HENA0363HU Engelsk - Frit emne: The American Presidency

Writing back in 1973, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. remarked that the American presidency was in crisis. What may have seemed as a temporary phenomenon forty years ago has, some argue, today become an endemic feature of the executive. This course examines the development of the presidency from George Washington to Barack Obama. For two hundred years the constitutional wellsprings of presidential power narrowly defined have remained unaltered. Yet the effective power of the chief executive has mostly waxed and occasionally waned as the context of the presidency has changed and different personalities have sought to stretch presidential power. On the one hand, the presidency has come to “embody” the American political system. On the other hand the presidency today seems to be captive to that same system. This course will interrogate the problematic role of the presidency in the political system and its wider symbolic value to the American people by looking at how the presidency has evolved though the nation’s history and been interpreted by political scientists. Was Schlesinger accurate in his presumption of crisis, and does that crisis continue to the present? Was it always thus?