The Cult of the Presidency

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The modern vision of the presidency couldn’t be further from the Framers’ view of the chief executive’s role. In an age long before distrust of power was condemned as cynicism, the Founding Fathers designed a presidency of modest authority and limited responsibilities. The Constitution’s architects never conceived of the president as the man in charge of national destiny.

Key quote: No president should have the powers President Bush has sought and seized during the last seven years. But after 9/11 and Katrina, what rationally self-interested chief executive would hesitate to centralize power in anticipation of crisis? That pressure would be hard to resist, even for a president devoted to the Constitution and respectful of the limited role the office was supposed to play in our system of government.