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Over the past several decades, the power and importance of America’s presidency have greatly expanded . Of course, presidential history includes both ups and downs, some coinciding with the rise and fall of national party systems and others linked to specific problems, issues, and personalities. We should train our analytic eyes, however, to see beneath the surface of day-to-day and even decade-to-decade political turbulence. We should focus, instead, on the pronounced secular trend of more than two and a quarter centuries of American history. Two hundred years ago, presidents were weak and often bullied by Congress. Today, presidents are powerful and often thumb their noses at Congress and the courts. For better or worse, we have entered a presidentialist era.