The Re-emergence of Executive Power

• Author: Jack Fruchtman
• Profession: Professor of Political Science and Director of the Program in Law and American Civilization at Towson University, Maryland
• Pages: 126-142

American Constitutional History: A Brief Introduction, First Edition. Jack Fruchtman.

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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The Re‐emergence of

ExecutivePower

Executive power declined during the Radical Reconstruction era, but

enjoyed a re‐emergence in the free market republic, especially after the

turn of the century. The period began with a powerful Congress

dominating the president and ended with a powerful president leading

Congress and the American people. At least one nineteenth‐century

commentator thought that presidents after Abraham Lincoln failed to

exercise requisite leadership.

Leadership and the Presidency

In 1885, a young Princeton political scientist wrote that the political

events in the 20 years after the Civil War demonstrated the rise of

Congress as the predominant force in American government while

the presidency wilted. Its author, Woodrow Wilson, transformed his

Johns Hopkins University doctoral dissertation into a book,

Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics, even before

he submitted it to his doctoral committee. With its publication, he

hoped to stimulate a renewal of presidential power. “Whereas

Congress at first overshadowed neither president nor federal judi-

ciary,” he wrote, “it now on occasion rules both with easy mastery

and with a high hand.”

The Re‐emergence of ExecutivePower 127

Wilson argued that this system of “congressional rule” was based

on the corrupt standing‐committee system in the House, something

a strong president could overcome. Congressional committees

acted with no accountability to the electorate. If a strong president

did not emerge, perhaps a cabinet system founded on the British

model was the best alternative. Wilson revised his assessment in

light of how the United States finally assumed world power status

after the 1898 Spanish–American War, which was followed by the

strong presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. In his 1908 book,

Constitutional Government in the United States, Wilson expressed

delight at the changes that had taken place under Teddy Roosevelt

who greatly enhanced presidential power in the years of his

presidency, 1901–1909. He thought of himself as a steward of the

people, a president who should do anything and everything to

protect the public interest as long as the Constitution or the law did

not forbid such action.

Known as a “trust buster,” Roosevelt effectively broke up the rail-

road trust in the Northwest Pacific under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

He advocated controls over the food and drug industry and conse-

quently was instrumental in Congress’s passage of the Pure Food and

Drug Act in 1906. The law prohibited the interstate shipment of

food, drugs, medicine, and alcoholic beverages that were “adulter-

ated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious.” Moreover,

Roosevelt brought the United States onto the world stage with an

aggressive foreign policy. He proclaimed a corollary to the Monroe

Doctrine in 1905 that prohibited the establishment of a foreign

military base anywhere in the Caribbean. The following year, he won

the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a truce between Russia and

Japan to end the Russo‐Japanese War of 1904–1905, often called the

first great war of the twentieth century. Roosevelt also created com-

missions to deal with striking workers, most notably those in the

United Mine Workers in 1902. Having promised to bring to all

Americans what he called a “Square Deal,” he helped the miners gain

increased pay while working fewer hours. Wilson viewed all of this

from his Princeton quarters. Two years later, he won the gubernato-

rial election in New Jersey, and then just 2 years after that, he was

ready to take his ideas to the White House as the twenty‐eighth

president of the United States.