump was not that different from his predecessors in seeking to grow the president’s power. “Most presidents try to [expand their powers] incrementally, and Trump has tried to do it non-incrementally,” Feldman told another Harvard scholar for a study of the presidency. Feldman was confident that the checks and balances in the Constitution would keep Trump in check.
During his first term, Trump set himself up for further expansion of his powers by focusing on federal court appointments, including the Supreme Court. During the 2024 election, the Supreme Court handed him and all future presidents a clear explanation of their immunity from prosecution for their actions while in the Oval Office.
Blueprint for Trump
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the second Trump administration, included a plan for further growing the president’s power, by eliminating the independence of federal agencies that have traditionally had some autonomy, including the FBI, the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. Trump took action on that idea this week, by signing a new executive order.
Project 2025 also calls for a merit-based federal civil service, with workers replaced with people loyal to the president. And the plan calls for getting rid of some agencies like the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security.
These actions are designed to be steps toward Trump being able to cut some programs like Medicare and Medicaid that previously had been considered nearly impossible to touch, eliminating any reference to diversity goals and making it harder for people to buy contraception and abortion pills. The document goes on and on about other ways to encourage Christian values in the federal government, including criminalizing pornography.
The Brennan Center for Justice has some ideas for reforms to pull back the power of the presidency, but these aren’t likely possible while Republicans control Congress and the White House. Here are their ideas of actions to address situations ripe for presidential overreach and abuse:
Make it easier for Congress to terminate the president’s national emergency declarations.
Limit the president’s use of his powers to send military forces against the American people.
Pull back on the president’s war powers, and his “wartime detention and deportation authority.”