Most Americans don't know there was
another U.S. government before the Constitution was drafted. Simplified
books and courses leave out the Articles of Confederation, the government
of the United States for its first eleven years. There were several
fatal defects in the Articles of Confederation, and one was its presidency.
Concerned with the dangerous powers
of the king of England and monarchies generally, the first framers created
a presidency which was too weak. The "President of the United States
in Congress Assembled" was elected for a one-year term by Congress itself.
That "President" had almost no powers.
When John Hancock was elected to that
post, he was too ill to travel from Boston to the capitol in New York during
his entire year. The government functioned as well, or as poorly
if you prefer, without him. One of the major defects the framers sought
to solve in writing the Constitution was creation of a "vigorous executive."
They made the president the commander
in chief of the military. They gave him the power to appoint all
judges and major officials of the new government, subject to the Senate
power to "advise and consent." Most important, they gave him power to veto
legislation. It was not the absolute veto possessed by the royal
governors of the American colonies (and by the governor of one subsequent
state). Instead, Congress retained the right to override the veto
by a vote of two-thirds of each House.
The task that most bedeviled the framers
was the term and manner of election of the chief executive. Proposals varied
from a single term of seven years, to a limit of two, four-year terms.
Because George Washington, the well-respected president of the Constitutional
Convention, opposed that limitation, the framers settled on no term limitation.
Then, George Washington as the first president set an example of retiring
after two terms. Respect alone held that practice in place until
the 20th century. Once President Franklin D. Roosevelt violated that
tradition, it was written into the Constitution as an amendment.
The manner of electing the president
was an even greater problem. The framers had serious doubts about
direct democracy, and rejected it in all three branches of government.
For the president, they settled on the indirect process that people in
each state would elect respected figures as presidential electors. They,
in turn, would exercise their personal judgments in voting for presidents.
This process began to fall apart in
the third election, when John Adams became president. By then, political
parties had developed, despite the warnings against them both in Washington’s
Farewell Address to the American People, and in James Madison’s Federalist
paper, No. 10. Electors were then simply pledged to specific candidates.
Today, most electors are required to vote as pledged when elected, and
it is a felony for them to exercise any discretion.
The Electoral College contains one continuing
value . Because electors for president are elected state by state, candidates
must to some extent focus on states, rather than merely on the largest
cities, ignoring most of the nation. The framers did this deliberately.
They made the electors equal the states' senators plus representatives
to maintain the states' political importance.
Alexander Hamilton argued in the ''Federalist,
No. 78,'' that the institution of the electoral college would prevent men
who offered only "talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity"
from becoming president of the United States. I leave it to the readers
to decide how many times the electoral college has allowed people with
"talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity" to become
president.
We have never been quite satisfied with
the electoral college. More than 10,000 potential amendments to the
Constitution have been introduced in Congress over the centuries.
More than 1,000 of those were addressed to the terms and methods of election
of presidents. None has ever come close to passage.
Two of the proposals were to choose
the president by lot either from among the sitting senators, or sitting
governors. Combine both of those and most presidential elections
and a great deal of bad television ads, would have been eliminated, including
the remaining parts of the 2008 election with three senators still in the
running.
Various attempts have been mounted lately
to get around the electoral college with legislation. All such are
unconstitutional because the Constitution trumps mere law. The only
remotely possible reform is election of electors in each congressional
district, rather than winner-take-all, statewide. States can do this
by simple legislation, as Maine and Nebraska already have. |