How We Broke the Presidency

What is the president's job? Over the years, the answer has changed ... a lot. The Founding Fathers, worried about the president’s potential to become a king-like figure, limited the powers of the role. But during the 20th century, the executive branch got bigger and more powerful. Here’s what happened: As the executive branch grew, the president’s employees found plenty of new rules they wanted to make. There’s just one problem: under the Constitution, it’s Congress that gets to make laws, not the executive branch. So, we tried to work out an accommodation: The executive branch could create their own rules, but Congress would have the power to reject them. Eventually, however, there became so many rules that Congress simply couldn’t handle the volume. And members of Congress decided it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to let someone else take the heat for making tough decisions. The result: Today, we live in a country where most of the laws that control our lives … don’t come from the people we elect to write those laws.