Term Paper on "American Presidency McDonald, Forest. "

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American Presidency

McDonald, Forest. The American Presidency. Lawrence, University of Kansas Press,

According to historian and scholar Forest McDonald, the American Presidency was and is a unique institution. Although other nations have since developed elected executives called presidents, the American presidency has evolved along its own special course, because of the birth of America as a new nation without a long-standing tradition of previous history, monarchy or common law. Some of the Founding Fathers, particularly James Madison, were initially reluctant to invest the new executive office with much power, for fear of creating a new king. Madison, for example, wished to prohibit unilateral executive action in foreign affairs (238). This would, according to McDonald, have made it impossible for the United States to engage effectively as a nation on the world stage, although of course it would also have limited some of the military actions not officially declared 'wars' by Congress as well. From Madison onward, McDonald has nothing but contempt for those individuals who would limit the power of the presidency, an office, he says, "has been responsible for less harm and more good, in the nation and in the world, than perhaps any other secular institution in history" despite the relatively short history of America (481).

Since Madison's vision of a president severely hampered by checks and balances, the presidency as an institution has evolved, over the course of American history to one of the most powerful and dominant political positions in the world as well as the nation, often led by a king-surrogate in deed in not in name, a development that the author sees as positive rather than negative (459). McDonald attempts to answer the question of how this supposed shift in the conception of the presidency from weak to quasi-monarchial occurred, and provides a timely overview of an institution from the point-of-view of the modern voter, as well as the modern American reader's standpoint. McDonald believes that the increasing centralization of presidential power was necessary, and actually not that far an evolution from the original concept of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father that McDonald most admires, as opposed to Madison.

The modern presidency, according to McDonald, arose by an impossible challenge set for themselves by all of America's Founding Fathers: they wished to create an ideal government that fused the best elements of aristocracy, which they defined as the wisest elements of society, with a democratic process. The Founding Fathers did not wish to create a new monarchy, by and large, despite the enthusiasm of some people to make Washington a new king, and because the main parliamentary model offered to them was based upon an untenable notion of British kingship, they instead created the tripartite governmental structure as it now exists today. They separated the legislature from the executive branch, a distinction that America still maintains with Great Britain and many European powers. The U.S. Supreme Court, the third, unelected judicial branch, is praised by the author for its bolstering of executive power during the 19th century (the era, amongst other decisions, of Dred Scott) although McDonald despises the court's behavior during the 20th century, which he sees as overtly activist in its orientation.

To show America's uneasy relationship with executive power, rather than taking a strictly chronological, linear, and historical approach to tracing the history of the presidency, McDonald uses more of a philosophical methodology. His book is divided into three sections, delineating what he sees as the different functions of the office. The first section of his book chronicles how English common law, English philosophers like the 17th century John Locke, a 13th century legal commentator, John Bracton, and the 16th… READ MORE

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