This is the second installment of a new series at The Lemur called “Uncommon Ground,” in which Sherman Criner and Zachary Partnoy, the founders of The Lemur (and a conservative and a liberal, respectively), talk through a divisive issue in American politics with the intention of promoting civility and compromise.
In this issue, we discuss the “imperial presidency” and our fears about the excessive use of executive power.
Zachary: Before we dive in, we should first establish what we mean by an “imperial presidency.” The term was popularized during the Watergate era—it was the title of a 1973 book by historian and Kennedy confidante Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who articulated a series of anxieties about the all-powerful national security state and Nixonian abuses of power (Schlesinger, of course, hadn’t seen nothin’ yet).
At its core, the idea is that, over the course of American history, presidents have steadily usurped power from the legislature and courts in ways that the Founders would have frowned upon. FDR challenged judicial review during the late New Deal and served almost four full terms. Starting with Truman, nuclear weapons gave presidents hitherto unseen discretionary powers for total destruction in wartime, alongside an expanded national security apparatus and the military-industrial complex (thanks to the 1947 NSA and NSC-68). Lyndon Johnson circumvented Congress using constitutionally dubious measures to escalate American involvement in Vietnam. Schlesinger saw the presidency drifting toward something resembling an emperorship, attracting leaders not unlike the ambitious emperors of ancient Rome—people motivated and equipped to ruthlessly consolidate power in their person and surround themselves with loyal bureaucrats.
The “imperial presidency” was an alarming prospect for both liberals and conservatives. Liberals understood that the greatest achievements of 20th-century liberalism were accomplished through legislation, not executive fiat. And conservatives, who had opposed many of these changes in the first place, were even more wary of an ever-expanding presidency overriding the checks and balances designed to constrain it.
Sherman: I agree with you on the historical claim that the executive branch has steadily usurped power from its coequal branches, but I think we need to draw an important distinction. This “imperial presidency” isn’t necessarily an affront to the American constitutional order. Some of our greatest thinkers saw strong executive authority as essential—not as a constitutional defect but as a feature of the system itself.
Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 70, famously argued that “energy in the executive” is crucial for effective governance—especially in moments of crisis (Remember the Whiskey Rebellion from APUSH?). The “ingredients which constitute” this energy, Hamilton writes, “are, first, unity; secondly, duration; thirdly, an adequate provision for its support; fourthly, competent powers.” He even went so far as to explicitly distinguish a unified executive from that of “the two Consuls of Rome” and “executive council[s]” precisely because they would muddy accountability structures and impede the executive’s decisiveness. Hence, this unity empowers the executive branch to check the excesses of the legislative branch, allowing “ambition…to counteract ambition.” It’s no surprise, then, that the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed broad presidential discretion in these domains, despite congressional attempts to curtail executive authority—take Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020), which reaffirmed the president’s power to remove executive officers. This reflects a long-standing commitment to the unitary executive theory, which sees executive authority as necessarily centralized within the presidency.
And while you highlight historical cases of presidential “mission creep”—Johnson’s handling of Vietnam, Truman’s national security expansion—I think it’s worth noting what sets the Trump administration apart: transparency. Unlike past presidents who hid clandestine activities behind bureaucratic red tape, Trump’s administration has openly dismantled the bloated bureaucracy housed in agencies like USAID, which have strayed from America’s civic ideals. His administration’s actions are not an entrenchment of some kind of Trumpian empire but a purging of an unelected fourth branch of government. Now, do I agree with the means of this purging and its downstream effects on institutional integrity? Not entirely. But I don’t believe the ends are unjustified, either.
Zachary: Your constitutional point is taken. Infamously, the weakness of the Articles of Confederation was largely due to the absence of a strong executive. But I still think Hamilton’s energetic executive (intended only to possess an “adequate provision for its support” and “competent powers”) is a far cry from the modern unitary executive promoted by today’s originalists. (As a case study, where do you think Andrew Jackson—who dismantled many of the guardrails of the early republic, partially through the abrogation of undue executive power—falls on this spectrum? He was certainly energetic, but in a way that I think would probably have alarmed Hamilton…cough, cough, the National Bank.)
And while I see where you’re coming from, I feel much less confident in applying a constitutional imprimatur onto broad presidential powers based on a select few cases from the Roberts Court. The “imperial president” is not just some abstract concept—it is being etched into law, as we saw in Trump v. United States last term, in which the Court ruled that a president is immune from criminal prosecution for any action taken within his core responsibilities and that he is presumptively immune for actions on the periphery of those responsibilities. That decision wasn’t grounded in historical precedent—it exists in a vacuum where the dangers of an imperial presidency are ignored.
Chief Justice Roberts worried that the threat of criminal prosecution would “chill” a president’s ability to govern effectively. But who is really afraid that the modern president is too weak? Who really believes that the presidency is “imperiled,” rather than “imperial,” in Gerald Ford’s formulation? Since 1965, Congress has been painfully unproductive relative to its potential and ceded countless constitutional powers, especially war powers, to the executive (from the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to the post-9/11 AUMF. The real chilling effect, as I discussed in a Lemur article last October, isn’t on the president—it’s on Congress, civil society, and the other branches of government. Arguments that public opinion and the administrative state check the imperial executive seem wildly off-base, in my book.
I would also vigorously dispute the idea that Trump has been “transparent” in the second term thus far. He’s given a long leash to Musk and DOGE, who have engaged in a hostile takeover of the federal government, operating in congressionally unsanctioned secrecy. Selectively posting curated (and misleading) information on a website is not transparency in the same way that testifying under oath before Congress is.
But what concerns me most is the destructive nihilism of this power grab—it’s not clear what end this all serves—what does Trump really want with all that power? Lincoln expanded executive power to preserve the Union. FDR did so to address the Great Depression and World War II. Even Johnson, for all his faults, was absolutely convinced that he was defending American interests in Vietnam. But despite Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric about American decline (and despite the fact that most Americans are indeed concerned about the direction the country is heading in), these times are not dark and dire enough to call for extreme abrogation of executive power. So, what is the grand vision behind Trump’s imperial behavior? Is it to dismantle the elite establishment? End wokeism? Deregulate? None of these explanations feel sufficient. I suspect that’s because MAGA is itself so nebulous— “making America great again” is definitionally a “vibe,” not a coherent political project, but that might be a conversation for another day.
Sherman: I see your concern, and while I don’t want to go so far as to label any individual or institution an “enemy from within,” I don’t think it’s fair to say America is in a healthy state either. A nation’s decline doesn’t always come in the form of a dramatic external invasion—it often happens through a slow decay of the institutions and principles that once made it strong.
While I agree that we aren’t facing a crisis on the scale of the Great Depression or World War II, I believe we are witnessing a more insidious crisis: an epidemic of purposelessness. Declining religiosity, rising mental health issues, and increasing social alienation are real problems. Traditional institutions—faith, family, community—are fraying, replaced by an ideology that prioritizes radical self-expression over collective responsibility.
Within the context of what many perceive as a precipitous moral decline, the assertion that Trump’s expansion of executive power is somehow unprecedented does not hold up to historical scrutiny. Presidents have long justified sweeping executive actions as necessary responses to national crises—both real and perceived. Franklin Delano Roosevelt vastly expanded the power of the presidency, issuing more than 3,700 executive orders—far more than any modern president. He framed his extraordinary use of executive power as a response to economic collapse and global war, yet some actions, such as the internment of Japanese-Americans, were driven more by political expediency than by genuine national security threats. Similarly, Lyndon B. Johnson used executive authority to launch the Great Society, fundamentally altering the relationship between the federal government and the individual through entitlements and bureaucratic expansion in the name of fighting poverty and racial injustice.
More recently, Barack Obama dramatically expanded executive power under the banner of progressive moral imperatives. His administration institutionalized Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies across the federal government, reshaped civil rights law through executive fiat, and redefined cultural norms on race, gender, and identity. He unilaterally imposed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program despite clear congressional inaction on immigration reform, asserting executive authority to bypass legislative deadlock. Through executive orders and agency rule-making, he expanded the definition of discrimination to include gender identity in public schools and workplaces, imposed racial quotas in government hiring, and used federal agencies like the DOJ and EEOC to enforce a progressive vision of social justice—effectively embedding left-wing cultural priorities into the executive branch itself.
Now, under Trump, the use of executive power to respond to what many see as moral collapse has simply shifted ideological directions. Where Obama expanded executive authority to enforce progressive social ethics, Trump is wielding it to challenge those very institutions. His critics decry his actions as authoritarian, yet similar accusations were largely absent when Obama used federal power to advance his moral vision. If anything, Trump’s efforts—whether in curbing DEI programs, targeting government bureaucracy, or restricting illegal immigration—mirror prior presidents’ willingness to use executive power as a tool to shape national morality. In this sense, Trump is not inventing a new playbook; he is merely applying it to a different moral order.
Now, that doesn’t mean I think all executive power grabs are justified—prudence is key. But dismissing Trump’s use of executive authority as historically unwarranted is a mistake. The justification for strong executive action isn’t just crisis management—it’s about preservation.
Zachary: I think we can find some very sturdy common ground on your “preservation” point. What I appreciate in this discussion is that, despite our disagreements, we’re both fundamental believers in American institutions. As Edmund Burke said, “Institutions carry the collective wisdom of the ages.” Even as a liberal, I totally embrace that Burkean view here. And I know we are both big fans of “Chesterton’s fence“: in that spirit, we need a more rigorous process for checking and balancing presidents who want to get rid of the truly valuable institutions that stand in their way. Frequently, imperial presidents don’t understand why those institutions are there.
Sherman: Right, and though I believe that the most lasting change occurs organically at the family and community levels of society (hence my qualms with the immoral infestation of these social tiers), steady institutional change is the next best thing. And here, I think we find common ground. We both recognize that institutions are not inorganic bureaucratic structures but the lifeblood of a nation’s historical memory. Even if we disagree about the state of American society or the precise nature of the crisis it faces, we share an understanding that stability and continuity are necessary for any meaningful reform to take root.
Zachary: Putting it all together, maybe we can agree on this contention:
The imperial presidency paradigm endangers American institutions. Despite the inherent problems within Congress, the courts, the administrative state, and the media, empowering presidents to concentrate more and more power in the executive branch at the expense of those other institutions will have unintended and undesirable consequences.
Sherman: Certainly. And though this contention may sound a little milquetoast, it demonstrates our commitment to America’s traditions—despite recent presidents attempting to upend them through executive action. Are they flawed? Of course. But that does not mean we should throw the baby out with the bath water.
Zachary: Yes, we are both committed to American institutions, if not the exact same ones! And that’s precisely why our next discussion should explore the evolving role of the judiciary in shaping executive authority—has the Court been a check, or has it simply been a rubber stamp? Let’s take a deeper dive into the legal frameworks in our next installment.
