ABSTRACT
While constitutionally limited in authority, the presidency—the institution of the presidency, including the president, White House officials, and all of the associated offices—has steadily grown in public stature, political power, and actual size since the founding of the nation. This would not have come as a surprise or disappointment to Alexander Hamilton, who mused in Federalist No. 70: “Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Woodrow Wilson seconded this opinion a century later in his reflection on the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt—the embodiment of the muscular White House—that “Our President must always, henceforth, be one of the great powers of the world, whether he act greatly and wisely or not… We can never hide our President as a mere domestic office… He must stand always at the front of our affairs.” 1
