hey there and welcome back to heimlich history in this video we're going to continue looking at unit 2 of the ap government curriculum specifically the expansion of presidential power over time since the time of franklin roosevelt the power and role of the president has grown by roughly 13 or 14 metric butt loads and we need to figure out how that happened and why so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked well then let's get to it so in this video here's our objective explain how presidents have interpreted and justified their use of formal and informal powers now to begin let me remind you of what i said in the last video about formal and informal powers of the executive branch formal powers are those powers granted to the president explicitly in article 2 of the constitution things like the veto or appointing federal judges informal powers are those powers that are not explicitly mentioned in the constitution but that the president exercises nonetheless things like bargaining and persuasion and executive agreements now all presidents have made use of their formal and informal powers but over time the president has used more and more of both powers and the end result has been a much more powerful executive than we had when the republic began now let me remind you that this growth of power in the executive branch was one of the chief fears that had anti-federalists pooping their broadcloth britches during the ratification debates of the constitution and the answer to those fears was laid down by alexander hamilton and federalist 70 which is one of your required documents and here i'm just going to give you a summary if you want to look at this required document in more depth i've got a whole video on it anyway in federalist 70 hamilton argues for a single executive anti-federalists were arguing back that executive power needed to be divided among a few presidents so that the executive branch didn't become in their own words the fetus of monarchy they were worried that if there was only one president it would be far too likely that said president would consolidate too much power and become a tyrannical turd not so hamilton argues he says that a single executive is very much necessary first because a single person can act more decisively when required second a single executive will actually be a protection against the expansion of executive power because if the president tries to grab at power everybody knows exactly who to blame and thus a single executive would be much more inclined to be careful with the power since they will be watched so closely now i happen to think that hamilton's arguments are pretty sound but it's also true that presidential power has expanded significantly over time and that change largely has to do with how the president understands the role we actually have illustrations of two opposing interpretations of the executive role and the first is from president teddy roosevelt who said this my view was that every executive officer and above all every executive officer in high position was the steward of the people bound actively and affirmatively to do all he could for the people and not to content himself with the negative merit of keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin my belief was that it was not only his right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the nation demanded unless such an action was forbidden by the constitution or by the laws in other words roosevelt is saying that the president ought to act on behalf of the people in every conceivable manner unless it is explicitly restricted by the constitution the next president william howard taft had a different opinion of executive power he said the true view of the executive functions is as i conceive it that the president can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power or justly implied and included within such express grant as proper and necessary to its exercise in other words taft argued for a much more restricted understanding of executive power roosevelt said do anything as long as it's not explicitly forbidden by the constitution but taft said do nothing unless it is explicitly granted in the constitution and over the course of american history we can see how those two perspectives were adopted by different presidents starting with george washington we can see that his conception of executive power was basically to defer to congress which was the people's brand but then a huge shift in that role came with the presidency of andrew jackson he believed himself to be the representative of the people and therefore had a mandate to carry out their will now think about that for just a second constitutionally it's congress that represents the people's will but jackson took that mantle upon himself and you can see this change based solely on the number of vetoes enacted by jackson for comparison washington vetoed two bills john adams zero thomas jefferson zero and then jackson vetoed 12 bills so jackson certainly expanded executive power to match his conception of the role then executive power was further expanded under the administration of abraham lincoln although he is generally forgiven for that since you know he had a civil war to fight he assumed executive powers to save the union and to emancipate the enslaved population of the confederacy additionally he suspended the constitutional right of habeas corpus which means that people could be arrested without a proper trial that's a heinous thing but again he's generally forgiven for it since you know civil war but forgiven or not lincoln certainly expanded the power glove into which the presidential hand fits but that glove would expand beyond all proportion in the administration of franklin roosevelt elected during the great depression roosevelt made broad use of his executive powers in order to pass his new deal legislation aimed at rescuing americans from their economic suffering to this end he was able to get scores of new deal policies passed he created new agencies he spent butt loads of federal money to put people to work and he made use of the veto more than any other president before him times to which i say dang additionally the man was elected no less than four times breaking the two-term tradition set by washington and he took his power so far that he tried to push out supreme court judges who disagreed with him and replaced them with judges friendly to his policies now that didn't work but he tried nonetheless the thing is despite roosevelt being the poster boy for the anti-federalist fears of a tyrannical executive he kind of proves hamilton's point in federalist 70. in the 1930s the nation was in crisis and fdr came in and got to work quick fast in a hurry to handle and whether you agree or disagree with roosevelt's new deal policies nobody can disagree that he was an energetic executive now since fdr's presidency presidential power has expanded and contracted somewhat but it has never gone back to the smaller scope of power that we had in a president like washington i think it's kind of funny how today republicans and democrats argue about how big or small the government should be after fdr the government was big full stop no equivocation what they're really arguing about today is whether there should be a smaller big government or a bigger big government anyway despite this almost constant growth in the power of the presidential role there are some checks on that power that you should know just because the president has become more powerful doesn't mean the president is immune to the checks and balances of other branches case in point president donald trump was impeached twice during his four years in office joining the ranks of two other presidents who had been impeached bill clinton and andrew johnson now trump was not removed from office but the impeachments serve as a reminder that the president is not all-powerful additionally another check you should know is that after roosevelt's four terms in office we ratified a new amendment namely the 22nd amendment which limited the president to two terms okay that's what you need to know about unit two topic six of the ap government curriculum you can click right here and grab review packet which will help you get an a in your class and a five on your exam in may i myself am invested with precisely zero executive power but if you want me to keep making these videos then you can let me know that by subscribing heimler out