While the first year of the Trump Administration has featured staggering assertions of executive power, this is not entirely new; rather, it is just the latest step in a century’s growth in executive power, one that has accelerated in the last two decades. The founding generation wanted a strong, energetic executive — as exemplified by Hamilton’s arguments in The Federalist. But what we are seeing now, not just in terms of sheer power but also the radical flip-flops from one administration to the next, embody the very opposite of Hamilton’s ideal of “steady administration.”“Why isn’t Congress doing its job? What about the courts?” Adam White, Laurence Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance at the American Enterprise Institute, answers these and other questions in his lecture "The Rise of Executive Power and the Decline of Everything Else." Co-sponsored by the Center for Civic, Culture and Society and Menard Family Center for Democracy, the lecture will be insightful to anyone interested in the current state of the American political system.
