ABSTRACT
The clash between cabinet and staff is endemic to the contemporary presidency. The centralization of decision-making authority in an expanded White House staff is one of the most important institutional developments of the modern presidency. A century before Wilson, presidents who wanted secretarial help with correspondence or appointments had to pay for a secretary out of their own pockets. No statute acknowledged the existence or need for presidential staff, and the Constitution made no mention of White House staff either. Franklin and Dickinson were not alone in their support for a plural executive. The champions of a single president were concentrated among the convention’s younger generation, such as Wilson, James Madison, Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and South Carolina’s Charles Pinckney. The president would have “a privy council,” composed of the president of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and the heads of the various executive departments.
