Abstract
This chapter explores the politics of executive-centered partisanship as it played out during the presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. The pathologies traced in earlier chapters reached a troubling stage during President Obama’s tenure, but it reached a hazardous culmination during the campaign and administration of Donald Trump. These presidencies are defined by their embrace of movement-style politics, administrative unilateralism, and presidential policymaking. Far from realizing the pragmatic, transcendent leadership that presidentialists once envisioned, Obama and Trump demonstrate how the exercise of presidential power now exacerbates the country’s partisan divide. This chapter, while comparative, places greater emphasis on Donald Trump’s administration and offers further evidence of conservative “state-building,” which is especially volatile in the current party system.
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