PREVIOUS ARTICLE ALL CONTENTS Next ARTICLE

Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump’s War on the World’s Most Powerful Office, Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes

Reviewed by Graham G. Dodds

BUY

 

Most observers agree that Donald Trump was not a typical president, but there is much disagreement about what his unusual presidency means for the institution of the presidency and for American governance. In Unmaking the Presidency, Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes describe how Trump challenged basic understandings of the presidency. The authors are senior editors at the highly regarded website Lawfare, and they contend that Trump was not merely an idiosyncratic president; he systematically—and, for the most part, consciously—rejected time-honored norms about the institution of the presidency.

Hennessey and Wittes claim that “the presidency itself, stripped down to its legal essence, is actually a pretty spare institution” (p. 8) without a lot of rules, but over the centuries, various norms and expectations have been grafted onto that “bare-bones model” (p. 9). Trump rejected many of those historical additions, so “Trump’s presidency is a warped throwback to the presidency before countless expectations and bureaucratic structures developed around it” (p. 9). Trump’s aim in this was not to reconstitute some sort of premodern original presidency but to use the presidential office to further his penchant for personal expression, self-agg

To continue reading, see options above.

More by This Author

Obama on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks, John D. Graham Reviewed by Graham G. Dodds

About PSQ's Editor

ROBERT Y. SHAPIRO

Full Access

Join the Academy of Political Science and automatically receive Political Science Quarterly.

CONFERENCES & EVENTS

Academy Forum | Latino Voters, Demographic Determinism, and the Myth of an Inevitable Democratic Party Majority
October 9, 2024
4:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. ET
WEBINAR

MORE ABOUT THIS EVENT VIEW ALL EVENTS

Editor’s spotlight

Virtual Issue

Introduction: Black Power and the Civil Rights Agendas of Charles V. Hamilton
Marylena Mantas and Robert Y. Shapiro

MORE ABOUT THIS TOPIC

Search the Archives

Publishing since 1886, PSQ is the most widely read and accessible scholarly journal with distinguished contributors such as: Lisa Anderson, Robert A. Dahl, Samuel P. Huntington, Robert Jervis, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Theda Skocpol, Woodrow Wilson

view additional issues

Most read

Articles | Book reviews

Understanding the Bush Doctrine
Robert Jervis

The Study of Administration
Woodrow Wilson

Notes on Roosevelt's "Quarantine" Speech
Dorothy Borg

view all

New APS Book

China in a World of Great Power Competition   CHINA IN A WORLD OF GREAT POWER COMPETITION

About US

Academy of Political Science

The Academy of Political Science, promotes objective, scholarly analyses of political, social, and economic issues. Through its conferences and publications APS provides analysis and insight into both domestic and foreign policy issues.

Political Science Quarterly

With neither an ideological nor a partisan bias, PSQ looks at facts and analyzes data objectively to help readers understand what is really going on in national and world affairs.

Stay Connected

newsstand locator
About APS