The Presidency and the American State: Leadership and Decision Making in the Adams, Grant, and Taft Administrations By Stephen J.Rockwell, Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2023. 352 pp. $34.50. ISBN: 978‐0‐81‐395008‐2

As is so often the case, the American Presidency is in the news. It seems every day the Trump Administration makes decisions that raise fundamental questions about the powers of the president specifically, and the powers of the American federal government more generally. Stephen J. Rockwell's new book, The Presidency and the American State, is thus quite timely. This is a fascinating study which ties together three presidents—John Quincy Adams, Ulysses Grant, and William Howard Taft—who are not often associated with each other. Rockwell's mission is to study each president's contributions to the development of the American administrative state. To do so, Rockwell synthesizes literature spanning multiple academic fields, among them American Political Development, presidential leadership, and political history. The book is not based on archival research, but the endnotes suggest a deep grasp of the relevant secondary literature (5). The result is an enlightening study that will prove useful to political scientists, legal scholars, and historians of the presidency. The book begins with a discussion of John Quincy Adams's presidency. Specifically, Rockwell points to Adams's outspoken advocacy of internal improvements and expansion as Adams's chief contribution to the expansion of the American state. Scholars will be familiar with many of the policies discussed vis-à-vis Adams—canals, roads, and exploration of territory. What is new is the book's discussion of Adams's key role as an advocate—and lead promulgator—of those policies. Rockwell also dedicates a substantial portion of the book to Adams's relationship with slavery. It is widely known that Adams was an opponent of slavery. Yet, as Rockwell rightly notes, Adams's personal views on slavery ran contrary to the established “constitution and national state” that protected slavery “by law and by custom” (74). Drawing on Fred Greenstein's The Hidden-Hand Presidency (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), Rockwell argues that Adams maneuvered around those established rules by utilizing a “suite” of hidden hand executive actions (74). Again, the debates over internal improvements proved key to Adams's agenda. The antebellum debates over internal improvements were not so much about the merits of government infrastructure as they were about the implications of the policy for the future of slavery. Adams believed that the development of roads, canals, and the federal money required for their development would “break down the localism and prejudice of southern slave regions” (81). For Rockwell, Adams is an example of a president operating within a fixed set of rules and customs to further his political agenda. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on President Ulysses S. Grant, particularly his policies pertaining to Reconstruction and Indian Affairs. Rockwell argues that Grant inherited a “fully mature administrative state in a condition of evolution” in the wake of the Civil War (92). Whereas Adams operated within a set of established rules and norms regarding race and government authority, Grant was “far less concerned” with adhering to such rules. Reconstruction represented a fundamental reordering of American constitutionalism, a “Second Founding” as Eric Foner (2019) has dubbed it, in which chattel slavery no longer existed. Grant's prior experience as a general translated to his presidential leadership style, which Rockwell characterizes as acting with “immediate, responsive initiatives” (114). Consistent with extant scholarship, Rockwell portrays Grant as a well-intentioned, moralistic president. This led to important victories such as the defeat of the first Ku Klux Klan (130–131) and defeats, often mired in scandal. The final two chapters focus on William Howard Taft, whom Rockwell calls a “synthesist” who combined the innovation of Grant and the commitment to established rules of Adams (155). Rockwell is particularly interesting in attempting to dispel the “myth” that Taft was a “constrained, conservative president” in exercising command of the administrative state (156). Scholars have long associated Taft with two contemporaries: Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. This makes sense because all three men were at different times political allies and opponents. Rockwell takes issue with those who contrast Roosevelt's “stewardship theory” of executive power to Taft's formalist conception. As he wrote in his Autobiography (1913), Roosevelt believed that the president had a “duty to do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws.” Taft, by contrast, believed that the president was prohibited from exercising power unless it could be traced to a specific grant of power, either by the Constitution or by statute (156). Rockwell calls this dichotomy “misleading” because Taft's true position was less radical than Roosevelt's, but not nearly as constrained as conventional views would have it. I would have liked Rockwell to engage with some of the legal-historical scholarship on Taft's views of the presidency, such as that of Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan, and Noah Rosenblum and Andrea Katz. This is a fascinating, timely book that deserves a wide audience. However, I would be remiss if I did not note a couple quibbles, though they are merely quibbles. First, by focusing on just three presidents, Rockwell necessarily skims over important developments between Adams, Grant, and Taft. For example, civil service reform was key to the development of the modern administrative state. Rockwell notes that Grant put some reforms in motion (105), but his successors—Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur—were the ones who saw reform to fruition. Finally, emphasis on the presidency and its inhabitants only tell us part of the story. Rockwell surely mentions lower-level federal officials, but there is real importance to the “movers and shakers” who are responsible for implementing policy as promulgated by the president and his subordinates. But these are just minor quibbles, and in a sense, would require a much longer, less readable, and different book. The Presidency and the American State is essential reading for scholars of American Political Development and the Presidency, as well as to scholars of administrative law and constitutional law.