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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.

President Warren G. Harding faced a wrecked economy in the after­math of World War I and a period of intense fear and suspicion of foreign threats. Despite a Supreme Court that continued to countenance the sup­pression of citizens’ speech under the First Amendment, Harding bucked his advisers and commuted the sentence of Socialist activist Eugene V. Debs.

President Teddy Roosevelt was a colorful leader who had been a boxer as a young man and took a free-swinging, pugilistic approach to the presi­dency. A dedicated Progressive, he pushed through important initiatives like the Panama Canal plan by dint of sheer willpower and devoted much of his career seeking to whittle down the Supreme Court (and his own appointee Oliver Wendell Holmes).

President Martin Van Buren, a Jacksonian Democrat, did his best to project a strong executive image, like that of his predecessor. However, the Panic of 1837 crippled Van Buren’s economic plan. His effort to influence the courts in the Amistad case—involving a group of Africans who had staged a revolt from their Spanish captors on the high seas—only fueled his abolitionist opponents.

President Rutherford B. Hayes, the first Gilded Age president, began his career as an antislavery Union soldier. Yet the Compromise of 1877, which led to his prevailing in the wake of the hotly contested Hayes-Tilden elec­tion, caused Hayes to abandon Reconstruction and turn his attention to economic priorities such as using federal troops to subdue railroad strikes.

John Quincy Adams, the son of the second president, is generally viewed as a failed chief executive. A respected diplomat who became secretary of state under President James Monroe, JQ Adams won the contested 1824 election with the support of Speaker Henry Clay, whose endorsement led to Adams’s selection by the House of Representatives under the Twelfth Amendment.

Andrew Jackson ushered in a new age, in which populist democracy (at least for white males) was favored over the more deferential politics of an earlier era. During Jackson’s presidency, the country stopped doing busi­ness with the Bank of the United States and left the business of inter­nal improvements largely to the states.

Herbert Clark Hoover, first an international businessman, a global hero during World War I, and then a cabinet officer under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, was elected president in 1928. The next year, as President Hoover embarked on his progressive agenda for the country, the Roaring Twenties ended, crashingly, in the Great Depression.

George W. Bush (“Bush 43”) won office as a result of a highly contested election that was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, dividing the country anew after the polarizing Clinton impeachment. The son of the forty-first president, George W. Bush sought to build a new, more powerful presidency. When ter­rorists struck the World Trade Center on 9/11, Bush used the full authority of his office to wage an unprecedented “war on terror.”