Why is the presidency viewed as weak prior to TR?

[MiddleRoad]

I’ve seen pieces that have called the presidency a rather weak (and perhaps even almost irrelevant) office before TR and FDR reinvented it. Is this true, and if so, how was it weak? In what ways?

[The Mikado]

I’ve seen pieces that have called the presidency a rather weak (and perhaps even almost irrelevant) office before TR and FDR reinvented it. Is this true, and if so, how was it weak? In what ways?

"Irrelevant" was never the case, but in the post-Civil War years a lot of it is the very vivid memory of Congress overriding 15 of Andrew Johnson's vetoes, which was an absolute humiliation of Johnson, as well as the memory of Johnson's humiliating impeachment and survival by one vote. Congress effectively castrating a president like Johnson got Congress used to being in the driver's seat. Add to that that a President's big task during the late 19th century was distributing patronage jobs to reward party faithful, not really "govern," and you get a bunch of weak, wastrel presidents. (No offense to Ulysses Grant or James Garfield, both fine men, but Grant was a weak President and we never got to see how Garfield would've turned out).

Add to that that a lot of the President's strongest powers on paper are in foreign policy and foreign policy was not a priority at this time and that's another route cut off.

After Grant and before McKinley, the most any President actually gets personally felt in the process of governing is Grover Cleveland issuing an absolutely staggering and comical number of vetoes, and even that is a more passive power and not an active one. (Would Grover Cleveland have to veto 170 bills if he had a better relationship with Congress? etc)

[Sir Mohamed]

It wasn't always considered weak before TR, Lincoln for sure greatly expanded the power of the presidency. After the Civil War, congress already went back stripping powers from the office because of Andrew Johnson's hostile actions and total lack of competence. Gilded age presidents were also considered weak since, during peace and relative stability, political initiatives came less from the executive branch and more from within congress (as initially intended by the founding fathers). The prez was kind of left with approving federal legislation and overseeing its implementation. That was also the case between Jackson and Lincoln, when all the WH occupants of that era lacked leadership skills and didn't have much political capital to begin with while the union was tearing apart.

FDR, obviously, massively expanded executive powers and his successors continued on that path. By the late 60s, political scientists spoke of the "imperial presidency", which ultimately resulted in Watergate and many abuses of powers. In its aftermath, congress passed some laws to restrict executive powers, like Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, though all these measures failed to permanently reduce the presidency's powers. In recent years, executive powergrabs and overreach continued as a divided congress often failed to deliver major reforms or pass the president's policy goals.

[Benjamin Frank]

In 1893 at the Chicago Exposition, History professor/public intellectual Frederick Jackson Turner presented his 'Frontier Thesis' aka the ending of the 'The Safety Valve Theory' which argued that disputes between Americans and unemployment were settled by Americans moving west.

With the 'frontier' settled by the late 1890s, Turner argued this 'safety valve' had been shut off.

Teddy Roosevelt seized upon the public sentiment of this belief by referring to himself as 'the first modern President' and argued that government, especially the President, now needed to get more involved in disputes and things like busting trusts now that Americans could no longer escape/start over simply by going West.

[Benjamin Frank]

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

After the Civil War, it went from a strong central Govt to States rights, I have written about this extensively there were no Public Defenders and bl men were sent to Chain gangs to work on railroads and factories and majority of Blks until 1950 were in the S and females couldn't vote period

.that's why Dixiecrats weren't the SECULAR party they maintained state sovernty over Federalism until TR and FDR we tend to think on today's standards but this was the Wild Wild West, that's why DIXIECRAT arent praised by minority no matter if they are Ds

[buritobr]

It's harder to remember names of US presidents between the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln, and between Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt

[Orser67]

Both the president and the federal government in general had a much smaller role in American life prior to FDR.

Although the president has always had the veto power, it was originally conceived as more of a check on Congress only in rare circumstances (see e.g. this wiki page). Even after the president started making use of the veto power more frequently starting with Andrew Jackson, they generally weren't seen as the legislative agenda-setter until the Progressive Era at the earliest (both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson played big roles in establishing the president as someone who would set the legislative agenda and, especially in Wilson's case, take charge of shepherding bills through Congress). To be clear, I'm not trying to say that presidents never pursued legislative agendas or impacted legislation prior to TR, but it was certainly a lot different from recent presidents who come into office with comprehensive agendas of bills they try to pass through Congress.

More generally, the federal government often had little impact on the day-to-day lives of average citizens, except in times of war. Prior to the Progressive Era there usually wasn't an income tax (except for a brief period during and after the Civil War), there were relatively few federal organizations (to give a few examples of things that didn't exist: CIA, EPA, FDIC, Federal Reserve), and there certainly weren't federal programs like Social Security or Medicare. The average American might have little contact with the federal government outside of the Post Office. So, except in times of crisis, there was often relatively little for the president to actually do, at least as compared to the ubiquitous problem solver that Americans seem to expect today. Although there was at least one federal regulatory agency prior to TR, his presidency really increased the role of the federal government (and the president in particular) in economic life with the establishment of the Food and Drug Agency, the Hepburn Act, various conservationist policies, and anti-trust prosecutions.

Finally, after Jackson, there was a decline in the power of individual presidents in favor of the power of parties, as perhaps best evidenced by the fact that 5 of the first 7 presidents won two terms, but 3 of the next 16 presidents won two terms. There's more to say here, but this answer is probably long enough already.