Change and Continuity: The Presidency in Historical Perspective

When Ronald Reagan cast his first vote for president in 1932, the major party nominees were Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. We can, with less arbitrariness than usually characterizes historical demarcations, view Roosevelt's election that year as the beginning of the contemporary presidency. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who voted for Roosevelt are still among us in the 1980s. The techniques presidents use to rally friends, harass foes, manage the federal government, and deal with other nations resemble those inherited from Roosevelt in 1945. Perhaps most important, controversies that marked FDR's long presidency--over the welfare state, the limits of presidential authority, and Soviet-American relations--remain current.