On today’s episode, we’re continuing a conversation about presidential power that we broached a couple of weeks ago on Statecraft in an essay called, “What Trump Can Learn From Nixon.” It was about the attempts, in Richard Nixon‘s one and a half presidential terms, to build what observers called the “administrative presidency” — the presidency that actually fully controlled the administrative state.

My guests today have thought very deeply about presidential attempts to control the administrative state. William Howell and Terry Moe are co-authors of a book called, Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency. They’re both political scientists. Terry is a professor of political science at Stanford, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Will is the Dean of the School of Government and Policy at Johns Hopkins University.

We discuss:

* Why most federal employees in the 1800s were mailmen, and what changed

* How presidents have tried to control the administrative state

* Whether Republicans have used presidential power to rein in agencies they object to

* Whether the Supreme Court has been a firewall against Trump

For the full transcript of this conversation, go to www.statecraft.pub.

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