Elizabeth Drew, an astute observer of politics in the nation’s capital, entitled a recent article in The New York Review of Books “Trump: The Presidency in Peril.” To be clear, not this president in trouble — the presidency.
For perspective, we need to go back to the best source on the intent of the framers of the Constitution, The Federalist Papers, 85 essays written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to persuade voters to ratify the proposed Constitution. Hamilton has lately become a cult hero, owing to the wildly popular Broadway musical, “Hamilton.” Now showing in Chicago as well as on Broadway, it is not yet affordable to folks like me, but I have listened to the recording, and it is marvelous.
Hamilton wrote most of the essays in The Federalist that deal with the presidency. Federalist #68 is a masterpiece of lucid and candid argumentation. He stresses that the executive office needed to be unified, its powers concentrated in the hands of a single individual. That way there would be energy in the administration of the government, and no question about responsibility.
The other virtue he saw in the Constitution’s chief executive was a capacity for secrecy where needed. In military affairs and in tracking down criminal conspiracies, there would be no leaks. The president and those he trusted could discharge their responsibilities for foreign and domestic security effectively, and the nation would know who was responsible for the outcome.
One of Hamilton’s fellow framers later remarked that everyone trusted that George Washington, who chaired the constitutional convention, would be the first president. This observer thought that the office had perhaps been modeled with an eye to Washington’s virtue; he wished the framers had employed a wary sense of what a lesser man might do with such powers.
Hamilton’s brilliant candor is marred by the convoluted foolishness later in the essay, where he bravely shoulders the burden of explaining and defending the Electoral College. Readers of this column may remember that this cockamamie scheme owed its origins to slavery: the fact that slaves labored mainly in the South, where they could not vote.
Another awful flaw emerged from the framers’ scheme for choosing the executive. It relates to the vice presidency. The original idea was to give the vice presidency to the person who finished second in the contest for the presidency, not in itself a bad idea. But when political parties — with Hamilton and Madison in the lead, for opposing parties — took over the process, it seemed silly to give the vice presidency to the person who finished second for the presidency. So they didn’t do that. Instead party leaders, and eventually party conventions, started nominating “tickets.”
Fast forward to our present situation. It has lately occurred to some of us that if President Donald Trump resigns in disgrace or is impeached and convicted by the Senate of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” Mike Pence would join a group called “accidental presidents,” those who have ascended directly to the office upon the death or removal from office of a president.
How unusual is it that a person ascends to the presidency by this route? It has happened nine times. Most of the beneficiaries are forgettable. One, Andrew Johnson, was impeached, though not convicted — saved by the vote of one senator, one of John Kennedy’s “profiles in courage.” Another, Millard Fillmore, was from Buffalo. I was born in Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo. And who around here can forget Calvin Coolidge? More recently Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford were “accidental” presidents.
What sort of president would Pence be? Not, I submit, a nonentity. There would be anguish among Trump’s legion of followers; Rush Limbaugh would be apoplectic.
But there would also be deep sighs of relief from many Republicans. For them it would mean a chance to reincarnate Ronald Reagan. For more detail on this possibility, I recommend an article by Clare Malone in the June 15 edition of FiveThirtyEight.
In any case it will not be smooth sailing. Our republic is being torn apart. Twice in my generation we have had presidents who dragged this country through the muck and mire of their own tortured souls. These experiences have shown how vulnerable we are to such leaders. Madison thought that the new federal republic built by the framers we would be saved by our economic and cultural diversity, a consequence of our vast geographical expanse. It hasn’t worked.
Is there any ground for hope in the current situation? If the American political experiment is to be saved, it will require great creativity of the coming generation. We will need strong, principled leadership, not from saints (the framers were not saints, and some of them were scoundrels), but from capable politicians, committed to our founding ideals. Most importantly, rejuvenation will require a broad, deep political culture that demands real respect for equality and liberty.
I am actually hopeful that we can do this. We are already beginning to plant the grassroots of a new republic, on the foundation of the old republic’s enduring principles.
Don Robinson, a retired professor of government at Smith College in Northampton, writes a regular column published the fourth Thursday of the month. He can be reached at drobinso@smith.edu.