Congressional government : $b a study in American politicsWilson, Woodrow
History
Congressional government : $b a study in American politics
Wilson, Woodrow
Executive power -- United States; United States -- Politics and government; United States. Congress
It is this constant possibility of party diversity between the Executive
and Congress which so much complicates our system of party government.
The history of administrations is not necessarily the history of
parties. Presidential elections may turn the scale of party ascendency
one way, and the intermediate congressional elections may quite reverse
the balance. A strong party administration, by which the energy of the
State is concentrated in the hands of a single well-recognized political
organization, which is by reason of its power saddled with all
responsibility, may sometimes be possible, but it must often be
impossible. We are thus shut out in part from real party government such
as we desire, and such as it is unquestionably desirable to set up in
every system like ours. Party government can exist only when the
absolute control of administration, the appointment of its officers as
well as the direction of its means and policy, is given immediately
into the hands of that branch of the government whose power is
paramount, the representative body. Roger Sherman, whose perception was
amongst the keenest and whose sagacity was amongst the surest in the
great Convention of 1787, was very bold and outspoken in declaring this
fact and in proposing to give it candid recognition. Perceiving very
clearly the omnipotence which must inevitably belong to a national
Congress such as the convention was about to create, he avowed that "he
considered the executive magistracy as nothing more than an institution
for carrying the will of the legislature into effect; that the person or
persons [who should constitute the executive] ought to be appointed by,
and accountable to, the legislature only, which was the depository of
the supreme will of the society." Indeed, the executive was in his view
so entirely the servant of the legislative will that he saw good reason
to think that the legislature should judge of the number of persons of
which the executive should be composed; and there seem to have been
others in the convention who went along with him in substantial
agreement as to these matters. It would seem to have been only a desire
for the creation of as many as possible of those balances of power which
now decorate the "literary theory" of the Constitution which they made
that prevented a universal acquiescence in these views.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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