Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of two important texts on excessive presidential war power.The first, the War Powers Resolution, is the subject of this forum; it is still in effect today, though how effective it has actually been is a matter of debate.The second text celebrating its half-century is Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s bestseller The Imperial Presidency, published in late 1973 to positive reviews and widespread cultural acceptance. 1 The influence of Schlesinger's book-or, more precisely, its title-is clear, and it has arguably had the more enduring effect on American understandings of executive war powers.The Imperial Presidency has a basic thesis that is easy to understand: over time, beginning with the World War II era and accelerating rapidly in the early Cold War, the presidency sidelined Congress from its constitutionally defined role in foreign policy and military affairs.Before the 1940s, the White House and Capitol Hill had sometimes bickered but mostly respected each other's prerogatives and did not dare overstep their boundaries marked by the Constitution.There were exceptions, of course, and in some periods either the president or Congress might dominate, but on the whole the system worked.Things broke down in World War II, not because Franklin Roosevelt had an imperial disposition but because the unprecedented nature of the world crisis coincided with congressional isolationism, thus forcing FDR to experiment with imperfect means to achieve a necessary end, much as Abraham Lincoln had done during the Civil War.In normal times, such as after the Civil War, executive war powers quickly snapped back into place.But the globally existential challenges posed by Japan and Germany, and then by the Soviet Union and China, ensured that the presidency remained supreme in the conduct of war and diplomacy."The new American approach to world affairs, nurtured in the sense of omnipresent crisis," Schlesinger wrote, "set new political objectives, developed new military capabilities, devised new diplomatic techniques, invented new instruments of foreign operations and instituted a new hierarchy of values.Every one of these innovations encouraged the displacement of power, both practical and constitutional, from an increasingly acquiescent Congress into an increasingly imperial Presidency." 2 Schlesinger had never planned to write a book on the growth of presidential power; he was supposed to be writing a biography of Robert F. Kennedy but was finding it difficult to get motivated.By the spring of 1973, the unending nature of the war in Vietnam and the unfolding of the Watergate scandal had a combined effect on his outlook, and he resolved to ring the national alarm bell.Schlesinger was known for being prolific, but even by his standards, his
Source: Modern American History
DOI: 10.1017/mah.2023.16
Author: Andrew Preston
Institution: University of Cambridge
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,255
OpenAlex ID: W4385613755