ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to contribute to scholarship in the vein by examining three features of contemporary politics that threaten to weaken the informal checks upon which Congress has relied to impose some measure of constraint on an ascendant executive for most of the post-1945 era. The National Security Act of 1947 began to create an institutional framework that enabled the president to become the preeminent actor directing American foreign policy in the post-World War II era. The chapter examines the threat to the inter-branch balance of power posed by increased secrecy and heightened executive branch control of information relating to multiple aspects of the global war on terror, both foreign and domestic. The National Security Act of 1947 was passed during a period of historically low partisan polarization. Presidents have always operated with greater leeway when their co-partisans control the institutional machinery in Congress.
