The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power

Description: The modern presidency has become the central fault line of polarization in America because the president, increasingly, has the power to reshape vast swaths of American life. In The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy argues that "We, the People," are to blame. Few among us seem to think it odd "when presidential candidates talk as if they're running for a job that's a combination of guardian angel, shaman, and supreme warlord of the Earth." Americans on both sides of the red-blue divide demand a president who can create jobs, teach our children well, tend to the "national soul"--and vanquish their culture-war enemies. Our political culture has invested the office with preposterously vast responsibilities, and as a result, the officeholder wields powers that no one human being ought to have. In a new preface to the 2024 edition, Healy argues that the rise of mass partisan hatred lends new urgency to the cause of re-limiting executive power. In the years since Cult was first published, American politics has gone feral, with polls showing that substantial majorities of Democrats and Republicans view members of the other party as "a serious threat to the United States and its people." At the same time, the most powerful office in the world has grown even more powerful. That's raised the stakes of our political differences dramatically: The issues that divide us most are now increasingly settled, winner takes all, by whichever party manages to seize the office. In our partisan myopia, we've laid down the infrastructure for autocratic rule and sectarian warfare, making the presidency powerful enough to tear the country apart. Interweaving historical scholarship, legal analysis, and trenchant cultural commentary, The Cult of the Presidency traces America's decades‐long drift from the Framers' vision for the presidency: a constitutionally constrained chief magistrate charged with faithful execution of the laws. Restoring that vision will require a Congress and a Court willing to check executive power, but Healy emphasizes that there is no simple legislative or judicial "fix" to the problems of the presidency. Unless Americans change what we ask of the office--no longer demanding what we should not want and cannot have--we'll get what, in a sense, we deserve.

Price: 45.89 AUD

Location: Hillsdale, NSW

End Time: 2025-02-01T16:26:43.000Z

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