With two presidents – one current and one former – running against each other for the first time since 1912, the 2024 election presents voters with the unique opportunity to compare how Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump, who are each likely to get their party’s nomination, actually used the authority of the presidency.
Examining Biden and Trump from this perspective, it’s clear that while they pursued vastly different policies, they often used presidential power in remarkably similar ways.
Both Trump and Biden have tried to achieve their policy goals in ways that avoided having to get Congress’ cooperation. There are a few exceptions, with major legislation passed early in the presidents’ terms when they had a unified government – Trump with the 2017 tax cuts and Biden with the 2021 infrastructure bill and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
But more frequently, they aimed to accomplish their objectives either through their power over the executive branch and administrative agencies or in foreign policy, where a president possesses more discretion than in domestic affairs.
Such similarities in men who could not be more different in their political values and policy priorities naturally raise the question: Why do Trump and Biden seem so alike in how they are using presidential power? As a scholar who studies how the constitutional structure of American political institutions effects the authority and behavior of individuals operating within those institutions, I see these similarities as being driven by the fact that, as presidents, they faced the same incentives........