The Federalist Papers.. Alexander Hamilton
Hi,
I was reading through a couple of the Federalist Papers and I am not sure if I am understand and interpreting The Federalist No. 76 and 77 concerning the appointing power of the executive and others which were also mentioned as well. I didn't want to look up the translation on one of the websites for this just yet. I thought I would try to see if I could understand this on my own and then compare my results later on.. Anyhow, what I have is a little bit long that I have typed but if you have the time I would like to hear your feedback and whether I am on point with what I am reading or completely off the course.
The Constitutional Convention in 1787 formed a committee to resolve the question of how to select the president. The office of the president is a new kind of office. It is not a king or prime minister and the founders were having great difficulty trying to figure out what the powers of the presidency are and how to go about choosing that person. There are several criss-crossing coalitions and interest groups here. In the end, the creation of what is known as the Electoral College comes into play. It did not reflect a philosophical view of what it should be. Instead, it reflected a series of political compromises.
The second paragraph is saying that a good administration is only as good as its people in it. The character of an administration is revealed by the choices the president makes in his appointments.
There is a compromise between those who wanted the states to be more powerful than the federal government. They wanted northern votes to count more than southern votes or to balance against the 3/5’s Clause that provided the south with extra electoral votes. This means that there is a whole group of people that are colliding and the net result is it looks as if they are going to decide to have the Senate select the president. A coalition then forms against that and comes up with this idea called Electoral College.
One of the things that is important to remember is that we need to remind ourselves that the founding generation was not enamored with the term democracy. The founding generation thought the undiluted expression of public or popular opinion would. It is often shortsighted, passionate, and easily manipulated. The founders wanted to create a Chamber into which popular opinion could be fed. The Electoral College could sell a more sophisticated and refined judgment could result.
There are not many people in the founding generation that would have wanted any kind of direct election of the President of the United States. The net result is a creation, which recognizes the population at large, but it also recognizes the states as sovereign entities. In effect the Electoral College put together both representatives that are proportional to the Congress and to the House as well as the Senate. It carries forth the same compromise that created the arrangement for the Senate and the House in the first place. This means that they are essentially bringing forward that same political compromise.
No one at the time thought the Electoral College would actually select the person. They thought the Electoral College would go down the list and eventually turn the decision over to the House of Representatives. The Founders did not think that the electors, once selected, were obliged legally or morally to vote in accord with the majority opinion of their state. The Wall Street Journal had stated that over the 226 years that the Electoral College has existed, only nine electors have switched votes. This question of how obligated they are comes down to the political pressure that they now feel.
In the late 18th century and into the early 19th century, the belief in the values of robust democracy had yet to fully develop. They really were believers in something that was called a Republic and not a Democracy. The term Publius means of the public. In that culture it was much more permissible to allow the electors a great deal of discretion and not to feel bound by the popular vote. As we have evolved from the 19th into the 20th century, we went into a more full-fledged robust democracy.
In my opinion, the likelihood of electors, breaking with the opinion vote with the majority in their state has become more and more difficult and remote. One of the problems is there is room for mischief here and room for corruption for influence. The corruption possibilities here are enormous. You offer something specific in secret to that one elector. An example with corruption is in the election of 1800. Burgh (do not remember his name.. ) basically bought twelve electoral votes in New York City to reassure the election of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson’s fingerprints were not on it. Jefferson claimed he did not know. If you’re going to act in behalf of a respected candidate then your going to be sure that the candidate himself has deniability.
They all would be right in the top in terms of their overall native intellectual ability. They all agree that the American Revolution is a good thing and the American Nation should be established. Those are the two great founding moments. However, what they mean by the American Revolution and what they mean by the Nation, they do not agree on. Also, what they regard as the proper direction for this Republic is a matter of extraordinary great disagreement. The founders are seen as serenely sculpted figures who are in a calm type of setting. These are arguing men who are rivalries. These are passionate intensities. The best accounts of these arguments for the most part are thought by most people to be seen in Madison’s papers. This is incorrect and Madison himself will obscure these arguments because he is like a lawyer. The most revealing papers in terms of telling you the truth about their emotional lives is John Adams.
They felt that character mattered. It becomes a defining moment because it goes into the kind of argument that I am making that while we know that eventually the laws and institutions established by this generation will root themselves. We will become what we are now which is the oldest enduring Republic in world history of a government of laws, not a government of men. In the first few decades and in the first generation we had to be a government of men. The laws had yet to establish themselves.
It is essentially Hamilton that is making a point that a certain kind of men are capable of covering this certain kind of character. They have to have this certain kind of character and they have to be capable of honorable and virtuous behavior. If they were not, for example, such as in our current climate, the founder’s would then say one of these men would need to step forward. They would emphasize that they need to act in a fashion that is not exclusively partisan. That shows that he has an understanding of the public good that is not solely a reflection of his own private interests. That would be the behavior in keeping with the founders.
The historic function of the Electoral College has been to produce decisive electoral verdicts for the presidency, at a time when the popular vote is very evenly split. Tough cases make bad laws. If you change the Electoral College your going to have to make several other changes as well. This could be for instance whether the president will be chosen by a majority vote or a mere plurality. You’re going to probably have to change the terms in the resolution in the House of Representatives so it is not a state-by-state vote. The reason for this is if you go to a popular vote and you require a majority then it is going to constantly be thrown to the House of Representatives. I do not think that is very democratic.
The decisiveness of the Electoral College has been a real advantage to us and they are very unusual accounts. I seriously doubt whether 2/3’s of the Congress and 3 quarters of the states are going to be capable of looking through this and making changes in the Constitution. Realistically all the small states will vote against this. They would also lose their authority. A debate is wonderful but the likelihood of the revision of the Constitution occurring is about 1 in 10,000. Today members of the Electoral College are chosen now by party loyalty. There has been talk in the past to reframe the 2nd Amendment as to what militia means and that is possible. I personally favor a more restrictive attitude towards guns. Its interpretation may be changed but it will not need a new Amendment to change this.
