This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, November 10th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown. Executive power is the gift that keeps on giving to every future president.

The aggrandizement of the White House by George W Bush and

Barack Obama will now pass to President-elect Donald J. Trump. Gene Healy, author of the

cult of the presidency, discusses the implications for the next White House inhabitant.

Barack Obama and George W Bush did a lot to expand the powers of the presidency and Congress didn't seem to stand in the way in any

significant way. Barack Obama more recently, as you noted in a recent discussion with me was concerned that he would be leaving

quote a loaded gun around in the White House for the next president and And so what has he left behind

for president-elect Donald Trump?

Well, it's an important part of Barack Obama's legacy,

although it's probably not at all the legacy he wanted to leave.

You know, Obama and Dick Cheney will probably never be hunting buddies, but they have more in common than most people think.

Cheney described the mission of the Bush administration as, quote,

leaving the presidency stronger than we found it.

They did that.

They handed off a more powerful presidency

to Barack Obama, and he turned around, made it even more powerful and now will pay it forward to Donald

J. Trump. And Trump, for, well for most of this year, it seemed like a thought experiment that a

Libertarian might come up with when you're arguing with a liberal to get that person to focus on the dangers of

concentrating too much power in the executive branch.

Well now it's left the realm of thought. It's an actual experiment that we're going to be running and living through.

Yeah, so it seems to be if you wanted a good test of institutions and you had a candidate who was espousing a great deal of rhetoric that on its face

...