On the surface the new president seems to inherit an empty house," Hugh Heclo, a recognized expert on American democratic institutions, has noted. "In fact, he enters an office already shaped and crowded by other people's desires." Empowering the White House examines how Richard Nixon entered that crowded Oval Office in 1969 yet managed to change it in a way that augmented the power of the presidency and continues to influence into the twenty-first century how his successors have governed.

Nixon's White House is perhaps best remembered for the growth in the size of the staff, which...