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

Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom by Ludwig von Mises. Hardcover: 826 pages. (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2001), $35.00.

Review by Ryan Setliff

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 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.