Executive Power: Madison’s Nightmare

Peter Shane’s recent post on the History News Network, How has the presidency changed most in the last 30 years?, distills the essence of his newly published book, Madison’s Nightmare:  Executive Power and the Threat to American Democracy.  He concludes the piece as follows:

I wrote Madison’s Nightmare partly in the hope of explaining persuasively what’s wrong with the “unitary executive” as constitutional law and partly in the hope of demonstrating how aggressive presidentialism undermines good governance.  Much of the book deals with the dramatic questions of torture, domestic surveillance, and executive secrecy that are so often in the news.  I hope that the book also brings at least some greater attention to the centralization of presidential policy making control, which deserves far more public attention and debate than it has seen since its inception.