The Imperial Presidency

At it's inception, the President was to maintain a low-profile and stay out of the public light. The role of the President was simply to uphold the laws of the land and to veto laws where Congress had surpassed their constitutional powers. Unfortunately, this has changed quite dramatically over time.

Gene Healy from the CATO institute writes the feature article for Reason Magazine on how far the role of the presidency has changed from what was intended by the founders. It is definately worth the read. Here is a bit:

Today Americans expect their president to pound Teddy Roosevelt’s “bully
pulpit,” whipping the electorate into a frenzy to harness power against
perceived threats. But the Framers viewed that sort of behavior as fundamentally
illegitimate. In fact, the president wasn’t even supposed to be a popular
leader. As presidential scholar Jeffrey K. Tulis has pointed out, in the
Federalist the term leader is nearly always used pejoratively; the essays by
Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay in defense of the Constitution begin
and end with warnings about the perils of populist leadership. The first
Federalist warns of “men who have overturned the liberties of republics” by
“paying obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending
tyrants,” and the last Federalist raises the specter of a “military despotism”
orchestrated by “a victorious demagogue.