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Crisis And Command
John Yoo
A History Of Executive Power From George Washington To George W. Bush
Kaplan Publishing
January 2010
On Sale: January 5, 2010
544 pages
ISBN: 1607145553
EAN: 9781607145554
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
An American President faces war and finds himself hamstrung
by a Congress that will not act. To protect national
security, he invokes his powers as Commander-in-Chief and
orders actions that seem to violate laws enacted by
Congress. He is excoriated for usurping dictatorial powers,
placing himself above the law, and threatening to “breakdown
constitutional safeguards.” One could be forgiven for
thinking that the above describes former President George W.
Bush. Yet these particular attacks on presidential power
were leveled against Franklin D. Roosevelt. They could just
as well describe similar attacks leveled against George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham
Lincoln and a number of other presidents challenged with
leading the nation through times of national crisis. However
bitter, complex, and urgent today’s controversies over
executive power may be, John Yoo reminds us they are nothing
new. In Crisis and Command, he explores a factor too little
consulted in current debates: the past. Through shrewd and
lucid analysis, he shows how the bold decisions made by
Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR changed
more than just history; they also transformed the role of
the American president. The link between the vigorous
exercise of executive power and presidential greatness, Yoo
argues, is both significant and misunderstood. He makes the
case that the founding fathers deliberately left the
Constitution vague on the limits of presidential authority,
drawing on history to demonstrate the benefi ts to the
nation of a strong executive office.
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