The President is Not Supposed to be a King
It is commonplace to talk of the president as the nation’s leader and to see him as the most powerful figure in our political pantheon. Such talk would appall the framers of the Constitution were they alive today.
The Executive Branch was Article II of the Constitution. Article I - because it was deemed important that it be first - created the legislative branch, the voice of the people. Having just overturned the rule of a king, Americans were not about to create another one. Early in the debates over what became the presidency, Roger Sherman of Connecticut made it clear that the singular role of the chief magistrate was to carry out the will of the legislature, and Edmund Randolph of Virginia worried about the executive becoming be the "foetus of monarchy.”
Most of the debate about the executive during the convention focused on making sure to constrain the president’s power. He could be Commander in Chief of the armed forces but not declare war. He could negotiate treaties but not ratify them, nominate officials and Supreme Court justices but not confirm them. He could propose spending but all spending bills would have to be initiated and approved by Congress. He could administer laws but not pass them. He could veto laws but be over-ridden. His term was only four years - not long enough to amass too much power. The possibility of re-election would make him accountable, since, as Pennsylvania's Gouverneur Morris put it, limiting him to a single term would "Shut the Civil road to Glory" so that "he may be compelled to seek it by the sword."
The delegates also debated how to choose the president. Giving that power to Congress would render him a tool of the legislature, rather than a check on its excesses, yet they feared direct election by the people would open the door to demagoguery. Virginia's George Mason opined that "it would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for chief Magistrate to the people, as it would, to refer a trial of colours to a blind man." Hence, we got the Electoral College, which allowed state legislatures – presumably less influenced by popular passions - to choose electors but not the president directly.
The concern about a monarchical presidency continued in the ratification debates, with New York's Alexander Hamilton devoting 11 of the 85 Federalist essays to arguing that the president was not equivalent to a king. The First Congress grappled with how to address Washington, firmly rejecting John Adams's proposal that he be called "His Majesty" or "His High Mightiness," and settling on the humble "President of the United States." Washington himself eschewed a fancy title and even viewed using the veto acceptable only if he felt a law was unconstitutional. Stepping down after two terms, he exemplified what Benjamin Franklin at the convention expressed: "In free Governments the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors & sovereigns. For the former therefore to return among the latter was not to degrade but to promote them."
The history of the presidency has clearly altered in practice what the framers conceived in theory. Presidents such as Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt played critical roles in expanding the power of the office, often enabled by war or other national emergencies. The Electoral College remains but voters choose electors not state legislatures, thus rendering obsolete that vehicle designed to restrain demagoguery. Presidential efforts to augment their power in recent years - the "war on terror," fears about illegal immigrants and using the increased power of Executive Orders - have gone largely unchecked by Congress. The growth of the Executive Branch (Washington had his cabinet officers and they but a few clerks) has given the presidency access to expertise often unmatched on Capitol Hill. Given the pace and complexity of today's challenges, Congress has been willing to cede more power to the president, including the power to commit American forces in combat. A president's ability to command all forms of media and dominate the news was impossible in 1787 when most Americans lacked much access to those seeking the highest office. Today, Members of Congress pale in their ability – and often even in their desire – to buck a president of their party whose command of information and the media overwhelm or mute their voices.
For some, the growth of presidential power is welcome amidst a dangerous world and a Congress so divided it struggles to legislate. For others, the worries of the founders are being realized. The challenge now, as it was in the eighteenth century, is one of balance. The framers of the Constitution wanted what they called "energy" in the executive, but they wanted constraints on it as well. The Congress and the courts, as designed at the Convention, still have the capacity to exercise that balancing function. Indeed, it is required by their Constitutional oath. If they fail to do their Constitutional duty, we could become a country ruled by a king, who we just call a president.
Photo Credit: Swearing in of George Washington as First President, 1789 -wikimedia.org
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