Americans hold presidents responsible for economic growth and stability, but because each president must rely on entrenched experts and administrative norms, their ability to shift policy is often curtailed. In this book, author Patrick O’Brien tries to understand that tension by exploring how efforts to imbue the presidency with greater capacity to live up to those expectations have fluctuated over time, too often limiting presidents whose ambitions for economic reform outsized their managerial abilities.

The book succeeds in meeting this overarching objective. It is clear that despite similar formal powers, not all presidents have left the same legacy on public finance—namely, none as influential as Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) or Ronald Reagan. Yet, presidential success does not boil down to popularity or congressional support. Roosevelt brought about a New Deal finance apparatus; Reagan bequeathed his name on a second one that supplanted it. Both did so because they repudiated an older order whose legitimacy was tarnished. Other presidents, even if fortunate to have the political capital and unified government, were constrained by an administrative apparatus still beholden to a previous era.

This argument straddles the two dominant approaches that are common among historical institutionalists studying the presidency. As a result, they