Today we wrap up the process of appointments and the state of tension created by the Constitution between the Senate and the President. You will recall that the advice and consent role helps ensure that only the best people are selected for those positions requiring Senate approval, and further acts to ensure that even the people chosen by the President will, by virtue of the process, be superior. To those who objected that this would interfere too greatly with the power of the Presidency, Hamilton had pointed out that, while the Senate can withhold that consent, it cannot nominate on its own. That power resides firmly with the Executive.
But here Hamilton points out that the same role played by the Senate in the approval process, is also played by the Senate in the removal process. The power to impeach Justices and Ambassadors also requires the Senate to fulfill its role thus preventing a President from removing entire groups from other branches of government and replacing them with those more favorable to his way of thinking, creating “so violent or so general a revolution” [1] every time there is a change of President.
While there were those who felt that the appointments procedure would put too much power in the hands of the President over the Senate, there were also those who felt that the same process gave the Senate too much power over the President. Hamilton believes that neither is the case. As for restraining the President, he points out that the ability of the Senate to withhold approval of a nomination is not the same thing as “conferring a benefit upon him.”
The power of the Senate here is a negative power, only capable of denying something the President might want. It possesses nothing that it can confer upon him. Unlike the bestowing of emoluments or honors, neither of which is within the power of the Senate to confer upon the President, the withholding of advice and consent is not a positive that it can deliver, only a negative that it can wield. Hamilton points out how this proposed process is very unlike the process in New York, whose delegation was one of the primary audiences of these papers.
In his home state, it is within the power of the chief executive and a small group to make critical appointments, and that process is conducted in secret. In the proposed constitution, the blame for the nomination of a poorly qualified person falls solely on the President, and the failure to approve one that is highly qualified fall solely on the Senate. The open process insures accountability. There is no way to have similar accountability given the opaqueness of the New York State process.
Hamilton returns to the possibility of involving the House of Representatives, but dismisses it once again as “A body so fluctuating and at the same time so numerous, can never be deemed proper for the exercise of that power. Its unfitness will appear manifest to all, when it is recollected that in half a century it may consist of three or four hundred persons.” No, far better to keep such important decisions in the hands of the more stable and deliberative hands of Senators and the President.
The issue is that groups of people choosing will naturally lead to issues where “the desire of mutual gratification will beget a scandalous bartering of votes and bargaining for places”. And while it might be possible for a President to attempt to satisfy his friends with appointments, the existence of a small group of people deciding who gets privileged positions “would occasion a monopoly of all the principal employments of the government in a few families, and would lead more directly to an aristocracy or an oligarchy than any measure that could be contrived.”
Hamilton concludes these last papers on the nature of our Chief Executive by asking if the office of the President “combine(s) the requisites to safety, in a republican sense, a due dependence on the people, a due responsibility?” He summarizes by pointing out that the President will be subject to electors every four years, that he is subject to impeachment should he fail to perform his duties in a satisfactory way, that he is restricted by law from holding any other position other than that of the Presidency, and that, ultimately, the President can take no action that is not initiated by Congress. What additional constraints would the people feel necessary?
Indeed
- All quotes are from https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-71-80#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493464 ↑
To read all of John Parillo’s work on the Federalist Papers, check here.
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