12.7: Calibrating the Presidency

The term president – meaning one who presides over a meeting – was chosen for America’s chief executive largely for its implied weakness. John Adams, who would eventually succeed George Washington as president, considered it too feeble a name. Adams worried any man calling himself by such a label would be mocked by the kings and queens of Europe and disregarded by his own citizens as unimportant and ineffectual. In Adams’s view, magistrate, 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 the other branches, the presidency has become the world’s most powerful office. Once deemed weak, president 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.”

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

Many Americans long for a more powerful presidency when they support the current president, 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.