TWENTIETH-CENTURY REMEDIES

American history shows us that when governmental processes appear to break down, old institutions can be redeployed to operate in new ways, and new institutions can be built around them to reorient the work of the whole. In the early years of the twentieth century, reformers overcame widespread fears of governmental dysfunction by redeploying the presidency; their solutions to the newly emergent problems of governing under the Constitution worked around new conceptions of presidential leadership. This Article examines this faith in the leadership cure, with particular attention to the different roles it assigned to the presidency to revitalize American government. Drawing these ideas forward, I point out that these roles now appear to be at cross purposes, and I question whether the twentieth-century solution to problems of governing is sufficient for negotiating the problems now in view.