Presidents' Day 2008

Today is President's Day, and I try to comment on as many holidays as I can. So what do I get out of this particular day?

Well, I was thinking about the institution of the Presidency in general. George Washington could have been king, but he refused the offer. He said that the Americans did not defeat one King George to get another King George. That took a lot of character for him to say that. He definitely put his principles ahead of self-promotion in that instance. A lot of us may criticize authoritarianism or tyranny, but we wouldn't mind them if we were the ones calling the shots. But George Washington realized that authoritarianism was wrong, whether it was exercised by him or anyone else. He knew that power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely, so he applied that principle to himself as well as society as a whole.

By and large, the founding fathers believed in limited government, even though they differed on where precisely the limits should be. The Federalists (e.g., Alexander Hamilton, John Adams) advocated a strong central government, whereas the Democratic-Republicans (e.g., Thomas Jefferson, James Madison) supported a weak national government and more power to the states. Specifically, the Federalists wanted the federal government to assume state debts, institute a national bank, impose high tariffs on imports, and encourage manufacturing through subsidies, whereas the Democratic-Republicans tended to favor state autonomy over a large federal role. Whatever their differences, the founding fathers agreed that the concentration of too much power into a single authority was a bad idea. The thought that it could lead to a loss of freedom, and they also wanted to protect their property from an over-zealous government.

In their desire to limit government authority, the founding fathers wrote three things into the U.S. Constitution. First of all, they delineated specific functions for the federal government, while reserving all other powers to the states and the people. Congress and the President were primarily to enact legislation that related to their Constitutional roles. This principle is explicitly stated in the Tenth Amendment. Second, they stipulated certain freedoms that the federal government was not to transgress, such as speech, worship, assembly, privacy, and firearm ownership. And, third, they divided the federal government into three branches--the legislative, the executive, and the judicial--preventing thereby the concentration of power into a single branch. Generally speaking, the three branches had to agree on things for them to get done (except when Congress overrode the President's veto), resulting in the likelihood that a lot would not get done. But the founding fathers probably did not deem that to be too much of a problem. For them, the greater problem was an unfettered and authoritarian government.

Limited government is bread-and-butter conservatism, or at least bread-and-butter classical liberalism. Since I am a conservative, the founding fathers' commitment to that principle is what I celebrate on this Presidents' Day, as I think about why our framers instituted the Presidency in the first place. Their goal was to prevent the concentration of power into a single authority. Of course, there is debate about whether or not the President is currently following the Constitution, or if the Constitution even demands rigid adherence when the public safety is at risk. In all debates, we should value the safety and welfare of the general public, but we should also keep in mind what the founding fathers considered a potentially greater threat to the American people: an authoritarian government.