The presidency of the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century was not the powerful institution that we know today. Indeed, it was arguably one of the weaker branches of the Constitution. Why was this so?
There are two principal reasons for America having a weak presidency at this point in its history.
WHY DID AMERICA HAVE SUCH A WEAK FOREIGN POLICY PRIOR TO 1900?
Another factor that worked against the country having an active foreign policy was the tradition established by its first president, George Washington. In his farewell address at the conclusion of his presidency in 1796, Washington had cautioned America against involvement in foreign alliances:
This counsel set the United States on an isolationist course and thereby focused the nation on domestic affairs, in which Congress often took the leading role.
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However, the potential existed for the constitutional balance to change if a president decided to take a different approach to foreign affairs.
- The Founding Fathers had not expected America to need a foreign policy, because their new country was so far away from Europe – the ‘Old World’.
- In the eighteenth century, when the US Constitution was drafted, 3,000 miles of ocean acted both as a protective barrier and reinforced the sense that the United States inhabited its own world – the ‘New World’.
- Therefore, the US Constitution had little to say about foreign policy, since it did not seem to be a priority in a nation whose collective gaze was directed to the west and territorial expansion across the North American continent.
- That left scope for a president who wished to abandon isolationism to transform the presidential office, in effect to fill in the gaps in the Constitution.
- Such a president was Theodore Roosevelt.
This is a chronological list of all the Presidents we will study in the 20th Century
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