THE U.S. PRESIDENCY: POWER, RESPONSIBILITY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY, by E. Thomas Sullivan and Richard W. Painter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026. 307pp. Cloth $120.00. ISBN: 978-1-009-52198-7. Paper $45.00. ISBN: 978-1-009-52199-4.
Reviewed by Gary E. Bugh, Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University-Texarkana. Email: gbugh@tamut.edu.
Professors E. Thomas Sullivan and Richard W. Painter in their book, THE U.S. PRESIDENCY: POWER, RESPONSIBILITY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY, approach the study of the executive in terms of legal and political developments in light of the Founders’ concern with excessive presidential power. As the authors state in the Preface, the purpose of the book is to “outline through history and examples how the office of the presidency has grown in power and public prominence beyond the intentions of the Founders of the Constitution” (p. xi). They organize the book according to executive power, responsible use of this power, and available methods to hold presidents to account. The 18 chapters cover multiple topics related to executive branch authority with each one reviewing legal and political changes that have contributed to strengthening the office and weakening ways to check it. These examinations generally describe relevant constitutional passages, Supreme Court cases, congressional legislation, and scholarship.
It has long been known that studying the presidency is no easy task since the subject matter is a single office that few individuals have held. For example, Michael Nelson in THE PRESIDENCY AND THE POLITICAL SYSTEM (2006) placed the diversity of approaches to the U.S. executive into those by historians and political scientists, and further categorized the latter into “Savior,” “Satan,” and “Samson” models (p. 2–6). He concluded that “the sheer velocity of the turnover in these models since the 1960s would seem to indicate that the best one-word description of how scholars evaluate the presidency is confusion” (p. 6, emphasis in original). Sullivan and Painter in THE U.S. PRESIDENCY, however, establish a framework that involves an analytical lens honed from the founding and an approach that examines the history of laws and practices surrounding executive branch power.
In the Introduction chapter, Sullivan and Painter review the basic theories associated with Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu, the Declaration of Independence, and the Founders’ deliberations to establish their methodological guide for evaluating presidential power. The founding debates on the subject in particular are important for their analysis. Building from James Madison’s view in Federalist No. 37, the authors explain that the founders were concerned that “[h]aving too weak a president is dangerous for national security and weakens the internal functioning of the federal government. But having a president who is beyond the reach of the law is a danger to the Republic itself and a direct threat to the rule of law” (p. 196). Sullivan and Painter share the founders’ fear of unbridled executive authority and turn a critical eye toward the presidency. As they explain at the end of their Introduction, “[t]he story told in this book is one of presidential power almost always expanding, rarely contracting, and sometimes posing a fundamental threat to the principles of liberty and republican government upon which this country was founded” (p. 8).
More specifically, Sullivan and Painter present a challenge to the unitary theory of the presidency, which is the perspective that “advocates for a strong empowered executive” (p. 20). They state more than once that the executive office has transformed beyond what the founders envisioned into one resembling an extreme version of the unitary executive that justifies an “array of presidential powers” imperiling individual freedom and representative democracy (p. 19). For instance, the authors describe that “the presidency as an institution has grown in prominence, power, and authority, resulting today with the current Supreme Court adopting a full-throated ‘Unitary Executive Theory’ that would have been unheard of and unimaginable to the Founders” (p. 167). While the founders’ concern with a dominant president does not frame every chapter, apprehension about an extraordinarily powerful executive is always looming in the background.
As mentioned, each chapter explores a topic according to “how the presidency through history, law, and politics has grown in power far from the Founders’ original intent” (p. 285). This historical legal-political approach is evident from the start with the first chapter addressing aspects of the constitutional requirement that the nation’s “executive Power shall be vested in a President,” beginning with the expansion of both cabinet and staff (p. 12). Other areas of the office that have strengthened over time include executive orders, appointment and removal of executive branch officers and federal prosecutors, and control over the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission. This chapter also reviews several ways of analytically understanding the Vesting Clause. Sullivan and Painter discuss “the two competing theories of the limits of unilateral executive power,” one they refer to as “powerful executive” and the other as “restrained executive” (p. 12). The authors additionally describe the “intertextual interpretation” and Justice Robert Jackson’s three-part standard from Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952). It is an important chapter—and one of the longest—not just for its content, but for engendering further thought about studying the U.S. presidency.
Since the book considers various topics related to presidential power, it illustrates actions taken by President Donald Trump. The chapters provide succinct and well-researched reviews of executive branch issues that have emerged under Trump’s two administrations: war powers, vetoes, pardons, self-pardons, emergency powers, judge appointments, tariffs, immigration enforcement, birthright citizenship, faithfully executing laws, conflicts of interest, bribery, campaign finance, arms trading, federal land usage, impeachment, litigation against a president, indictment of a sitting president, state prosecution of a president, term limits, and more. This book is likely to address any issue related to the presidency that has garnered attention during Trump’s time in office. Rather than as reactions to Trump, however, the chapters serve as useful contemporary resources for anyone interested in executive branch authority.
The book’s critical approach does not detail proposals for limiting presidential power (alongside existing accountability measures from impeachment to term limits), though it touches on a few aspirations having this potential. Among these suggestions is that “Congress may want to impose additional constraints on presidential power in the statutory framework governing areas as far-reaching as national defense, commerce, and the environment” (p. 280). Another recommendation, mentioned in the last sentence of the book, is for “a republic that depends on the people’s engaged vigilance and consent in the exercise of their sovereignty in governing in order to throw off and prevent a tyrannical form of leadership that undermines and rejects democratic principles, values, and norms” (p. 286).
Yet Sullivan and Painter do not elaborate on how the American people could exercise control over presidents. While they mention the presidential selection process a few times, most notably in the Epilogue, they criticize it as undemocratic. The Electoral College is an indirect way of determining presidents that may interfere with effective representation of the people in the executive branch, thereby contributing to the expansion of presidential power. Nonetheless, the will of the popular sovereign still matters as a check on the nation’s chief executive. The people have the opportunity to choose new presidents at quadrennial elections (as well as congressional members biennially) and to exercise a multitude of other rights that stand in the way of abusive governmental power, including publicly criticizing the president at any time.
Both instructors and students of the U.S. presidency will likely find the book valuable for understanding specific topics related to the office. Though each chapter provides historical reviews, the overall scheme of the book is not chronological, so it would not align with a class covering the presidency from George Washington to the present. However, the format of the book with chapters addressing a variety of subjects is highly amenable to a topical approach of the presidency. A teacher could easily assign chapters to different course sections under required or suggested readings. Moreover, scholars working on specific areas of the presidency might benefit from some of the chapters.
CASES:
YOUNGSTOWN SHEET & TUBE CO. V. SAWYER, 343 U.S. 579 (1952).
REFERENCES:
Nelson, Michael. 2006. “Evaluating the Presidency.” In THE PRESIDENCY AND THE POLITICAL SYSTEM, ed. Michael Nelson, 1–27. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
© Copyright 2026 by author, Gary E. Bugh.
