Hamilton turns here, and for the next eleven Federalist Papers, to the subject of the Presidency. As always, the background here is important. Remember that the colonists had survived a bloody war with the British and were in no mood to trade one tyrant for another. The Founders intended to limit the power of the Executive Branch as a way to ensure that never happened.
To give you some idea of just how unpopular the idea of a strong presidency was to them, allow me to quote here some of how Hamilton says his critics refer to the office:
He has been decorated with attributes superior in dignity and splendor to those of a king of Great Britain. He has been shown to us with the diadem sparkling on his brow and the imperial purple flowing in his train. He has been seated on a throne surrounded with minions and mistresses, giving audience to the envoys of foreign potentates, in all the supercilious pomp of majesty.[1]
The rest of the description is not much better, and it included a few words whose meanings were unknown to me, and likely describes the political cartoons that were popular at the time. But suffice it to say that the citizens of the various states were viscerally opposed to the idea of putting much power in the hands of a single man. The fact that a single election can so greatly change the direction of our country today is a vivid illustration of why philosophers from the Hebrews, to Aristotle, and our founders, had a great distrust in the idea of an imperial executive. And it further illustrates the great wisdom our Founders had in not allowing direct democracy to choose our Chief Executive.
One of the key objections to the power of the President that Hamilton addresses here is the ability of that office to make “recess appointments”. The fear was that the “power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the senate by granting commissions” was taken by some to mean that the President could appoint Senators when Congress was not in session. Let us remember that at the time of Hamilton’s writing, there would necessarily be delays in travel, as well as ever-present mortality, that might open vacancies in the Senate from time to time.
The Executive may appoint “ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other OFFICERS of United States” and it was thought that a crafty President might use Congressional recesses to pack those listed positions as well as the Senate itself. Hamilton points out that recess appointment authority only extends to “other officers of the United States whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for”. Appointments in the Senate are expressly provided for so they are not affected by the recess exception. The other reason why this would not apply to the Senate is that Senators are appointed by state legislatures, so a vacancy appointment to the Senate would naturally have to occur when the State Legislature is in recess, and the Constitutional language does not make that assumption.
At any rate, the purpose of the recess appointment is to allow the President to make important appointments other than Senators, even if the Senate is not in session.
It is worth pointing out that recent presidents have made aggressive use of the recess appointment process. President William J. Clinton made 139 recess appointments, 95 to full-time positions. President George W. Bush made 171 recess appointments, of which 99 were to full-time positions, the most famous of which was installing John Bolton as US Ambassador to the United Nations. President Barack Obama had made 32 recess appointments, all to full-time positions.
In 2017 the Senate held nine pro-forma sessions that kept President Donald Trump from making any recess appointments. In 2020, during the COVID shutdowns, President Donald Trump threatened to adjourn Congress in order to get someone appointed to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and to the Director of National Intelligence, positions he was having trouble filling. However, the Constitution does not give the President the power to adjourn Congress unless the Congress itself fails to agree on an adjournment day, and the Congress agreed not to adjourn until their next scheduled day thwarting President Trump’s efforts.
As the rift between Congress and the Presidency continues to grow, we will see much greater use of this Executive power.
Indeed.
- All quotes are from https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-61-70 ↑
To read all of John Parillo’s work on the Federalist Papers, check here.
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The Federalist Papers are a great pathway to determine the intent of the Founding Fathers. The Executive Branch does need some flexibility but has taken far more power than the Founders intended it to have. That is Congress’ fault for failing to Act as it should.
I would agree with you Fletch. Part of the reason is that congress delegates its responsibilities to agencies, something that the current SCOTUS seems poised to rein in a bit, and our Presidency has morphed into the kind of office our Founders feared.
Dictatorship of sorts is what we have now and for some time too. And, the trap is people want the same from Trump – a dictator to make things right. Devolving away, I strongly think, is for greater local control which will strengthen the States. What this means is for the People to engage their county and state governments in a more through way.
Interetesting topic ….dam democrats.