Changes to the role of the presidency | AP US Government and Politics | Khan Academy

So, John, how has the role of the presidency changed over the last several hundreds of years?

It's changed dramatically. First of all, when the founders created the presidency, they left it kind of loose. They weren't exactly very specific about what a president would do. They realized that the first president, George Washington—and this is why he was so important—was a man of virtue, and that he, in his behavior, would set the precedence for the next president after him. That means the job is basically handed off by tradition from president to president.

The reason why they didn't know what a president should do is that there wasn't a notion of a—there wasn't a precedent for being a president. That's right. They knew what they didn't want. They didn't want two things: they didn't want a king; they just got rid of one of those. They didn't want a king, and they also didn't want somebody who was whipped around by mob rule.

Those were the two things they were trying to get between. A president has a lot of room to move in between the two of them. They thought, "Well, put it in the hands of a virtuous American, George Washington—a good first virtuous American." That person, through their virtue and character, would stay in the right place, would not become a king, and would not give over to the mob.

But it also meant that it relied on the character of the person in the presidency. Each president in subsequent years has taken shape in the presidency, both by what was determined by their predecessors, but also by what they could do in the job.

What's happened is that a job that started out very weak in the American system has now become one where some people think of all—even the entire American government—as the president. That's not what the founders wanted.

But how does that evolve? Because obviously the Constitution talks about the powers of the president. So how does it change so much over time?

What happened was when they originally created the presidency, there was a debate. The debate was, we need somebody who can move quickly. We can't always be calling them into Congress because, of course, when America was started, it used to take several months, or sometimes it would take weeks to get on a horse and get to Washington. So we need an executive who can move quickly.

Well, what happened was, in various wars, America needed to move quickly, and they needed one person to act on behalf of the entire union. There's only one person who can do that. But as people wanted quick action, they handed over more power to the president. Congress, which used to fight with the president a lot during the Second World War and then on into our present day, has given up a lot of its power to the president.

One of the key ones being the power to make war. Presidents can now go and make war. Well, that's not the original way it was arranged. They've done it because there is a hunger in the country for quick action. But the problem and challenge of that is if you invest somebody with the power to do things quickly in an emergency, they hold on to that power, and they don't let it go.

That means that they start doing things when it's not an emergency that is then not vetted by the American system. That system has both the judiciary and the legislative, which are meant to hold back a president who's trying to act too quickly and do too much.

And just to go on this notion of making war as an example, there's clear powers that, you know, Congress has to approve a war, it has the power of the purse. So how did this happen? Did they just do that as a ritual now?

Well, basically, there are times, and Congress tries and makes attempts to try to pull power back from the president. The only times they've been successful after the Second World War is really after Watergate. The view was that the president had gotten too powerful. That President Nixon, who left office, had abused the office, and so Congress tried to pull some power back.

But again, political parties, which are now very close to the president—it used to be that political parties were not so powerful. If I'm a Republican in Congress and I want my Republican president to do well, I'm going to give him the power he wants because we're connected.

In the old days, if the president in the office was of my party, well, that's nice, but I've got my own views, and I'm in Congress, and I'm going to do what I want. So essentially, a lot of these powers that have gone to the president have been handed over to him not with a ceremony but just by lack of a fight by members of Congress in withdrawing from their traditional role as the founders wanted it—as the key actor in American government.

That's no longer the case in America today. The president is the key actor, and then every time that happens, the next president for the next several presidents waits, "You allowed that to happen to that person; I should have that power."

That's exactly right. It's almost like the powers convey to the new president, like the furniture in the Oval Office. They think, "Well, this chair is pretty comfortable; I'm not going to get rid of that and sit in the old, you know, uncomfortable wooden chair. I want all the plush trappings."

Here's another reason American politics has created a situation—and television has made this so much worse—where people run for office promising the sun, the moon, and the stars. They say, "I can!" Donald Trump, when he was running, said, "I alone can fix it."

That is not the way the country was originally founded, that one person could fix or unfix things. It was supposed to be a country with representatives of the entire country. But politics has created a system where, whether it's a Republican or Democrat, they run by saying, "I can do anything."

Well, that means when you get in the office, you want those quick powers that allow you to keep those campaign promises. And those quick powers are only quick if Congress and the courts aren't in the way. So politics, and the way you run for office, makes presidents want to have every possible power at their disposal.