Description
The American Presidency is in crisis owing to the expansion and abuse of the power at its command: a matter of concern not only for the US but for the whole world. Is this crisis an aberration in the nation's history? as transient as the Presidency of one indi- vidual? Or has power flowed to the Presi- dency as such because of the needs and drives in American society? This is the question discussed in Professor Schlesinger's authori- tative and lucid examination of the growth of presidential power from Washington to Nixon.
He points out that it has been war, above all, which has nurtured presidential power. The Founding Fathers, when they wrote the Constitution, intended to vest the decision to go to war in Congress; but thereafter America's quest for world leadership gradually undermined the original arrangement, overwhelmed the original separation of powers and transferred authority to the Presidency to the point where a major military campaign (the bombing of Cambodia), part of a war which was legally speaking not a war, could be concealed from the American people and the entire legislative branch of the Government for some two years.
ISBN:023396570X
