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Nixon’s abuse of presidential power constitutes his most important influence on later constitutional law and U.S. politics.
Representatives objected to Tyler’s vetoes, arguing that the president should be “dependent upon and responsible to” Congress.
The Whig Party came to power in 1841 behind William Henry Harrison, but Harrison died one month after assuming office.
Congress debated a resolution to impeach Jefferson because of an appointment that Federalists thought suspicious — an early precedent that clarified Congressional roles in oversight.
Jackson had deep flaws, but he left a lasting legacy, strengthening the executive office and striving to represent as many Americans as possible.
David S.
The young nation was lucky to have the only candidate on Earth who could do the job.
There were no primaries back then to select presidential candidates, no organized political parties, no orchestrated campaigns, not even any established election procedures.
Members of the first federal Congress had to create a new government almost from scratch.
The first Congress may have been the most important in American history, establishing how our new government would work based on principles that had been only broadly outlined in the Constitution.
Largely unknown to his cabinet, Ronald Reagan broke with previous U.S. policy and initiated a global campaign of economic and political warfare against the Soviets.
The Soviet Union was erased from world maps not because of a reform process or a series of diplomatic arrangements. It simply could not sustain itself. Historians will debate for decades, perhaps centuries, which factors weighed most on the Soviet system. Was it the bankruptcy of State ideology?
He fought the alliance between corporations and political bosses, to take back government for farmers, workers, and consumers.
The daughter of a Lebanese immigrant grew up to become Ronald Reagan’s chief of protocol and organized more state dinners than in any other presidency.
In a pivotal trip in 1967, Senator Kennedy saw first-hand the effects of poverty in the Delta.
Taft is remembered for emphasizing constitutional restraint as president, but he also set aside more public lands and brought more anti-trust suits than his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt. And he set the standard for integrity and personal conduct in the White House.
Jeffrey Rosen is a historian, law professor, and President and CEO of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Uncovering the story of an early American political crisis
In the summer of 1829, Thomas Spotswood Hinde initiated a correspondence with former president James Madison. Having heard that Madison was writing “a Political History of our Country,” Hinde offered to provide essential information for this project.
The Senate convened 20 years ago to determine whether President Bill Clinton had committed "high crimes and misdemeanors"
John Nicolay and John Hay were Lincoln’s two closest aides in the White House, and they helped to craft the image of the president that we have today.
Although his flamboyant successor, Theodore Roosevelt, greatly overshadowed him, William McKinney deserves credit for establishing the United States as a global power, acquiring Hawaii and Puerto Rico, establishing the “fair trade” doctrine, and paving the way for TR’s accomplishments.
She functioned as Franklin Roosvelt's de facto chief-of-staff, yet Missy LeHand's role has been misrepresented and overlooked by historians.
Franklin D.
When the Palmetto State threatened to nullify federal statutes at will, President Jackson met it with tough rhetoric and a threat of force -- and postponed the Civil War for three decades.
War was at hand. Upstairs in his White House study over the long winter of 1832-33, President Andrew Jackson stood strong against a distant state that posed, he believed, an all too imminent threat to the Union.
In his second term, George Washington faced a crisis that threatened to tear apart the young republic. His wife Martha later thought that the bitterness of the debate may have hastened the president’s death, but Washington gave America the gift of peace, and an important precedent in leadership.
James K. Polk appears doomed to remain one of our least-appreciated presidents, despite Robert W. Merry’s valiant attempt to drag him from the shadows in A Country of Vast Designs.
After 65 years, the archives of FDR’s personal secretary are now open to the public.
On June 30, 2010, 14 boxes containing a treasure trove of more than 5000 personal letters, notes, and photographs from the Roosevelt administration and his family arrived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York.
An impetuous and sometimes corrupt Congress has often hamstrung the efforts of the president since the earliest days of the republic.
On a little-remarked, steamy day in late June 1973, a revolution took place in Washington, D.C., one that would transfer far more power and wealth than did the revolt against King George III in 1776.
When the Donkey and the Elephant First Clashed
140 years ago, Harper’s Weekly’s cartoonist of genius, Thomas Nast, sired the Democrat donkey and the Republican elephant into ridicule. In an environment of flourishing editorial cartoons, Nast’s ready vocabulary of political symbols caught on.
What happened when an anti-Vietnam War activist met his new client - Lyndon Johnson
As an American president presides over a divisive war without an apparent end, for the second time in my life, my thoughts have been drawn back nearly four decades to another president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and his war in Vietnam.
It’s always been the Republicans.
Why have our presidents almost always stumbled after the first four years?
Why Harry Truman refused to sign a photo which had Dick Nixon in it
As Anne Keigher, an architect who's deeply involved with the London house that Benjamin Franklin called home for almost 16 years, shows me around the place and points out a supporting pillar in the basement. “This original pier needed new concrete footing poured beneath it, so we were digging down to shore it up,” she says. “That’s when we discovered the bones.”
What a skeptical biographer discovered about a very elusive subject