Imperial Presidency Summary

The United States of America was founded on a belief in the rights of the people. In his book, The Imperial Presidency, Arthur Schlesinger analyzes the rise of the presidency as the head of our nation along with the belief of the presidency becoming too powerful. A concentration of power in one branch of government, he argued, threatens the whole political structure the country currently functions on. The dominance of one person overpowering others could easily be deemed an issue of national security, because it threatens the core of democracy. Government is the institution of public policy, therefore if the government upholds an imperialistic ruler, what will become of America? Schlesinger wrote The Imperial Presidency during one of the

War-making powers were given to Congress to prevent a single person from being able to declare war. The president needed continuous approval from Congress before doing anything regarding foreign policy. Escaping from the rigid monarchy of George III ensured that the settlers would avoid giving one entity the power to make such influential decisions. However, presidents increasingly started and carried out unauthorized wars, such as President Polk and Mexico. This “emergency prerogative” was and continues to be abused to it’s fullest extent. It allows the president to ignore the Constitution by declaring a state of emergency. Granted, many of these decisions were very crucial to national safety and there are times where presidents have used the prerogative to push their own objectives forward without having to explain themselves. As a result, the military expenses by presidential action have consumed more than half of the budget. Schlesinger has written that even the CIA is not under the control of Congress, “fewer than a dozen members of Congress have any idea how much money the CIA spends each year, and probably none of them has much of an idea what the agency actually does with that money” said Representative Findley in 1973. This lack of regulation from Congress shows that it is not only the fault of the president for their abuses of power, it is also the responsibility of Congress to enforce their own rules