Measuring Presidential Power across American History

• In Event: (Re)Evaluating Presidential Power

Abstract

How do we measure presidential power across American history? This is a question that has involved considerable disagreement among scholars largely because there is no empirical measure of presidential power from George Washington’s presidency to the present time. We address this issue by providing three measures of how presidents described their own power across American history.

The first measure is the idea that presidents served as a Chief Magistrate. As John Philip Hill (1916: 9) described, “The power of the President and his place in the national life is quite different to-day from the conception of that office held by the framers of the Constitution. They planned a Chief Magistrate, non-partisan, calm and aloof from the throbbing political questions that might agitate the legislative branch of the Government. …they did not dream that the Chief Magistrate of the new Republic would exercise in time the combined powers of the English King and his Prime Minister…” As such, presidents who invoke the term Chief Magistrate to describe themselves suggest a presidency of limited power.

The second measure is the Chief Executive. As the federal bureaucracy evolved, particularly in the late 19th century, presidents acquired greater power and authority. Hence, as Charles Beard (1910/1914: 199) noted, “The President’s position as chief executive officer is so exalted and the powers of that place are so extensive, that his functions as a legislator, both constitutional and customary, are often lost sight of by commentators.” And Political scientist and constitutional scholar Herman Pritchett (1959: 209) contended that “perhaps the best reasons for regarding the initial sentence of article II [the executive vesting clause] as a grant of power is that only by this method is the President equipped with the broad authority which the chief executive of a modern state must have.”

Finally, the president’s greatest responsibility today is to serve as Commander in Chief. As Harry Truman (1956: 478) advised, “The President, who is Commander in Chief and who represents the interest of all people, must be able to act at all times to meet any sudden threat to the nation’s security. A wise President will always work with Congress, but when Congress fails to act or is unable to act in a crisis, the President, under the Constitution, must use his powers to safeguard the nation.” And as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (2004: 188) noted, “By the 1970s the title Commander in Chief had acquired almost a sacramental aura, translating the holder from worldly matters into an ineffable realm of higher duty.” Yet, as James McPherson (2008: 5) stated, it was only at the advent of the Civil War that it was necessary to define the commander in chief clause.

Consequently, these three terms examine different aspects of the American presidency and presidential power. How presidents invoke these terms to describe their authority over time therefore provides a key measure of presidential power across the entire course of American history. Using the American Presidency Project’s database, we examine all presidential references from Washington until Biden (as of the end of 2023). We hypothesize that as references to the president as Chief Magistrate decline, we should see a concomitant increase in presidential citations of the terms Chief Executive and Commander in Chief. Importantly, we can examine when these changes occurred and provide explanations for how and why they occurred. As such, this research will address a long-standing issue related to the development of quantitative measures of presidential power.

Authors

• Richard W. Waterman, University of Kentucky

• Yu Ouyang, Purdue University Northwest

• David Griffith

• David Stevens, UIniversity of Kentucky