An introduction to the main themes of the American Constitution—popular sovereignty, separation of powers, federalism, and rights.
America's First Officer, Part 1
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America's First Officer
In this module you'll find out what about George Washington made him so uniquely qualified for the task of being our nation's first president. Learn how his actions before, during, and after his time in office set precedents which are still followed today.
與講師見面
Akhil Reed AmarSterling Professor of Law and Political Science
Yale Law School
Welcome back.
In our previous sessions, we've been talking about the Preamble of the
Constitution, its first sentence, and Article
One, the Congressional powers and Congressional structure.
We're now going to be transitioning into the next article
of the Constitution, Article Two, all about the Presidency.
We'll, we'll talk about the structure of the
Presidency, and also then talk about specific Presidential powers.
We're going to talk about words.
The very word, "the President", for example,
but we're also going to talk about numbers.
The number one.
There's one President. We'll talk about the number four.
He serves for four years. The number 35.
The age at which one becomes eligible for the Presidency.
We'll, we'll talk about the number of
electors, how the Electoral College was actually, designed.
And why it was designed. How it was apportioned.
So let's begin.
And eventually we're going to talk a lot about this
picture, which is a, a painting of the Washington family,
a very famous painting, which will actually, I think, sum
up a lot of the features of the founder's Presidency.
If you actually understand this picture, you
understand a lot about the early Presidency.
Let's begin with the very, word "President".
Now under the Articles of Confederation,
there was a presiding officer, a President,
but he looked nothing like the Presidency, like the President under the Constitution.
That, that presiding officer in the Articles
of Confederation was basically just a fellow
who held a gavel in the, the Congress, who sort of was picked by members
of Congress and who rotated, out of, of that office, quite, frequently.
That person had no independent, national mandate, independent of
Congress. Had no, veto pen, no pardon pen.
No power of appointment.
No direct superintendence of an executive branch of government.
No commander-in-chief power.
No explicit authority to receive ambassadors.
No implied authority to negotiate treaties and conduct foreign policy.
No, immunity from, no fixed term of office.
No immunity from being instructed or even re-,
recalled by his, state's delegation, by his state legislature.
so,
no, no nation-, no guaranteed national salary.
A very short term of office,
very different from four years, perpetually re-eligible.
No entitlement in-, indeed, to serve, again
and again and again without, mandatory rotation.
So, that President under the Articles of Confederation was just
the, the, the faintest shadow of the Presidency under the Constitution.
So, so one question is, why did they call the person President, then?
And I think one idea may have been to
slightly ease the transition, from, the Articles of Confederation.
To try to persuade, Americans that this new system wasn't a total break with
everything that they had come to, expect under the Articles of Confederation.
Remember that, in Article One,
the, the Constitution calls the first branch Congress.
Just as under the Articles of
Confederation, there's a thing called Congress.
But recall that the new Congress is really
different than the old Congress, as we talked about.
It's a real legislature.
It's bicameral.
It's going to be able to pass laws, it's, one branch
is going to be directly, repre-, elected by, by ordinary people.
A very, very different kind
of body.
Even the Senate, which is the part of the
new Congress that looks most like the old Congress.
Insofar as the Senate is picked by state legislatures
originally, as were Congressman of the Articles of Confederation.
Each state is represented equally in the Senate
as was true under the Articles of Confederation.
So in those two respects, the Senate looks a little like the old, the new Senate
looks a little like the old Congress, but
even the new Senate, recall, is fundamentally different in
that, Senators are going to be voting as
individuals, per capita, rather than as a state block.
They're going to serve for six-year terms rather than for one-year terms.
They are going to be immune from,
from state recall and mandatory in, instruction.
They're going to be paid by the national government.
They're going to be perpetually
re-eligible, whereas under the Articles of Fed, Confederation, there
were sort of mandatory term limits for these, ambassador-like, congressmen,
who, who basically voted as a bloc, as a delegation,
and a thing that looked a lot like the UN.
So the Senate, the new Senate looks a little like
the old Congress and yet even there we see profound differences.
Now, with the Presidency, a new President looks almost
nothing like the old presiding officer under the Articles of Confederation.
So one idea, though, was still we'll use these old labels and that will make this
new office, perhaps, go down a little easier with, with ordinary citizens.
And here's a second reason.
I think the Framers understood that
the first president would be George Washington.
We'll talk
a lot about why that's so.
In fact, over the course of these lectures,
George Washington will emerge again and again and again
as someone whom, whom we need to understand in,
in a deep way to understand our, our Constitution.
Recall that, at the Philadelphia convention that drafted
the Constitution, Washington was actually the presiding
officer of that convention and there he really was a
little bit like the presiding officer under the Articles of Confederation.
He held a gavel, but he didn't have all sorts of vast powers, at least
formal powers at Philadelphia, he had a lot
of informal sway because everyone, so respected him.
And, indeed, everyone at Philadelphia and throughout the country knew that,
Washington, if Virginia ratifies the constitution, will be
the first, chief executive of the United States.
He, he towers head and shoulder above everyone else and, in some ways, they
designed, the Philadelphia Framers did, the Presidency for George Washington.
And, in this way, I think, it was perhaps apt that, they decided to call
this new chief executive President because, of course, that was
the label that George Washington had at the Philadelphia convention.
He was the presiding officer.
The "president" at Philadelphia.
He was referred to at Philadelphia as "Mister President".
And so I think maybe one idea is just they became
so comfortable with the idea of calling George Washington "Mister President",
in Philadelphia, that they, used that explicit label for the new office,
the chief executive position under the
Constitution that they designed for George Washington.
Now, one other related difference between the presiding officer under
the Constitution and the presiding officer under the Article of Confederation is
the presiding officer, under the Articles of Confederation, the President,
if you will, basically was there when Congress was in session.
The Congress wasn't always in session.
It didn't always have a quorum.
The new President is going to be President of
the United States, not merely President of Congress.
And the United States as an entity, as an ongoing entity, is always in session.
So I began
by saying we're going to be talking about some numbers.
A key number is the number one.
There was one and only one president at any time.
That's not true of Congress, which is a multi-member body.
Two houses, each house, actually needed to be big enough to be
genuinel,y representative of, to enjoy the confidence of the citizenry.
The judiciary's a multi-member body.
The Presidency is singular and unique.
It revolves around one person and let me give you a couple of other numbers.
One person, 24,seven, 365, one
person always there. Congress will go in and out of session.
Courts will go in and out of session. But America is always in session.
Always needs a presiding officer
at the helm. That person is the President.
And there may be emergencies that arise, crises...
Foreign invasions, foreign policy crises,
hurricanes, and the like. And those opportunities,
maybe land will become, available, in the west if Napoleon is,
suddenly interested maybe in selling, the
entire Louisiana, territory to the United States.
There are going to be unique challenges and opportunities that may
arise, and when they arise, Congress might not be in session,.
Court, the Supreme Court might not be in session.
They, they, they take summer breaks, but the Presidency will always be in session.
He's the President of the United States.
And, and one important
way, then, to think about this office is what sorts of things
need to get done to preserve the United States as an ongoing enterprise.
and, and when you ask yourself that
question, you can begin to see how presidents
may sometimes at, at least temporarily, need to
do things to keep the United States afloat.
To respond to challenge, challenges or opportunities,
until the Congress can be brought back into session.
So one president.
24, seven, 365, all this at the helm, all this, in session
because America is always in session. Okay, so I've talked about some numbers.
The number one, 24, seven, 365. Let's talk now
about the number four. The Presidency is a four-year
term of office.
And at the founding, perpetually re-eligible.
You can be elected again and again and again.
And you might say, "well, what's the big deal"?
Today you look out and most governors have
four-year terms, but that wasn't true at the founding.
Modern governorships, and I'm going to come
back to this, have actually emerged as,
imitations to some extent. Echoes of the modern Presidency.
When the Constitution was drafted, no
chief executive, no governor, no president.
Some of the states called their
chief executives "governors", some called them "presidents".
The ones who called their chief executives "presidents",
by the way, had particularly weak presiding officers.
"Governors", as a rule, were stronger than "presidents" in the various states,
but no state gave its chief executive a four-year term.
And the state with the most powerful
governorship, which is probably Massachusetts, that's the one
state where the governor had, a veto pen
that he uniquely wielded, it's a one-year term.
In most states, it's actually a one-year term of office.
Only New York has a three-year term, and now the Framers
of the Constitution are proposing to give a President a four-year term.
And they're creating a vastly more powerful President than
any state, governorship because now this President's going to be able to pick his
own advisers rather than be stuck with a, a, a council picked by the legislature.
The President's going to, in fact, pick his own cabinet officers.
He's going to have a veto pen, which only Massachusetts has.
A more powerful pardon pen than in most of the states.
He's going to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
And he's going to be able to receive ambassadors, and be head of state.
He's going to have vast powers.
Vastly more powers than any state governor has,
and now you're giving him a much longer
term of office, than most states.
I believe, I think 10 of the 13 states, I think, had, had one-year terms.
I have to double check on that, but it's something like that.
So why, oh, and he's independently elected
of the legislature, too. in, in most states,
in eight of the 13 states, the legislature picks the chief executive,
rather than being independently elected.
So, so why would you give him a four-year term?
And I think there are two stories here. There's a domestic balance, story.
A kind of checks and balances story. And there's, a geostrategic story.
An international law, international and foreign affairs story.
Here's the domestic story.
Remember that the Framers are modeling their Constitution in some
respects on states, but then they're tweaking some of the numbers.
Because of geography, we're going to have a, members of
the House of Representatives elected every two years and Senators every six years.
because it takes longer to get from the extremes
of the continent to the national capital, more travel time.
because it takes a little longer
to bone up on foreign affairs.
To actually learn about, other parts of the country, other parts of the world.
So you need to give,
federal law makers a little bit more time in office, because of the learning curve.
so, so if you're going to have, and so in
states, most of the, state legislators are picked annually.
But members of Congress, House
of Representatives, every two years, biannually.
Senators every six years.
So a four-year Presidency kind of roughly counterbalances
two and six.
In states, if you've got a one-year, House of Representatives, and maybe even
a one-year Senate, well, then maybe you want a one-year chief executive position.
So there's a kind of balance within the state that
your executive, office roughly counterbalances
the legislative term of office.
But because, for geographic reasons in part, we're going to have a longer term
of office for members of the House and the Senate, we should have a counterbalancing
longer term of office for the Presidency. Now there's some
other, that's the kind of, the domestic balance story.
The idea was we're creating a much more powerful legislature,
a much more powerful Congress than we had in the Articles of Confederation.
So to counterbalance that more powerful Congress, we need
a more powerful executive.
Precisely because this new Congress is going to have a lot more power, we
have to break up its power with bicameralism compared to the old Congress.
And counterbalance it with an executive who going to to be able
to keep it in check, for example, with a muscular veto pen.
Many of the Framers, led by James Madison at Philadelphia, thought that
state governments had kind of gone, spiraled out of control a little bit.
That state legislatures
were too dominant.
Within state governments, they ran roughshod over rights.
They weren't strongly enough counterbalanced
by judges and by, state executives.
And so if this new federal government was going
to avoid the mistakes that some of the state governments
had made, we needed to break the legislature up into
two, break the old Congress into two houses, and counterbalance
it with a stronger executive who has a longer
term of office, an independent mandate, a veto pen.
Someone who basically, would resist, the inclination to, to
vote for stuff that might seem popular in the moment,
but actually would be contrary to the long term interests
of the American people, to, considerations of justice and fairness.
One individual legislator might not care that much about his reputation.
No one's really going to notice whether he goes along or not.
But a President, he would care about history and reputation because he'd
be one person with all eyes on him and so you want to get that person a little
more, powerful base to resist legislative encroachments.
So that's the domestic balance story. The foreign affairs story is this person,
your chief executive, is going to have to go
up against other heads of state in the world.
And they're, they serve for life.
They're hereditary.
And so you want some stability in foreign affairs.
And so you want someone who actually is going to be
able to look a treaty partner in the eye and
basically say,"Listen, I'm going to be able to, I speak for
the American people not just in this, this month, this year,
but more enduringly".
so, there's the domestic story to counterbalance
the legislature and a foreign affairs story.
Both of which argued for a longer term, of office.
Now here's the interesting thing.
Once the Framers of the Constitution got the American
people to go for this two, four, six model.
Two year House, four year presidency, six year, Senate.
Some of the states actually began to adjust and began
to move away from annual elections for lawmakers to biannual.
now, as I said, in, in, I think, 48 of the 50 states,
you have governors who served for, for four years on the Presidential model.
And that, that gradual shift away from annual elections to, longer
terms of office begins with the adoption of the Constitution itself.
And shortly thereafter, states start to
amend their constitutions to create longer, terms
of office for governors and, and now
longer terms of office for legislators, too.
It's not just four years, though, remember?
It's four years perpetually re-eligible.
You can run again and again and again for life, no term limits.
Now, today, the Constitution's been amended.
A President can't be elected for
more than two, two terms.
Ten years in total because you could imagine a half-term.
We'll talk about that in later sessions,
but at the founding, President was perpetually re-eligible.
and, and in the states, those governors who were perpetually
re-eligible basically almost always kept running again and again and again.
And they either died in office or left office very shortly before their death.
John Hancock,
basically, it's annual in Massachusetts, he's the
governor of Massachusetts, he runs again and again.
He steps down very briefly in the mid-1780s and then
keeps running again and again, and he dies in office.
And the governor of New Jersey, Livingston, again and
again and again and then he dies in office.
And the governor of Connecticut runs again and again
and again, and steps down a year before his death.
George Clinton, remember,
in New York, it's a three year term.
I think he serves six terms, almost two decades.
Steps down briefly and then is elected even for a seventh term.
He ends up dying in office, not as governor of
New York, but as Vice President of the United States.
George Washington sets a different example, he does not die in office.
He got unanimously elected, every single elector voted for him.
We're going to talk about the electoral
college in our next session. He got unanimously re-elected.
He could have been, I think, unanimously re-re-elected in
1796-97, but he chose to step down. And, in choosing to step
down, he began a tradition which is going to later become
constitutionalized in the Constitutional Amendment of a two-term presidency.
So he sets, a different, example than the state governors, had.
had, had Washington stayed in office until his death,
maybe a tradition might have emerged in which the
Presidency became kind of a lifetime office as a
practical matter, instead of what it has now, become.
So the text says four years perpetually re-eligible, but Washington begins to
establish a different tradition.
Washington, in fact, establishes all sorts of precedents, therefore.
Not just as our first President, and he does
all sorts of things that later Presidents will, will imitate,
but he also set some important precedents as our first,
he sets important precedents, excuse me, as our first Ex-president.
He comes to embody the idea of an elder statesman, who, who's available
for advice, if necessary, but
isn't constantly intervening in, national affairs.
Allows the successor, basically, to govern peacefully, hands off power
to someone else, and then fades back into the farm, goes to the ranch.
and, and, and that model is not as visible in the
text of the original written Constitution which, which, as I said,
envisions perpetual re-eligibility.
It's the model, instead, that, that, is, embodied by, the,
the choices made by, by George Washington.
Most particularly to leave office, even though he could have been re-elected.
In our next session, we're going to talk a lot about Washington.
We're going to talk also about, the
electoral college and how it's apportioned.
We're going to talk about eligibility rules for the Presidency.
We'll talk about, for example, another number, 35 years.
And I'm going to end that session, with, this, this, picture, which
is, from, a chapter of the book, America's Constitution: a Biography.
We're now into chapter four.
This is the picture that begins chapter
four, and we're going to end our next session,
with a careful examination of this, of
this painting, which is of the Washington family.
I'm going to try to persuade you that, if you understand the early Presidency,
you understand a lot of elements of this painting.
This painting is going to sum up a lot of the
great themes of American's Presidency under
the original Constitutions, so stayed tuned.
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