Confronting the Presidents: No Spin Assessments from Washington to Biden

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and racism.

Like the power of the federal government itself, presidential power has waxed and waned over time. The debate over whether “the United States should be a strong central power […] or if the states should wield the most strength” began with the Founding Fathers themselves and continued throughout the nation’s history (8). For example, Thomas Jefferson bitterly differed with other framers of the constitution on the issue of centralized power, vowing to “weaken the federal government” (23). President John Quincy Adams’s “great projects,” which depended on a strong federal government to establish “national institutions” (51), failed, paving the way for the presidency of Andrew Jackson, which weakened the federal government by abolishing the national bank.

Some presidents actively sought a less active role for themselves in the life of the nation—for example, rejecting the idea that the federal government should offer direct assistance to its citizens. As the authors note, despite his own struggles with depression, Franklin Pierce vetoed the Land-Grant Bill for Indigent Insane Persons, which would have granted federal funds for the establishment of care facilities for people with a mental illness. The authors argue that no president did more to increase the size and scope of the federal government than Franklin D.