When I started college, Dick Cheney , the 46th vice president of the United States, was already rebuilding the presidency — quietly, methodically, and with no intention of returning it in its previous form. Today, as a presidential historian, I study the system he left behind. That’s what I thought when I woke up to the news that Cheney had died from complications of pneumonia and cardiovascular disease: By setting out to reclaim executive authority after Watergate, Cheney supercharged it — circumventing legal limits, rewriting internal rules, and building a presidency that could outpace oversight.

Donald Trump , the 47th president, now commands that system. Where Cheney was shrewd and calculating in expanding the powers of the presidency, Trump ripped out the circuit breakers, ignor

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