How Washington Invented the Presidency
2013-11-02 · Guest: Harlow Giles Unger (Historian and Author) · 17:29
George Washington and the American presidency
Bob Zadek interviews historian Harlow Giles Unger about his book on George Washington and the creation of the American presidency. They discuss how the Constitution originally envisioned a weak executive branch and how Washington, through necessity and decisive action, established the precedents and powers that define the office today.
Topics: George Washington, US Presidency, Constitutional Law, Executive Power, Founding Fathers, Harlow Giles Unger
Speakers: Bob Zadek, Harlow Giles Unger
Introduction [00:00]
Bob Zadek: Hello everyone, welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, every Sunday at noon at Talk 910. Thanks so much for listening. I’m your host, Bob Zadek. We are the only live libertarian talk radio show on the air all weekend and the leading libertarian talk radio show in the Bay Area. Thanks so much for listening. We are the show of ideas, not attitude; of stuff, not fluff. Thanks so much for listening. 800-345-5639 is the way to join the conversation.
My guest today, his second appearance on the show, I’m quite proud to say, is Harlow Giles Unger. Harlow is a veteran journalist, broadcaster, educator, historian, and he’s an expert on America’s founding fathers. Harlow has authored, I guess now perhaps 19 books and counting, including The Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation, and The Last Founding Father: James Monroe. Harlow was on the show before to discuss his then-new book dealing with the Boston Tea Party. Harlow is a distinguished visiting fellow in American history at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, and he lives in New York City. Harlow is here to discuss his book, which, based upon today’s headlines, could not be more important: Mr. President: George Washington and the Making of the Nation’s Highest Office. Harlow, thanks so much for joining us on this Sunday afternoon.
Harlow Giles Unger: Thank you for asking me, Bob.
Inventing the Presidency [01:40]
Bob Zadek: Thank you so much for giving us your time. Now, your book, which is a wonderful read—and I will throughout the show, I’m not going to be able to control myself, over and over again tell you and the audience how much I enjoyed reading it and, more importantly, how much I learned from the book—what was there that piqued your interest in writing about George Washington and the office of the presidency that, it’s fair to say, he more or less created from scratch?
Harlow Giles Unger: Yes, he did invent the presidency as we know it. And certainly, in my opinion, was the greatest president we’ve ever had. He remains the greatest president in history. And actually, his presidency—recent presidents almost make a mockery of the office that he created. Actually, Congress originally, the Constitutional Convention, created a figurehead as president. They had lived under the tyranny of an absolute monarch, King George III of England, for several decades, and they were not about to create a new King George in the executive power of the United States. So they created really a figurehead as president. The Constitution says “the executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States,” but it fails to define executive power.
Bob Zadek: It’s amazing, Harlow. The audience may not appreciate that, but we take the office today of President and there’s a lot going on in that office in the West Wing. And when you start with the Constitution, there is so little said about what the President is supposed to do, how the office relates to the other branches of government. So there was virtually a few syllables of commentary on what now is the most important political office in the world. And there was a few syllables, and that was it.
Harlow Giles Unger: The Constitution created a president hoping that he would sit in the presidential seat—and he was an old man—sit there and smile and do nothing. He was really to do nothing. And James Madison, who’s one of the authors of the Constitution, put it quite simply: that the executive in our government—and these are Madison’s words—“in our government, the executive department is not the stronger branch of the system, but the weaker.” That’s why the Constitution begins with “We the People.” It doesn’t begin with “We the President.” As I say, the Constitution said the executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States, but it doesn’t define executive power and doesn’t say what the President should do with it other than execute the office of the President, whatever that means. Well, it means nothing, and that’s exactly what the framers intended. The President was to do nothing.
The Weak Executive Branch [05:00]
Harlow Giles Unger: They wrote a Constitution that made him Commander in Chief of the armed forces, but only when Congress called those forces into action, which left the President Commander in Chief of nothing and no one. Other presidential powers, if we can call them that, were no greater. He could make treaties, but only with the advice and consent of the Senate. He could nominate judges and heads of executive departments, but again, only with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Senate would have to put them into office, and then the President had no power to get rid of them. And still worse, the Constitution ordered the President to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, but gave him no law enforcement arm or powers to arrest or punish violators. So really, when Washington took office, he had no powers under the Constitution. As I said, that’s exactly what the founders intended.
Bob Zadek: And it should be mentioned that what was most interesting is the founders had no model to work after. There was no elected chief executive ever in the history of our planet Earth. So they were building something that never, ever existed before, and they knew much more what they didn’t want than what they did want.
Distrust of Democracy [06:20]
Harlow Giles Unger: Right. They wanted the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives was the only body elected directly by the people.
Bob Zadek: The People’s House.
Harlow Giles Unger: Exactly. And they gave the House of Representatives more powers than any other branch of government. The President’s signature on a law can be vetoed, but the signature of no law can become law without the signature of the Speaker of the House. So he has the ultimate say. The Speaker of the House determines which bills come up for a vote and which are tabled and left to die. The House of Representatives is the grand jury of the nation. Only the House can impeach or indict other federal officials, including the President. And the Speaker of the House of Representatives is the elect of the elect. In other words, the members of the House are elected, and they in turn elect the Speaker. Unlike the Senate president, he is a member of the House. He can vote and debate. The Vice President, as head of the—who presides over the Senate, is not a member of the Senate. He can’t debate and he can’t vote except in the event of a tie.
Bob Zadek: And it should be mentioned, as you pointed out, the House was the People’s House. As evidence of how little comfort the founders had with the concept of democracy—and what is not appreciated today, I don’t think, is that if we look at the three branches of government, the President was not elected by the people; he was elected indirectly through the Electoral College. So the President was not elected by the people. The senators were elected by the state houses, not by the people. The courts were not elected by the people. The only direct election that existed at the time of our founding was the House of Representatives. So one-half of one-third of our federal government was governed by pure democracy. That shows how little faith the founders had in—not faith, but distrust, discomfort with the concept of direct election.
Chaos in the Early Congress [08:30]
Harlow Giles Unger: Well, yes and no. After all, they did make the House the most powerful branch of government. So it did have more power than any other branch in government. So it’s not that they had no faith in it. They weren’t sure if it would work, and in fact, it didn’t at first. At first, it was really chaos. There were so many conflicting interests that—I mean, you had Southerners who were slave masters. You had Northern abolitionists. You had Western pioneers spitting tobacco. You had one representative walk in with a couple of hunting dogs at his side. No one would listen to anybody else. They didn’t agree with anybody else. So it was constant chaos. And except for that very first Congress, which had an elite group of founding fathers, in a sense, they got something done. But after that, the House really was constantly debating and not getting anything done. And as a result, the presidents one by one, but starting with Washington, began to take the law into their own hands and just do things unilaterally.
Usurping Financial and War Powers [09:50]
Harlow Giles Unger: And during his eight years in office, President Washington really established what I call seven pillars of executive power not granted to him by the Constitution. These were powers that were granted to the House of Representatives, but Washington just seized those powers out of necessity because he had taken an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. And he intended doing just that, even if it meant violating the letter of the Constitution to preserve the spirit of that document.
And so when Congress was out of session, that very first Congress met and, unlike the current Congress, they actually did pass a budget before they recessed, but there was no money. There was no money. So they left no money for the President to spend. And as a result, the government shut down. I mean, if you can imagine such a thing ever happening, but they actually shut it down in 1789. And Washington could not shut it down. He sent his Treasury Secretary to banks in New York City—New York was the temporary capital at that time—and borrowed money on his own say-so, on his word. So he, in effect, usurped or asserted, whatever word you want to use, powers of appropriating and spending money without the consent of Congress. And the Constitution clearly gives that power to the Congress, not to the President. But he asserted those powers.
Similarly, the following year, Congress was out of session and Indian nations in the West—and they were considered foreign nations in those days—were attacking American settlers and defeated a force of American militiamen out West. Washington had to act to defend the lives of American citizens. He did not have the right to send troops to war, but he just asserted that right. He seized that power, drafted some troops, 2,000 of them, and sent them to war without the consent of Congress. Really, a declaration of war. But again, he was acting to defend American lives. And now, obviously, he set precedents for all his successors. And in the centuries that followed, we have been officially at war more than a dozen times, but Congress has only declared war five of those times: in the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, the War of 1812, and the two World Wars. But in all these other wars, presidents have on their own sent our troops onto foreign soil into battle. And unlike Washington—Washington clearly was defending American lives when he sent the troops to war. That has not been the case in many instances where his successors sent troops to war.
Washington’s Evolving View of the Constitution [14:22]
Bob Zadek: So Washington took an office—and you tell in the book how Washington showed up for the job, sat down at his desk, and answered a few letters, and there was not much to do. So he spent some time with Martha, and he rode his horse, and he worked around the home, as it were. But there wasn’t much going on. He felt, as you describe it in the book, pretty useless. There wasn’t anything—it’s hard to imagine today, but there was just nothing to do. Indeed, there weren’t even any laws to enforce. Congress hasn’t yet passed even one law. And I learned from the book the first act—a great trivia question—what was the first act of Congress? And that was, as you pointed out, the Oath Act, which created the oath of office for the other governmental officials. So Washington started with a totally blank slate. And then did he feel that the Constitution—how did he feel about the Constitution? Was he uncomfortable as he started to accumulate presidential power that didn’t expressly exist? Did he feel he was acting consistent with the Constitution or his oath?
Harlow Giles Unger: Well, he was acting consistent to his oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. And the Constitution of the United States, after all, is the heart of the American government, the American system. And he knew that his oath of office required him to protect American citizens. And this first blatant violation of the Constitution—his borrowing of funds was a violation and a blatant one, but it didn’t involve that much. But sending troops to war against the Indians, that was a blatant violation of the Constitution, which clearly states Congress shall declare war. It does not give the executive that power. He seized that power, but he did so to protect the lives of American citizens.
His view of the Constitution evolved. He was, after all, the president of the Constitutional Convention. He presided over that convention and was the first to sign that document. But his view of the document ultimately, at that time, he said it is a compromise. It was a compromise between all these conflicting interests around the country. And he said it’s not what everybody wants, but try it. If you don’t like it, Article 5 gives you the right to amend it. So do so if you don’t like the way it works. But let’s see how it works first. So he was willing to give it a shot. When he saw it didn’t work, he acted immediately and decisively. He was a man of battle. He’d been tested.