Presidency

From 1929 to 1945, the presidency grew significantly in size and power and took on a larger role than ever before in American GOVERNMENT. This resulted from both the extraordinary demands of the Great Depression and World War II and from the leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The executive branch grew very slowly during the HOOVER PRESIDENCY from 1929 to 1933, expanded rapidly during the New Deal years of the 1930s, and then nearly quadrupled in size during World War II. Even after postwar retrenchment, the executive branch remained far larger than it had before 1933, and both the CONGRESS and the public looked much more to the president for policy direction than had been the case prior to Roosevelt’s presidency.

At the beginning of his term as president in 1929, Herbert C. Hoover intended to energize the executive branch and apply modern organizational techniques to national issues. A powerful secretary of commerce in the 1920s, Hoover believed in an active presidency, although he wanted—consistent with his convictions about the role of the federal government—an office that would catalyze and coordinate efforts to address national problems rather than directing and controlling them. Appointing like-minded “Hoover men” to cabinet and subcabinet positions, he initiated action on a number of issues, began studies of social and economic trends, and planned conferences on social and economic problems.

But inertia and Hoover’s reluctance to push too hard or change things too fast limited such undertakings, and by late 1929 the onset of the Great Depression and the collapsing ECONOMY commanded his attention. Although the Hoover presidency did more than any previous administration had done during economic hard times, those efforts were constrained by Hoover’s steadfast opposition to a regulatory or welfare state. By the end of his term, Hoover used the power of the presidency largely to restrain Congress from doing or spending too much. Hoover also lacked the temperament to take on the political and symbolic roles of the presidency, and his gloomy outlook and growing unpopularity diminished the authority of the White House. “This office,” he said, “is a compound hell.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the presidency much differently. “I want to be a preaching President,” he once declared; and he wanted to be a powerful president as well. Confident in his abilities, comfortable in the White House, and ready to use the federal government to deal with the Great Depression, Roosevelt from the first expanded the size and power of his office. He served far longer than any other president and, during his 1933-45 tenure, played a decisive role in the evolution of the modern presidency. Under FDR, the president became more than ever before the center of national government, setting the agenda for public policy, sending proposals to Congress, and then implementing the resulting programs. Congress increasingly responded to the president’s agenda rather than initiating its own, and the SUPREME CoURT ultimately approved the expansion of federal and executive-branch

Power. Although Roosevelt has often been criticized for his untidy administrative style, he infused the executive branch with energy, focused its efforts, and expanded its role and authority in both domestic and foreign policy. His adept use of the news media contributed still further to the new power of the presidency in national affairs.

In the first months of his presidency, Roosevelt oversaw the remarkable first Hundred Days that began the New Deal’s unprecedented array of programs to combat the depression. As the subsequent proliferation of new programs greatly enlarged the size and reach of the executive branch, he also wanted to reorganize the presidency in order to provide more efficient policy planning and coordination. Although the conservative coalition that stymied much of his second-term agenda considerably weakened the final measure, Roosevelt in 1939 won passage of the Executive Reorganization Act, which established the Executive Office of the President and provided more presidential control over the executive branch. During World War II, the size and powers of the presidency grew even faster and further than during the depression. Congress delegated great authority to the president to coordinate war mobilization, and Roosevelt also exercised the military and diplomatic powers of commander in chief to an unprecedented degree. Much of the wartime growth of the presidency was cut back once the war was over; but in 1950, the executive branch had nearly twice as many employees as in 1940, and more than three times as many as in 1933. The Executive Office of the President established in 1939 provided an institutional foundation for presidential power, while managing the regulatory welfare state implemented in the 1930s and overseeing the nation’s new global role further entrenched the new size and authority of the presidency.

See also eoreign policy.

Further reading: Thomas E. Cronin, The State of the Presidency, 2d ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980); Sidney M. Milkis, The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the Party System since the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (New York: Free Press, 1990); Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993).