The Sources of Presidential Power: John Adams and the Challenge to Executive Primacy

Americans have characteristically held ambivalent views toward power particularly presidential power. In the decade that began in 1970 the pendulum moved full swing as critics of various stripes first deplored the imperial of Richard Nixon and then rejected the leadership of Jimmy Carter who tried to strip the presidency of its regal trappings. The present-day ambivalence is, in part, a legacy from the Founding Fathers who resolved their own inner and interpersonal conflicts in regard to power by creating an executive office of minimal definition in the Constitution. These men who had fought to free themselves from what they perceived to be the threat of enslavement to royal tyranny were caught between their fear of creating a quasi-regal leader and their belief that strength in the executive was essential to effective, balanced government. In providing a merely skeletal description of the presidential role, the framers of the Constitution skirted their own dilemma but set the stage for a power struggle that would essentially begin with the second American presidency. As the idol of the entire nation, George Washington conducted a magisterial administration; his personal prestige and stature made his word fiat among contemporaries. John Adams enjoyed no such advantage and would, therefore, be the first president to test the viability of the executive office on its constitutional basis. Because Adams experienced a unique combination of obstacles to the exercise of extra-constitutional authority, his presidency provides an ideal test case for evaluating recent arguments concerning the sources of presidential power. In his influential study, Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership, Richard