12.6: Calibrating the Presidency

The term president — meaning one who presides over a meeting — was chosen for America’s chief executive largely on account of its implied weakness. John Adams, who would eventually succeed George Washington as president, considered it too feeble a name for America’s chief executive. Adams predicted any man calling himself by such a label would be mocked by the kings and queens of Europe and disregarded by the citizens of his own country as unimportant and ineffectual. In Adams’s view, a magistrate, an excellency, even an elected king would have been preferable to the meek title on which the Founders settled.

Since Adams’s day, the presidency has been occupied by men both courageous and craven, virtuous and vile, forceful and feckless. Through their actions — and those of Congress and the federal courts — the presidency has become the world’s most powerful political office. America’s chief executive has even changed the meaning of the word president. Once deemed weak, it is now favored by national leaders (both democratic and dictatorial) all around the world who wish to aggrandize themselves by holding the same title as the so-called “Leader of the Free World,” even if their actual powers are petty by comparison.

Whether the gradual empowerment of the presidency has made the American political machine better or worse is a fiercely debated question. The machine undoubtedly works faster when a decisive president is in charge rather than a deliberate Congress. But fast-moving machines can be dangerous as well as productive, and political machines are no exception to the rule.

Many Americans long for a more powerful presidency when the current president is one they support, only to pine for greater constraints on it as soon as a president they oppose takes office. Unfortunately, we can’t have it both ways. A vexing but unavoidable challenge of institutional design is to create a system that works well when both good and bad leaders are at the controls.