The Man of the People: Political Dissent and the Making of the American Presidency

Abstract

In this fascinating study of early American politics, Nathaniel C. Green uses the presidency as a lens through which to see the development of American national identity, the struggle to establish the authority of the American constitutional system, and the tensions between the emergence of partisan divisions and the desire for national unity. Green eschews the familiar stories about the early American presidency. He does not look at the office of the presidency from the perspective of its occupant. He avoids the momentous early constitutional debates over the scope of the powers of the presidency and the humdrum of presidential administration and policy making. The presidency being “made” in these pages is the presidency of the public imagination. How did people talk about the presidency, and those who aspired to exercise the powers of the presidency, in the early years of the republic? Through a wide-ranging but close examination of...