Choosing a republican President

Note: This is the first in a series of essays examining the prospects for electing a republican president in 2016 and ultimately reining in the modern imperial presidency through the lens of Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist essays on the executive branch.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a politician making Iowa or New Hampshire his second home must be in want of the presidency. We’ve got more than a few of those these days and can expect the 2016 presidential campaign to begin in earnest minutes after the mid-term elections conclude.

Expect the Big Announcement from Hillary some time “around” the end of the year we’re told–followed by the little announcements by Democratic Party minnows also wishing to swim in the presidential lake. Throw a dozen or more elephants in the room and we’ll have plenty to write and talk about as the President and Mrs. Obama prepare to settle into a compound in Hawaii to reflect on his presidency and the trials of directing the general will in a regrettably only semi-audacious political age.

Back among and within the contiguous American body politic, what will easily get lost in all the coming discussions of policies and personalities, gurus and gaffes is the critical role the presidential election process itself plays in determining the outcome of the election–and the way our current process and its trajectory make the recovery of our republic more difficult.

The constitutional framework for choosing the president is skeletal. Each state is given the freedom to choose how it will award its given number of electoral college votes (equal to the number of members it has in Congress, thus merging the Senate’s equal and the House’s proportional principles of justice). Constitutionally, there is nothing that requires a single popular vote be cast in determining the presidency, although, as Federalist 68 indicates, some sort of role for the people was assumed from the start.

What parameters there were, Hamilton explains in Federalist 68, were designed to produce a certain sort of president:

Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. This, Hamilton concluded, was “no inconsiderable recommendation of the constitution,” given the critical role “the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration.” The president, if all went according to plan, would be republican, then, in at least two senses: (1) as a judicious representative of the people, not their impassioned and impassioning mouthpiece, and (2) as their servant in carrying out the specific task assigned to the executive branch: the just and responsible administration of the laws.

How could Hamilton confidently assert that the electoral college system would produce such a republican executive? As a negative constraint, a state-centered mode of choosing electors combined with the necessity of building a winning coalition state by state would undermine the efforts of demagogues and local rabble rousers to dangerously and divisively impassion the American people. As a positive measure, the system would impress upon the new president the national character of his constituency and urge upon him a public service equally broad, within the bounds of the Constitution’s clearly-defined lines of executive responsibility, enforced by regular elections and the system of checks and balances.

The system, in essence, was designed to produce presidents with the national character and executive disposition already possessed by the man all knew would be (and wished to be) the first president, George Washington. Washington modelled his public service on the Roman republic’s farmer-statesman Cincinnatus and was chosen first president of the Society of the Cincinnati, a veterans group whose motto was Omnia reliquit servare rempublicam (“He relinquished everything to save the Republic”).

The Obama presidency has accelerated and accentuated long-standing trends that threaten to make the office everything the founders hoped to avoid. The president as passionate orator we know. The president as pen- and phone-wielding policymaker we recognize. But the president as sober, competent executor of the laws, “relinquisher of everything to save the public”? Where’d that guy go?

To be fair, he’s been slinking off the national stage for a while. Almost as soon as the founding generation had passed from the scene, a new model for the presidency arose, described in the rhetoric and embodied in the person of Andrew Jackson.

In his First Annual Message to Congress (1829), President Jackson argued that the Constitution’s presidential election system was fundamentally flawed:

To the people belongs the right of electing their Chief Magistrate; it was never designed that their choice should in any case be defeated, either by the intervention of electoral colleges or by the agency confided, under certain contingencies, to the House of Representatives. As a result, he proposed “such an amendment of the Constitution as may remove all intermediate agency in the election of the President and Vice-President” and vindicate “the first principle of our system–that the majority is to govern….”

Jackson being Jackson there is good reason to suspect that the driving force behind the proposal was as much bitterness as ideology — Jackson having lost the 1824 presidential election in the House to John Quincy Adams despite having more popular and electoral college votes than his rival (though not a majority of either). A passionate man leading a passionate movement (read any account of the 1828 presidential election) proposes a dramatic change to the Constitution that will free an impassioned people from the constraints of the electoral college: not exactly what the founders had in mind. Jackson’s proposal, of course, failed, but the idea–and presumably the understanding of American government beneath it–has had a remarkably robust following ever since.

That day may be closer than you think. Although amending the Constitution remains a daunting task (requiring, today, that 38 states approve any change), the National Popular Vote movement has struck upon a formula that will, as it were, use the electoral college system to abolish the electoral college.

Since it began polling on the question in 1944, Gallup has consistently found that a substantial majority of Americans favor abolishing the electoral college and replacing it with a system guaranteed, one way or another, to award the presidency to the popular vote winner. At present, 10 states (plus Washington, D.C.), with a total of 165 electoral college votes, have agreed to award their state’s presidential electors on the basis of the national popular vote. When that group is large enough to determine the election–that is, when it includes enough states to control 270 electoral college votes–the mutual pledge will be triggered and the electoral college, for all intents and purposes, will be gone. The assent of a group of nine additional states similar in profile to those who are already on board (relatively large and blue or purple in their politics) would do the trick. A simple majority in nineteen states, in other words, could settle the matter among themselves, bringing about what would be the final stage of the democratization of the presidency and, in all likelihood, the permanent elevation of the Obama-like orator policymaker over the sober executor.

Perhaps as striking as our long-standing, bipartisan opposition to the electoral college is the breadth of the consensus in favor of it at the time of the American founding. Alexander Hamilton notes rather mordantly at the beginning of Federalist 68 that “[t]he mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents.” As a result, Hamilton makes short work of his defense of the institution. Nevertheless, his case for the electoral college, paired with Jackson’s case on the other side above, shows just what is at stake in the debate over choosing our president: the very definition of our regime itself–republic or democracy?

If “the first principle of our system” is “that the majority should govern,” a president chosen by a national popular vote with a mandate to impose his will on any recalcitrants in Congress is the natural result. As Jackson argued, no other federal officeholder could claim to be the “direct representative of [all] the American people”–or at least most of them. But would the “divine right of the majority” give us any more justice than the “divine right of kings”? As Jefferson put it, “an elective despotism is not the government we fought for.”

On the other hand, if the first principle of our system, as understood in our founding documents, is that the natural rights of all should be preserved, we very much need a president who will faithfully execute the laws and “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”–and an election process that, as Hamilton put it, “affords a moral certainty, that the office of president will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” Applying the brakes to the National Popular Vote movement would be a start, but, as we’ll argue in subsequent essays, there’s rather more practical work to be done.

David Corbin is a Professor of Politics and Matthew Parks an Assistant Professor of Politics at The King’s College, New York City. They are co-authors of “Keeping Our Republic: Principles for a Political Reformation” (2011). You can follow their work on Twitter or Facebook.

Excellent!! Thanks for posting.

America's Founders understood that it was the ideas underlying the Constitution, and citizen understanding of those ideas, which would be essential to preservation of individual liberty. President Washington's "Farewell Address" contained warnings about what he called the "Spirit of Party" and the ability of potential future leaders to endanger liberty.

In considering the questions posed by this thread, might Washington's words might be considered cautionary?

Here is a small excerpt from that Address containing pointed references to the dilemma America may face now, when attempts may be made to "alter" the Constitution's clear restraints on power. He warned of the dangers to liberty of factions and parties and leaders who might be "more artful" than others.

"However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
"Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.
"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
"This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
"It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
"There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.
"It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
"It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?
"Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." - Excerpted from George Washington's Farewell Address

Note: Underlining added for emphasis.

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