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James Madison, “Father of the Constitution” and a member of the First Congress, was devoted to the concept of a strong union. Madison is seldom considered an adept or successful president. Yet he viewed compromise and attention to the public good as means of keeping the Union intact, even if it meant a diminution of the president’s power.

James Garfield, a powerful figure in the Reconstruction-era Congress, took office in 1881 with a goal of uniting the Republican Party, which was split between the Stalwarts (who strongly favored political patronage) and the so-called Half-Breeds (who believed patronage bred corruption).

President Franklin Pierce took steps to build new commercial relation­ships abroad, revamp the military, and restructure the federal courts. After an unprecedented landslide in the 1852 presidential election gave him supermajorities in the House and Senate, Pierce seemed poised for a productive presidency.

President Andrew Johnson succeeded to the presidency suddenly, when Abraham Lincoln was killed by an assassin. Confronted with the prospect of Reconstruction—bringing the Union back together after a prolonged Civil War—Johnson tolerated harsh treatment of former slaves in South­ern states, believing that it was up to the states to determine their status.

Abraham Lincoln, who began his career as an unsophisticated frontier lawyer, became the first successful presidential candidate of the fledg­ling Republican Party. As the nation splintered into a civil war, Lin­coln wielded his constitutional authority with an inspired wisdom and effectiveness.

President Reagan was a popular and transformative chief executive who chipped away at what he considered a runaway federal bureaucracy to bring a more conservative vision to all three branches of American gov­ernment. While the Iran-Contra affair during Reagan’s second term gal­vanized critics, he still managed to win major victories to curb what he perceived to be overreaching by Congress.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only president elected to four terms, expanded presidential powers in a fashion unparalleled in American his­tory. He launched the New Deal; fought off constitutional attacks of his bold legislation by proposing to pack the Supreme Court; and greatly expanded the president’s powers in foreign affairs.

Harry S. Truman, a farmer and soldier from Missouri and a latecomer to politics, was thrust unexpectedly into the presidency when President Roo­sevelt died in office with World War II raging in Europe. Truman was a plain-speaking, decisive, and sometimes impulsive leader who dropped the atomic bomb to end the war.

William Howard Taft adopted a conservative view of presidential power in stark contrast to the feisty and (in Taft’s view) dangerous activism of his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt. A stickler for strict adherence to the Constitution, Taft helped steer through the Sixteenth Amendment to permit a variety of federal income taxes.

President Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Georgia, won over an American electorate distrustful of government because of the Vietnam War and Watergate. He prevailed in 1976 with a pledge of honesty and open­ness. Carter, who viewed himself as an enlightened trustee of the Ameri­can people, championed the cause of affirmative action for minorities when much of the country still resisted this concept.

President Woodrow Wilson ushered in a new brand of domestic and inter­national politics for the United States. A champion of Progressive policies, including the right of women to vote, Wilson believed in a muscular chief executive, especially in times of war and crisis. He led the United States into World War I, at times bypassing Congress.

President George H. W. Bush (“Bush 41”) was a one-term president who some detractors believed lacked the charisma, vision, and political skill of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. Consequently, Bush’s domestic record was mixed; it was worsened when he broke his “no new taxes” pledge. Yet Bush exercised his constitutional powers in the realm of foreign policy with strength and decisiveness, driving Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

Grover Cleveland’s second term, after a four-year hiatus in private life, was marked by a willingness to take bold action. When socialist union leader Eugene Debs led a railroad strike that threatened to cripple rail transportation and the postal service, President Cleveland and his attorney general used the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to obtain an injunction and to successfully prosecute Debs.

Millard Fillmore, who fell into the presidency when Zachary Taylor died unexpectedly, is often regarded as a weak leader and a failed chief executive. Eager to show that he could heal the rift between North and South, Fillmore reversed some of Taylor’s cautious policies. He zealously supported the controversial Compromise of 1850, which some historians believe worsened the sectional divide.

President Barack Obama, the first African American chief executive in the history of the United States, inspired millions of people to believe in his mes­sage of hope. His administration’s signature piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act, came under persistent attacks as he sought to implement sweeping health-care reform. The Obama administration exercised executive powers aggressively - refusing to deport many undocumented immigrants who had entered the country as children.

President James Buchanan, who believed that the Republican Party and the abolitionists were destroying the nation, personally lobbied the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, hoping it would get him (and the Democratic Party) off the hook on the slavery question. The decision, however, only intensified the conflict over the question. Buchanan was a man of contradictions.

Benjamin Harrison, the “Centennial President,” failed to achieve many of his goals (for instance, he was unable to secure passage of federal leg­islation to ensure public school education and voting rights for African Americans in the South). Yet he successfully pressed Congress to pass the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to deal with the growing threat posed by cor­porate trusts and monopolies.

No other president in American history faced so many decisions about the scope of his constitutional powers as did George Washington. Keenly aware that his interpretations of the fundamental charter would set precedent for future generations, and reluctant to appear that he was gathering power like a king, Washington was extremely cautious as chief executive.

Thomas Jefferson displayed a rich, complex, and sometimes contradictory view of the Constitution. Among early presidents, Jefferson was the lead­ing advocate of limited federal power, instead favoring strong authority for the states.

Calvin Coolidge inherited a presidency tainted by the Teapot Dome scandal and sought to bring stability to the White House to restore public trust. He won a victory in asserting his pardon power to commute the jail sentence of an Illinois man imprisoned for violating the unpopular Pro­hibition laws, and he appointed Justice Harlan Fiske Stone—a forward-thinking justice—to the Supreme Court.