Publisher's Synopsis
"While some scholars of American politics view the Trump presidency as an aberration, Nicholas Jacobs and Sidney Milkis argue that his unsettling ascent to the White House was decades in the making, the result of numerous institutional and constitutional changes. From aggressively redeploying the federal government's administrative powers, to using the tools of the modern presidency to undertake a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, Trump's presidency reveals the peril of a presidency-centered democracy that combines executive aggrandizement and polarizing struggles over the meaning of American identity. The disruptive features of the Trump presidency should not be viewed as an ephemeral phenomenon, nor will Donald Trump's departure from the White House end the threat that presidentialism poses to American democracy. This work aims to provide a serious explanation for why the Trump presidency happened--and why it might happen agai
