Reassessing the Presidency : The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom [Hardcover]

John V. Denson (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2001

This remarkable volume is the first full-scale revision of the official history of the U.S. executive state. It traces the progression of power exercised by American presidents from the early American Republican up to the eventual reality of the power-hungry Caesars which later appear as president in American history. Contributors examine the usual judgments of the historical profession to show the ugly side of supposed presidential greatness.

The mission inherent in this undertaking is to determine how the presidency degenerated into the office of American Caesar. Did the character of the man who held the office corrupt it, or did the power of the office, as it evolved, corrupt the man? Or was it a combination of the two? Was there too much latent power in the original creation of the office as the Anti-Federalists claimed? Or was the power externally created and added to the position by corrupt or misguided men?

Contributors include George Bittlingmayer, John V. Denson, Marshall L. DeRosa, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Lowell Gallaway, Richard M. Gamble, David Gordon, Paul Gottfried, Randall G. Holcombe, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Michael Levin, Yuri N. Maltsev, William Marina, Joseph Salerno, Barry Simpson, Joseph Stromberg, H. Arthur Scott Trask, Richard Vedder, and Clyde Wilson.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 826 pages
• Publisher: Mises Institute (June 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0945466293
• ISBN-13: 978-0945466291
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,053,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excuse my gushing, but this book is REALLY good June 21, 2002

By Andrew S. Rogers TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

As a student of the presidency, I'm nearly at a loss to describe how interesting and important the essays in this collection are. This high quality is just what I've come to expect from the scholars and writers at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and if I could give this title six or seven stars, I would.

As in any collection of essays, some of the ones here assembled are better than others. Taken as a whole, though, they are a powerful indictment of how the increasing centralization of power in the office of the presidency has resulted in the destruction of America's heritage of individual liberty and decentralized government. Some of the articles that struck me as particularly valuable (or just as fascinating reads) include:

* H. Arthur Scott Trask's study of Thomas Jefferson. This is one of the best attempts I've yet seen to grapple with the question, not only of whether Jefferson himself can justly be called a 'libertarian,' but also the specific issue of whether his two terms as president advanced or hindered the cause of liberty.

* Marshall L. DeRosa's 'Supreme Court as Accomplice: Judicial Backing for a Despotic Presidency.' While all three branches of government are to blame for the centralization of power in Washington, the Supreme Court has, at key points in history, been particularly destructive. DeRosa gives us chapter and verse.

* Randall G. Holcombe's 'The Electoral College as a Restraint on American Democracy.' This article goes beyond other analyses of the Electoral College in explaining how the Founders really intended the body to function, why it never did, and how it was early corrupted and twisted by the influence of party and faction....

* William Marina's excellent 'From Opponent of Empire to Career Opportunist: William Howard Taft as Conservative Bureaucrat in the Evolution of the American Imperial System.' In tracing Taft's career, Marina shows how foreign and domestic empire-building inevitably go hand-in-hand. This is an insightful and unexpectedly timely essay.

The two concluding essays, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Clyde N. Wilson, are also excellent summaries of the changing nature of the presidency and the likelihood, or lack thereof, for meaningful change. Other essays -- including those by Thomas J. DiLorenzo (of 'The Real Lincoln' fame), Ralph Raico, Joseph R. Stromberg, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, and editor John V. Denson -- are of similar high quality. Space prevents me giving each of them the raves they deserve.

Each of these essays challenges the accepted hagiography of the presidency as an office, and of individual presidents as well. The men generally voted by historians as among our 'greatest' chief executives -- notably FDR, Lincoln, and Truman -- are proven in these pages to have been among the worst, most dangerous, and least worthy of canonization. The Mises Institute is never afraid to challenge the old orthodoxies (founder Lew Rockwell has called for the abolition of the office of the presidency altogether), and here they have done so, not only with skill and insight, but almost compulsive readability as well.

I have no hesitation, even now, in declaring this my Book of the Year for 2002 (it was published in 2001, but I'm a little behind in my reading). It's a bit of an effort to carry around, but it's definitely worth the exertion. Read more ›

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A highly needed review of the presidency. January 20, 2002

By Mike B.

Format:Hardcover

Reassessing the Presidency shatters long held myths about some of the occupants of the White House and instead exposes their real actions. Denson's work documents how the decline of liberty and the rise in power of the executive of the United States has gone hand in hand.

The opening part of the book focusses on how presidents are "ranked" by historians, drawing the conclusion that most often, presidents that created more outlays by spending more and enlarging the federal budget where ranked as better then those who were more fiscally conservative with the taxpayers dollars. While the closing section is devoted to the impossibly of a limited government and offers the solutions in overcoming our current situation.

Denson then takes a critical look at the Lincoln and Roosevelt administration as both men used war and crisis to further enhance their power and control. Well, outside the presidency's constitutional limits. And how future presidents such as Truman would further build on earlier power grabs, turning the executive branch into what it has become today.

Denson's work even takes a look at some less know and documented president's and their role such as Van Buren work in the creation of modern political parties. And how the Supreme Court has acted helped to create the modern presidency.

It's an excellent work that strips away warm fuzzy feelings about past presidents and takes a much needed critical look at their actions.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Reassessing the Presidency, Cincinnatus to Caesar January 4, 2004

By R. Setliff

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

~Reassessing the Presidency : The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom~ is an intriguing historical assessment of the American Presidency, which has become one of the most powerful institutions in the world. Likewise, the American Presidency has dramatically changed since its inception. Most modern history books on the Presidency are characterized by adulation of executive power, administrative largess, and aggressive federal intervention in domestic, economic and foreign policy. Nonetheless, this powerful reassessment of the Presidency by the Mises Institute challenges such hagiographic tomes that idolize the President and venerate the dictatorial Presidents for their constitutional usurpations and assumptions of un-delegated power solidified as precedent.

This powerful tome is essentially an anthology of essays offering a critical analysis of the Presidency as an institution, and the various Presidents through the year, as well as an assessment of their policy prerogatives, etc. Most of the authors do not mince words and they hold to a priori presupposition that constitutionally limited government is desirable and offer no apologies in their condemnation of those who usurp it. Some contributors are cynical enough to bluntly declare the utter impossibility of limited government like Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

The various contributors include a motley crew of intellectuals from Old Right thinkers, classical liberals, libertarians and southern conservatives. Generally, their harmony of perspective includes advocacy of a non-interventionist foreign policy based on armed neutrality, strategic independence and open commerce, as well as support of a laissez-faire market economy. Amongst the more notable contributors are: John V.... Denson (author of The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories); Marshall L. DeRosa; Thomas J. DiLorenzo (author of the Real Lincoln); Paul Gottfried (author of After Liberalism); Hanns-Herman Hoppe (author of Democracy: The God that Failed); Jeffrey Rogers Hummel (author of Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men); Joseph R. Stromberg, and Clyde Wilson (editor of John C. Calhoun's papers).

One of the more interesting essays penned by Marshall DeRosa is entitled "Supreme Court As Accomplice." It essentially documents judicial backing for what he characterizes as a despotic presidency. He starts by going over history from Old Republic constitutional foundations to a FDR's stacking the court to move the New Deal along. Another interesting piece is featured on the Electoral College. One essay by J.R. Hummel offers a history of an unsung hero, Martin Van Buren, and he wins acclaim chiefly for his advocacy of an independent treasury system where all federal government monies are kept in a federal depository, which is attendant to his opposition to a national bank. Marshall DeRosa and Thomas DiLorenzo offer a slew of indictments against Abraham Lincoln whose administration was characterized by executive usurpation of constitutionally delegated powers. They see the bittersweet precedent for usurpation set by the Lincoln regime. President Andrew Johnson receives extol as the tribune of states' rights and with putting an end to radical reconstruction. Also, several essays wrestle with the assent of the Imperial dreams of grandeur by William McKinley who architected the American empire and the belligerent Teddy Roosevelt are met with a piercing critique of their policies. They acted to repudiate the founding father's advocacy of armed neutrality and condemnation of reckless interventionism and expansionism. Teddy Roosevelt who is the darling of neoconservatives and progressives alike receives no praise here. His personality is demonstrated as megalomaniac as was his bloodlust for war. Roosevelt publicly scathed the idea of limited government as a relic of the horse-and-buggy era. Roosevelt is famous for his trust-busting campaign, which was really a smoke and mirrors charade to espouse populist rhetoric while devising economic corporatism beneficial to favored constituencies. He was a pawn of the J.P. Morgan group and Chicago meatpackers that lobbied for a federal regulatory state to put its small-scale competitors out of business. Roosevelt labored tirelessly to engorge the Presidency by his series of usurpations in the domestic and foreign policy arena. Woodrow Wilson is not spared criticism as Wilson's naive idealism and internationalism are documented as well. Finally, America's most cherished sacred cow, the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is trampled as the contributors make light of the ominous similarities between the New Deal and fascism. (Initially, prior to WWII, American progressives found Mussolini to be saint and his corporatist regime as a model of reform for all nations.) FDR's love affair with Joseph Stalin and his naive overtures to the Soviet Union receive an energetic documentation as well. FDR practically handed Eastern Europe to Stalin on a silver platter and did so rather enthusiastically praising the Soviet Union as a democracy. As the reassessment reaches its climax, Paul Edward Gottfried and Michael Levin offer compelling condemnations explaining how the managerial President has become a social engineer of sorts.

All things considered, this colossal read is a veritable goldmine of information and history and its honest and frank critique of the Presidency is certainly informative to say the least. These days, it seems Presidents with a fetish for usurpation of their constitutionally limited powers always seem to be the darlings of the academic and political establishment who spout out hagiographic books idolizing the worst offenders against the Constitution. Presidential dictators are trendsetters and loved by the establishment. Thus, this book is profoundly heterodox in rejecting the usual bandwagon praise for Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, Truman and Wilson. Overall, the book is amazingly astute in its observations and sharply critical of the executive state. Its conclusions, whether you agree with them or not, are extremely thought provoking and they cannot be easily dismissed. This book isn't written in a spirit of withholding judgment as conservative historian, Forrest McDonald, so often does, but rather it frankly just 'tells it like it is. One doesn't have to agree with everything in total to find it incredibly useful. Nonetheless, the book is profoundly thought provoking and a devastating indictment of an institution that has so egregiously strayed from the original intent of those that framed it and the Constitution. Read more ›

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Perspective on the Presidency -- And Engaging, Too! September 15, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Denson writes with an entirely entertaining style and rapier wit when it comes to his own essays -- giving other fine writers such as Robert Caro (a fine biographer of Lyndon Johnson) a run for their money. Just as valuable as Denson's essays are the contributions of the other authors included in this book. For starters, Denson clearly states the book's thesis and supports it without larding on aimless details, faulty logic, and unsupported opinions such as the stultifying tree-killer and sycophant, Eric Larrabee (vast sections of which cause you to wonder why you are reading it). The first essay, which is an assessment of presidential spending (granting that Congress plays its own role and follows its own agenda) brings some fascinating surprises. Sure to enrage both conservates and what we call "liberals," the co-economist/authors of the first essay reveal some startling facts. For example, Ronald Reagan's spending is more lavish than the much-reviled Clinton's. Furthermore, much-ignored presidents come out on top as the finest managers of the public purse -- with spendthrifts such as FDR, Hoover, Lincoln, and Lyndon Johnson taking their place in debtors' prison at the bottom of the list. Someone should have taken away their credit cards.
Even more interesting are the new dimensions of Washington, Madison, and Jefferson that are revealed in the essays of Gordon and Trask.... Going far beyond the much-discussed hypocrisy of owning slaves, Jefferson's less-than-stellar personal committment to the principles outlined in his Declaration of Independence include his unconstitutional purchase of the Louisiana Territory, his poor appointments to the Supreme Court, and his strategic failure to rein-in the Hamiltonians as they sought to vastly expand the power of centralized government once they trashed the Articles of Declaration in favor of the very fuzzy statements included in the Constitution -- much to our detriment.
The book's treatment of previously ignored presidents even shows why they have been ignored by "conventional" historians. To the power-worshipping "royal" historians that can be counted on to lavish praise on presidents that funnel great gouts of money to the education industry and to other special interest groups that relish spending money earned by other people, the skin-flint presidents and those who don't impose their "vision for America" on the populace have little to offer. But the galvanizing essays of this book depict the endless power plays that transformed the executive branch of government from a more self-regulating branch of government with an adversarial relationship between the president and vice president (balance of power even within the executive) into the imperial presidency of the past 80 years. Our pathetic high school textbooks never indicated the interesting contributions that marked the administrations of these so-called "do-nothing" presidents. For example, the chapters on Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, and Lyndon Johnson show how and why they circumvented constitutional limitations as they sought to expand their power base. Particularly enlightening for some readers will be the detailed explanation tracing the evolution of WW2 and its horrible slaughters directly out of Wilson's duplicitous entry into WW1 -- complete with jingoism and propoganda to sway the American booboisie (thank you, H.L. Mencken). These fine essays put flesh and bones on the ravening skeletons of these too-often admired Caesars -- with sags in all the wrong places. As a nice antidote to the usual historiography, the presidencies of Grant and Johnson (not Lyndon) stand out in a better comparative light. Even the Appendices offer telling insights into some of the decitful childhood propaganda we can all remember about the nearly deified Lincoln -- who should be better known for trying to imprison Supreme Court justices who disagreed with him, who closed over 100 newspapers that dared to disagree with his policies (or even were "insufficiently bellicose"), and the suspension of habeas corpus and all that it implies by the man called "Tyrant" by his assassin. This book contains everything you wanted to know about the presidency but were never told. Like Drano for clogged minds. Read more ›