When the founding fathers set up the checks and balances of the president, congress etc, was it their intent that the president be non-partisan, and subject to the decisions of the other branches of government? That is, was he (or she, presumably at some point) intended to not be affiliated with a political party and to serve more as a chair?
As a chair? No. As an executive.
Many of the founders fully expected political parties, and were instrumental in creating them (Adams and Hamilton the Federalists, Madison and Jefferson the Democratic Republicans). So no, I don’t think it’s right to say that all of the founders expected the President to be non-partisan. Washington hoped for that, as did Hamilton. Jefferson knew better.
The executive was a co-equal branch of government. It was not subservient to Congress, but also wasn’t supposed to be able to function independently.
When the Founding Fathers set up the US, the expectation, by default, was that everyone would be nonpartisan, because they didn’t even anticipate the concept of political parties at all. They probably should have, but they didn’t.
I think they certainly were aware of parties. They just hated what faction and party had done in Britain (Civil wars, etc) and hoped that if they could just get the balance right they could create a republic that didn’t need them. They were wrong, of course.
Jefferson seemed to realize pretty early on that the system (particularly the electoral college, but also the Congressional structure) would require parties, and likely two of them.
You can read some thoughts on “faction” (basically parties) in Federalist 10 here: The Avalon Project : The Federalist Papers No. 10
Basically Madison says you can’t remove the causes of faction (they are inevitable) so you can only reduce their effects. He thought that having a representative republic, rather than a direct democracy, might reduce faction. That features such as the states selecting Senators might mitigate factionalism, for example. He also thought having more people in the electorate would help (ironic considering how small we consider the initial electorate to be).
Hamilton did similar in Federalist 9, but I haven’t read that one recently.
Yea, it definitely became problem when John Adams became president. He was a Federalist, and his vice president (Thomas Jefferson) was a Democratic Republican. And it really came to a head in 1800, when Jefferson and Aaron Burr - who hated each other, despite being in the same party - were tied in the Electoral College. These problems were “fixed” after the Twelfth Amendment was ratified.
It seems to me that they envisioned a POTUS with less power than what we have today, but I doubt being non-partisan was ever seriously entertained. Other than Washington, we don’t have any examples of a non-partisan POTUS, so clearly the idea was abandoned early on, if it was ever even there to begin with.
I don’t think the intent was that the President would not be affiliated with political parties.
I just don’t think the founding fathers envisioned the modern politics where the President dominates the party. I think the founder envisioned ambitious Presidents and ambitious Congressmen. The friction between them, by design, would push back on each other and each would keep the other in check. Instead, we now have people who are party members first, and congressmen second. They are not ambitious enough as congressmen to stand up for their branch of government and only stand up for their party.
Perhaps the key point that they missed is that Congressmembers and Presidents are drawn from the same pool of people, while Parliament and monarchs are not. Most MPs can never be anything but an MP, and so the only way for an ambitious MP to increase their own personal power is to increase the power of Parliament. But an ambitious Congressmember hopes to someday be President themself, and so are OK with increasing the power they will (eventually, they hope) hold.
The Constitutional Convention was an odd mixture of mouthing high ideals while pushing interest-group politics. There were demands, compromises, pouts, walk-outs, and late-night drinking. The states were divided on almost everything except slavery, where there were only two sides instead of 13, and the delegates within states often could barely stand one another and frequently didn’t vote together.
The high ideals included the notion that the best and brightest men in the states, i.e. men just like them, would get together, argue out all the issues, and agree on a best course for the nation. That’s why the House, as representatives of the peoples’ varied interests, rather than the elites of the appointed Senate, had by far the greater prestige in the early years.
Parties were not mentioned, to my memory, although the coverage of the proceedings was spotty, recorded in dairies and not revealed until much later. Factions, as mentioned above, were very much on their minds, however. They wanted to prevent them and their demands for speedy action. The elites of the Senate were supposed to cool down the hot heads. (Leading to an apocryphal saucer metaphor a century later.)
What didn’t have was a notion of what a President was supposed to be or do, other than the shining image of George Washington. HE was above faction. HE wouldn’t join a party. HE would preside over all equally. HE would always take the best course. HE would have a veto over the actions of Congress when they got out of line. HE would be a Leader, and a Chair, and an Executive, and a Symbol. Yes, there was a cult of Washington that far exceeds anything we have seen since. After him, maybe the deluge, but he could be trusted to set the best example.
He did. And the deluge happened anyway.