Mr. President (12 page)

So they marveled—and then continued with their business. In the following week, they considered the terms for legislators in the lower branch (one, two, and three years were the options) and the upper branch (four, five, six, seven, and nine years were placed on the table). They argued too over who, if anybody, should pay these public servants—the states (which would make them subservient to local interests) or Congress (which meant they would be paying themselves)—and of course they returned, time and again, to the potentially disastrous matter of proportional versus state representation. Day after day, issue after issue, they continued, and on June 28, late in the afternoon, Benjamin Franklin, not prone to religious excess, called upon a higher power to settle their differences:

But the delegates couldn’t even agree on that. Without voting on God’s assistance, they adjourned.

All this round-and-about was anathema to Alexander Hamilton, the very proof that democratic ways lead to chaos. In the days following his speech, he reaffirmed his commitment to his extreme views time and time again. June 21: the states should indeed be abolished. June 22, in support of monarchy: people undervalued the true worth of royal corruption, “an essential part of the weight which maintained the equilibrium of the Constitution.” June 26, as recorded by Madison: “He [Hamilton] acknowledged himself not to think favorably of Republican Government; but addressed his remarks to those who did think favorably of it, in order to prevail on them to tone their Government as high as possible.” His ideas, though, were not receiving serious consideration. Even his vote had become meaningless, effectively overridden in the three-man New York delegation by John Lansing and Robert Yates, who remained opposed to the very idea of a central government and voted against all attempts to strengthen it.

So why stay? On June 29, frustrated and restless, Alexander Hamilton took his leave and headed back to New York. With his departure, the convention lost its most unapologetic advocate of executive power. Whatever the chief executive was to become in later years, this group of statesmen did not wish him to be an almost king, as Hamilton would have preferred.

On July 17, a month after Hamilton had proposed an elective monarch, delegates resumed their discussion of the executive. By then, six weeks had elapsed since they had settled on the outlines of the new executive branch of government. It was a good time to revisit that first draft, evaluate it in light of later decisions, and see if it still looked sound. One by one, they took up the resolutions they had already passed.

Should they stick with a single executive? Yes, by acclamation of the state delegations. This did not mean that certain individuals, notably
Edmund Randolph, George Mason, and William Paterson, had changed their minds, but they were no longer making a fuss over the matter.

Should the single executive be charged with executing the national laws? Of course, by definition. No dissent there.

Make appointments to offices not otherwise provided for? That too was just fine.

Possess the negative over acts of the legislature, subject to override by a two-thirds vote? Somewhat surprisingly, delegates had made their peace with a limited veto. There was no opposition to this either.

Should the single executive be chosen by the national legislature? Here was a point of contention. Gouverneur Morris predicted this would render the choice of the executive “the work of intrigue, of cabal, and of faction.” James Wilson argued it would destroy the executive’s independence and make it impossible for him “to stand the mediator,” but the alternative—selection by the people—still seemed frightening. “It would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for chief Magistrate to the people,” George Mason pronounced, “as it would, to refer a trial of colours to a blind man.” Morris’s motion to have the executive chosen by “citizens of the United States,” instead of the “National Legislature,” failed, receiving only the single vote of Pennsylvania, Morris’s and Wilson’s state. In some manner yet to be determined, Congress would choose the chief executive.

Should the executive be ineligible for a second term? This too was back in play. Gouverneur Morris offered a simple but strong argument against ineligibility: “It was saying to him, make hay while the sun shines.” After some debate, six states voted to allow more than one term, while four stood firm—hardly a convincing result, but at least for the time being, the chief executive could be reelected.

If the executive could be returned to office, however, was seven years still an appropriate term? Many delegates thought not. A few, like Morris and Dr. James McClurg of Virginia, reasoned that reelection eliminated the need for
any
specified term; the legislature that appointed him could also remove him whenever it wished. The executive would therefore serve “during good behavior”—nothing more need be stated. Yet “not more than three or four” delegates saw it that way, according to Madison’s notes. A stronger challenge to seven-year terms came from those now wanting shorter spans, but these differed as to
the preferred length, and no specific number garnered enough votes to unseat “seven.”

That was the confused state of affairs when Gouverneur Morris, the first speaker on the morning of July 19, took charge. Like Hamilton, Morris was an extremely effective debater—so gifted, in fact, that William Pierce gave him five stars in that regard:

Unlike Hamilton, however, Morris could not only capture the attention of this assembly but also change its direction.

Morris tended to play large, and he certainly did so now. “It is necessary to take into one view all that relates to the establishment of the Executive,” he commenced, “on the due formation of which must depend the efficacy & utility of the Union among the present and future States.” Prior debates had focused on particular aspects, he said, but the enormity of the task required they all be considered together. “Our Country is an extensive one. We must either then renounce the blessings of the Union, or provide an Executive with sufficient vigor to pervade every part of it”—and vigor, at the very least, required independence. Although all delegates gave lip service to an “independent” executive, they would be contradicting that principle if they gave the power of his appointment, and worse yet the power of his impeachment, to the legislature. Morris had been arguing this point all along, but now that the chief executive could repeat in office, his dependence on the legislature was more apparent than ever. To gain reelection, he would have to court legislators—the exact reverse of how it should be. “One great object of the Executive is to control the Legislature,” Morris pronounced, as both he and Wilson had done before, but this time he went a step further. The executive must be “guardian of the people,
even of the lower classes, against Legislative tyranny, against the great and the wealthy who in the course of things will necessarily compose the Legislative body.”

Was Gouverneur Morris, son of a lord, really crying out against “the great and the wealthy,” his own class? Back in 1774, during the height of popular resistance to imperial authority, Morris happened to be watching a large meeting in front of New York’s Fraunces Tavern: “I stood on the balcony, and on my right hand were ranged all the people of property, with some few poor dependants, and on the other all the tradesmen … who thought it worth their while to leave daily labor for the good of the country.” Identifying with the men of property, he had expressed his feelings about those beneath him:

Yet now he vowed to create an executive strong enough to protect those “poor reptiles” from men like himself.

This was part of Morris’s larger scheme, an extreme variant of the “checks and balances” strategy that served as the foundation for much of the discussion at the convention. While most delegates believed that the two branches of the legislature should represent somewhat different interests and serve as checks upon each other, Morris, like Hamilton, thought the branches should be taken to their extremes: a “democratic” branch to represent the masses, offset by a consciously “aristocratic” one to serve the interests of the very top rung of society. Both democratic and aristocratic interests presented grave dangers, but by keeping them separate and distinct, the framers could ensure they curb each other’s “excesses.” “Vices as they exist must be turned against each other,” he had said back on July 2. Yet while he once had seemed most fearful of the lower orders, now he expressed an equal concern that “the rich will strive to establish their dominion & enslave the rest. They always did.
They always will…. Wealth tends to corrupt and to nourish its love of power, and to stimulate it to oppression.”

The popular branch alone could not check this drive for power. “The rich will take advantage of their passions & make these the instruments for oppressing them,” he stated. That’s why delegates needed to create a truly independent executive who could function as “the great protector of the mass of the people.” He could hardly protect the people against legislative usurpations if he owed his job, and his continuance in office through reelection, to the very legislators he was supposed to hold in check.

There was an alternative. If the executive was to be “the guardian of the people,” why not “let him be appointed by the people”? Delegates had long distrusted this concept, Morris not the least among them, but suddenly, driven by pure logic, he overcame his aversion—at least for the moment. If the people themselves chose their “protector,” and if they were the only ones empowered to keep him in office, he would be free to curb legislative abuse. That was the circuitous route that turned Gouverneur Morris, an even less likely democrat than James Wilson, into a champion of popular election of the executive.

Further, Morris warned that if the legislature held the power of impeachment, the executive’s independence would be even more seriously undermined. In that case, when the chief executive tried to check the legislature, legislators would simply remove him from office. But if impeachment by the legislature was not a desirable option, who could hold an inept or corrupt executive in line?

Morris’s reasoning here led him to uncharted terrain. If the executive was eligible to repeat in office, and if each term was short enough, the people themselves, by refusing to return him to office, would hold what amounted to the power of impeachment. That’s why Gouverneur Morris, who only two days before had argued that the executive should remain in office “during good behavior,” possibly for life, suddenly suggested that his term be only
two
years—a shorter period than any of the delegates had yet suggested. If an executive misbehaved or failed to perform his functions, he would simply lose the next election. Reeligibility and frequent elections, taken together, supplanted the need for impeachment and the problems it created. Unlike impeachment, Morris’s system would not subject the president to the whims of Congress, nor would it turn changes of leadership into cataclysmic events.
Orderly transfers of executive authority, when necessary, would be built into the very fabric of the system.

Here at last was a plan that was totally interconnected, with each component—popular election, reeligibility, short terms, and “impeachment” only by the people through the electoral process—logically pinned to the others. Morris’s schema, radically more democratic than anyone but James Wilson had dared envisage, gave the people themselves a prominent place in the electoral process. Would this assembly of gentry dismiss it as out of the mainstream, as they did with Hamilton’s?

No, they took Gouverneur Morris seriously. When Morris moved at the end of his presentation “that the whole constitution of the Executive might undergo reconsideration,” the state delegations unanimously consented.

Something remarkable was happening. Through many of the prior debates, the delegates’ vested interests had shaped their positions to an embarrassing degree. They had been not disinterested leaders, as good republicans should be, but obedient representatives from small states or large, “carrying states” or those with less trade, states that depended on slave labor or those that did not, yet quite unexpectedly Gouverneur Morris, as aristocratic as any of the delegates, and as haughty in his demeanor, was moving in a direction that ran counter to his class interests. He challenged some of his very own prior notions. Openly, he was changing his mind, and following his lead, others granted themselves permission to do likewise.

As delegates reconsidered their prior positions, the arguments crystallized. With cold, hard logic, Morris had demonstrated how legislative selection required ineligibility for a second term, lest the executive saddle up to Congress to gain reelection, and ineligibility, in turn, required longer terms in office, so the executive would have enough time to become proficient at his job before being forced out. These elements belonged in a single package, while Morris’s proposed alternatives—popular election, reeligibility, and short terms—belonged in another. On the very first day of debating the executive office, James Wilson had suggested the very measures Morris was now presenting,
but he did not fully demonstrate their interconnection. Now Morris showed there were two
sets
of choices, and delegates would have to select one of them.