Q&A: Two Scholars Trace The Rise of the 'Strongman' Presidency
A conversation with political scientists William Howell and Terry Moe about how U.S. presidential power has grown to enable a strongman
Terry Moe is the William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and William Howell is inaugural Dean of the School of Government and Policy at Johns Hopkins University. Together, the political scientists are the authors of a new book, Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency. Howell and Moe describe how presidential power has grown to the point where in the wrong hands, it threatens to subvert American democracy and replace it with a de facto system of strongman rule, whether led by Donald Trump or someone else. They show that while Democratic and Republican presidents used power in similar ways throughout the 20th century, beginning with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Republican presidents have used executive power maximally, which has led to Trump's extreme uses of presidential power in his second term. Howell and Moe previously co-authored two books on the presidency and the U.S. Constitution. I spoke with them over Zoom last week. Our conversation follows, condensed and slightly edited for clarity.
Luke Johnson: Where do you start your story charting the expansion of presidential power?
William Howell: We start with the Constitution, and then the recognition, a hundred years later with the advent of the Progressive Era, that the system was ill-equipped to meet modern challenges. Therein begins the growth of the modern presidency and administrative state. The administrative state led to the expansion of presidential power for Democrats and Republicans alike, and what we call a symmetric logic of presidential power: the President's ability to advance policy objectives, which was materially enhanced by modern bureaucracy, really picks up in the New Deal and is fortified in the 1960s.
When administrative agencies begin in the 1930s, there are glimpses of concern being raised by conservatives. But it isn't until the 1970s that conservatives have the idea that a vastly empowered presidency -- above and beyond what is afforded to the presidency through a symmetric logic -- is going to solve the political problem of how to deal with an administrative state with which they disagree. In the 1970s and 1980s, there began a new set of arguments and efforts to expand the powers of the presidency, eventually in ways that strain democratic norms and present a threat to democracy itself.
Terry Moe: It wasn't until the 1970s that conservatives gained political power, and they could see that they might be able to capture the presidency and take action against the administrative state. They could also see that with Congress controlled by Democrats and the courts occupied by judges who had accommodated the administrative state, the only way they could attack and wage war on the administrative state was through a presidency of extraordinary power.
It's ironic, right? Conservatives had been a party of limited government. They had railed against the "totalitarianism" of liberal presidents. It dawned on them: wait a minute, we could have a conservative president, and with a powerful president, we can take on the administrative state unilaterally. The Reagan administration was the first to take the ball and run with it: the Reagan Justice Department developed the Unitary Executive Theory. This theory claims that the Constitution provides the President with vast unilateral power and that Congress and the courts have little to no legitimate ground for placing constraints on what presidents do.
LJ: Can you give an example of that?
WH: An important domain in which this plays out is through and within the administrative state. Agencies have statutory missions. Take the Environmental Protection Agency. The objective of protecting the environment is established by law. The Unitary Executive Theory says what matters is not the mission of an agency but whatever is in the head of the president. If he says, "I'm not interested in strengthening the regulatory regime, I want to appoint people who worked in the oil industry to run the EPA," the Unitary Executive Theory allows that. There are all kinds of efforts of successive presidents who, with greater power, are looking out at an administrative state with which they disagree in order to subvert and sabotage the work that goes on within.
LJ: Is that what you're talking about when you raise the issue of asymmetric logic? Democrats would appoint people to the EPA who would favor protecting the environment, whereas Donald Trump would appoint somebody who wants to destroy the agency?
WH: For the most part, Democrats are pretty happy with the administrative state, and they would like to see the administrative state fulfill its statutory functions. Not so with conservatives, who look out upon the administrative state with a measure of repulsion and horror, which has only become exacerbated over time as conservatives have become more conservative.
An important reason why we have this asymmetry is that Republicans want to end a status quo that's deeply entrenched institutionally, and they need more power. Democrats who sit in the White House don't need much more power. They just want to see these agencies do their jobs and do them well. They don't need anything like the Unitary Executive Theory to advance their policy objectives.
LJ: How has Donald Trump been using presidential power in ways that are far more extreme than past presidents?
WH: You don't need us to answer that question, right? It is all over the news. There's a ticker tape of actions that he's taking. If you just read out the claims to power and the actions that he has taken since he's assumed the presidency for the second time, they're extraordinary.
TM: He's mobilizing the full power of the federal government to persecute his political opponents and to attack universities, law firms, businesses and scientific research. He is ignoring and violating the rule of law, flat out. He is denying people due process. He is destroying agencies that are established by law. USAID was established by Congress. It has a legal mandate. He simply destroyed it. That's illegal. He did the same thing with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency established by law. He is impounding funds that have been authorized by Congress. That's illegal: there is a statute that says presidents cannot impound funds. It goes on and on and on where he is simply ignoring the law and acting unilaterally to make policy on his own.
It turns out that our political system, and the courts in particular, are simply inadequate to handle this. The courts are too slow, and too cumbersome. There are too many ways to appeal and delay. In the meantime, he is moving forward with the wrecking ball. By the time anything happens, an agency has been destroyed. Thousands of workers have been fired. All of the advantages are his, and he is clearly acting as a strongman.
The twist is that we have a Supreme Court that, through Republican hardball politics, is now controlled by a conservative supermajority, and they adhere to the Unitary Executive Theory. Over time, it is likely that the Supreme Court will come around and say, maybe all of what he's doing unilaterally is legal because under the Constitution presidents are granted vast unilateral power. This Supreme Court, as it did in the immunity decision, will provide legal justification for the things that he's doing which are flatly inconsistent with existing law, and they might change the law so that it justifies authoritarian presidents.
LJ: During the Bush administration, the Supreme Court made several judgments against the Bush administration, pushing back against its claims of executive power in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Now, in your telling, you're saying that the Supreme Court is abetting the Unitary Executive Theory, if it hasn't already in the immunity decision?
TM: The Supreme Court has moved much further to the right over the last 10 years or so, and that has been a big part of what's happening. The immunity decision is the single most dangerous decision the Supreme Court has ever made in all of American history. It is a shocking decision that protects authoritarian criminal behavior by presidents and makes it impossible to hold them accountable. It's hard to see how that can possibly be justified, but that's what they did.
LJ: Would electing a Democratic president solve some of these problems?
WH: I think it's worth being clear that we are not partisans in the story that we're telling. When we say, as we believe, that when you see Democrats assume the White House, the threat to democracy subsides, it's not because we're cheering on the policy objectives of Democrats, per se. The threat subsides because of that asymmetric logic to their relationship to the administrative state; the claims they make on presidential power are structurally very different. Democrats believe more in the rule of law and rules and procedures.
TM: It is also short-term. Look at what happened when Joe Biden was elected: we got a brief respite from Trump's assault on government and democracy, and then he comes back in and we're back in the storm again.
What happens in the future? Trump may well leave center stage, and the anti-system populist constituency that is driven by grievances against the government will still be there. It will still control the Republican Party and those who want to be president. Republicans who become president will be pursuing a presidency of extraordinary power. This constituency wants a strongman. They have it with Trump, and it's not an accident. Trump became a strongman because that's what the constituency wanted. That's how he got elected, and that's the basis of his power. Other Republicans are going to do the same thing, and that is the real danger. This is not solely a Trump thing. This is a problem with American society and with the conservative movement that is pursuing a presidency of extraordinary power that is anti-democratic.
LJ: Do you have any suggestions for how presidential power might be curtailed?
TM: I think political scientists often end books with proposals for reform that aren't going to happen. They say we should get rid of the Electoral College. Yeah, we should, but the chances of that happening are zero.
We wanted to look at how this problem came about, and we need to understand it. The source of it is a big chunk of American society that's alienated and anti-system. If there is a solution down the road, it is for Democrats, ultimately, to appeal to this segment of the population and convince them that they can represent them and represent them in a way that is true to democracy and the rule of law.
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