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.
They wanted everyone to be non partisan. Political parties were almost universally considered a Bad Thing by the founding fathers. For a long time after independence that was the case.
I was making a slightly different point with ambition, but I think yours is better. Your usage is illuminating and can explain why that all happened. Personal ambition creates a stepping stone (if not to President, then to lifelong Congressman that makes $$, or board seat that makes $$, or whatever). Congress is certainly OK with increasing Presidential power by not rocking the boat.
I was using ambition to explain that Congressmen would ambitiously push Art I powers to the max (Let’s really push, abuse even, our power to tax, or declare war, or etc.) An ambitious president would push Art II powers to the max. By design of the Constitution, those ambitions meet and get hashed out and we move along as one Country (“ambition must be made to counteract ambition”). Which does happen, but much less now. The usual situation is the President pushing his powers to the max and Congress not attempting to push back against it with their power. I think it’s because parties push together with the President as one entity (R Pres / R Congress = one entity, not two).
I don’t think the Founders thought Congress would just abdicate their Art I power like they have in favor of their party. I think the founders would be more confused by what Congress is (not) doing than what the President is able to do - I don’t think they thought party loyalty would be so concrete and encompassing. Like, a powerful President emerging in this scenario over decades would be logical. We don’t really fear a powerful President anymore, we embrace it (or at least quietly tolerate), we just want them to be in our Party.
Maybe we would have been better off if Geo Washington had taken the offer to become King or America. He didn’t have any direct descendants to carry on, but he could have adopted – many of the best of the Roman emperors were the adopted ones rather than actual sons. After all, the UK under Elizabeth II (all my lifetime) seems to be doing fairly well – She seems to have met most of the items Expano asked of He above.
As an American I must stand against this slur to our sacred Founding non-Father.
Lizzie had exactly no power to do a damn thing. She was a Symbol, well, of an institution that a sizable fraction of the population finds execrable, but not a Leader nor a Chair nor an Executive. She established no norms and made no vital decisions. She appointed no one and dealt with no crisis. She acted toward foreign powers with the same nothingness that oozed out of her at home. She might as well have been a hologram.
Please discuss terms with my seconds for this dastardly dismissal.
I personally believe that as well, as I personally think that their I inevitable consequence is partisanship at the expense of compromise. That’s a contributing reason behind my question; ISTM that your founders set up something that should have worked quite well, except that it must have been predicated on enlightenment period optimism.
When the Blessed Founders were establishing the system of checks and balances that protect and ensure the rule of law in our once-proud nation they assumed pro-American majorities in Congress and on the Supreme Court.
Rookie mistake.
When the founding fathers were drafting the constitutional documents in the late 1700’s it took 7 days to travel from Boston to the capital in Philadelphia, and 6-10 weeks to get a message sent to Europe. Politicians barely campaigned but relied on their platforms being distributed.
While the US Constitution was truly great for its time, maybe - just maybe Americans shouldn’t be so fixated on what people 250 years ago thought were the best rules of law. It really needs to be tossed and rewritten from scratch with modern ideals and values.
I actually think this is a big part the reason the US winds up in their messes (like Trumps authoritarian seizing of power). There is so much low hanging fruit that should be modernized - like the unequal distribution of the electoral college votes and having to be a 2-1/2 month time gap between a vote and the actual transfer of power. Many other democratic countries have much more recently written Constitutions/Bills of Rights etc. - often because they could observe the American model and improve upon it.
I can see two ways of looking at this.
In one sense, yeah duh, of course they suck. We currently have a party in a two party systems that are happy to do absolutely anything to ensure their party gets and keeps power, even it means destroying the entire system and installing a fascist dictator. It’s got to the point were even in foreign policy being a valuable ally of the US means nothing. The only thing that matters is if you have sufficiently kowtowed to, and enriched, the head of the GOP.
On the other that’s kind of a return to the norm before party politics, before you had political parties you had factions that were almost entirely based around individuals, and their relationships, with actual policy differences being secondary (or non existent). When one faction won, they received absolute power, and the other was at best completely removed from power in any form, and at worse exiled or executed.
re: Compromise
I’ll take a different approach. Compromise fascinates me. I’m a lawyer and talk about the concept with my clients all the time - usually these clients have family that also are invested in the outcome but don’t have a say in the litigation. Very generally, everyone absolutely is for the concept of compromise. Yes, of course. Those stupid politicians hate it, but I don’t. But when it comes time to put pen to paper, nobody wants to compromise. Nope. Why should I (blah blah blah)…when they won’t (blah blah blah)…it’s not fair…I deserve no less than… Over time I learned how to handle this, well in advance of pen to paper - it’s mostly listening. The conversations are difficult, but having private conversations, 1 on 1, over time, makes the concept easier to grasp and understand that maybe compromise will get something accomplished.
Now to my point. I think there is an argument for less transparency in politics. It’s all very much theatre and performative now. It’s hard, maybe impossible, to compromise in that kind of environment. It’s too transparent. It’s not just the politician that needs to compromise, but everyone watching needs to accept it too. Not going to happen.
Not sure how to fix it. Outside of a free press, something needs to adapt to our everything is transparent reality we live in for compromise to survive. It’s led to a mob rule style of governing.
I believe that it was expected that the president take care that the laws be faithfully executed, which makes them subordinate to congress. But it was up to congress to impeach and convict them if they didn’t. Congress’s biggest mistake was to give him emergency powers without requiring that congress approve their use within a reasonable time.
We’re so used to seeing Congress in almost continual session that nobody can comprehend how seldom Congress was active in the early years. Except for the very first Congress, which had a lot to do, Congresses rarely sat for more than six months of a two year term. Even weirder, a Congress normally did not convene at all for a full year after an election.
Giving the President emergency powers, since he had to Pres 365 days a year, was the only sensible strategy in a world of slow communications, glacial movement, and minimal governmental activity.
We live in a reverse of that world, when communications and events are almost instant, while even active Congresses normally can’t react within the necessary timelines. Again, giving the President emergency powers became a necessity, or at least a perceived one in a post-WWII world when a missile could strike any moment.
That Congress has given away far too many powers, and loosened the meaning of a national security emergency to Humpty Dumpty level, is all too obvious today. But as with many others things, short-term thinking allowed the chasm to wider imperceptibly until we all fell in.
[Seriously, spell-check? You don’t recognize Humpty Dumpty as words?]