Would Washington Dine Freely with Clinton?
In the wake of Election 2000, the relationship between the equally standing institutions of the United States Presidency and the United States Constitution has been subjected to much recent scrutiny. One could imagine transporting several framers of the Constitution to our time to view the meticulous hand counts, the legal wrangling, the missing and/or misleading ballots. Whether those magistrates would shake their heads in disbelief or smile and nod their approval of this function of a federal republic is a matter of humorous conjecture. Such thoughts, however, inspire further discussion about the Founders’ approval of the modern-day presidency. The United States Constitution stands as the ultimate example of higher law, a piece of parchment that has bore interpretation, reinterpretation, and interpretations of reinterpretations through practice, formal amendment, and judiciary precedent. Article II – dictating the powers, duties, and qualifications of the President and the Executive Branch – only solidifies the ambiguity of this heralded document. In turn, each of the forty-one men elected to the prestigious office have brought his own take on what defines the power of the President; time has shown some interpretations valued while others discarded by both the public, political scientists, and historians. An overwhelming number of “valued” Presidents, however, have manifested themselves in the twentieth century, where the power of the Presidency “has grown bigger, more complicated, and infinitely more visible than the Founders could have imagined” (Light 448). A recent survey of historians taken by C-SPAN showed seven of the “top ten Presidents” reigning in office since 1900 (Page N. pag. ). With increased power of the presidency a current requisite for valued status, does the office of the Presidency fit within the Founders’ view of what a President should be, and are such comparisons valid? This paper shall explore this question in detail by looking towards the United States Constitution and relevant Federalist papers in an attempt to discover the Founders’ view of Presidential power from which a comparison to the modern power can be made. The brevity of the U. S. Constitution shows itself in the lack of detail given to its second article. Article II is divided among four sections: a description of the election process and qualifications for office, a description of formal powers, a description of other formal duties, and a brief provision for removal by Impeachment and conviction. Among the formal powers given to the President include his or her position as “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States,” the ability to grant reprieves and pardons except in the case of Impeachment, and the powers to make treaties and appoint ambassadors, counsels, and judges “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate” (II.2). The power to veto or sign bills into law is actually explicitly given in Article I of the Constitution as a check against Congress. Analysis of this dry but all-too-important article of the Constitution reveals little else but the straightforward nature of the document of the whole. On the other hand, a comparison with Article I raises some issues. The position of the article itself – following an article devoted to Congress – could imply a perception that the Legislative Branch was of greater importance to the Founders than the Executive Branch. The substantially greater length of the first article, with more powers specifically given to each house with and a clause for elasticity, helps support this theory.