ABSTRACT
Presidents usually asserted power and Congress, often after some initial resistance, ultimately acquiesced. As the number of governing tasks and the number of people necessary to perform them expanded, policy-making became, for both the president and the Congress, a considerably more demanding task than the Framers of the Constitution could have possibly envisioned. For the president, the extraordinary increase in the number of people and agencies ultimately responsible to him as chief executive and as commander in chief had the effect of expanding both the power and the organizational complexity of his office. Presidential power expanded on the assumption that the executive had both a special responsibility and an ability to act in foreign and military policy. In the case of the presidency, the power and prominence of the office increased to such an extent that the institution was in effect transformed.
