The Co-Presidency Spectator / Hamilton Warned Us
Eastland, Terry
Hamilton Warned Us by Terry Eastland E arly in the 1992 campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton remarked, in response to the question of how come she didn't run for president herself, "If you vote for...
...Bill has responded publicly to reporters' questions but (as I write in late March) Hillary has largely avoided the real interview formats, on privacygrounds, instead preferring to take schmooze questions from the likes of Eleanor Clift...
...In early March, demonstrators representing the National Organization of Women rallied in front of the White House in favor not of Bill but of Hillary...
...Of course, Article II of the Constitution vests the executive power in a President of the United States of America...
...Much of Federalist 70 concerns the difference of interests inherent in plurality...
...plan to reinvent government does not include a constitutional amendment that would put into law the plural executive that the two have so disingenuously brought about...
...This short essay ought to be kept close at hand as the Clintons serve Bill's term of office...
...When two or more persons are engaged in any common enterprise or pursuit," wrote Hamilton, "there is always a danger of difference of opinion...
...Warning about "the most bitter dissensions" that can spring from a plural executive, Hamilton said that these "lessen the respectability, weaken the authority, and distract the plans and operations of those whom they divide...
...A plural executive would be less energetic in the sense that it would make decisions more slowly...
...ecutive is more conducive to what he called "energy...
...Likewise, she is the first First Lady effectively to wield Article II powers of nomination and appointment for key administration posts, including that of now-departed White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum...
...W ith the shadowy Hillary drawing widespread criticism, Hamilton has proved prophetic...
...By all accounts, Mrs...
...But now, fifteen months since her husband was sworn in as the nation's forty-second president, it seems clear that, in voting in Bill, the American people have indeed voted in Hillary...
...Here plurality in the executive has worked to the advantage of administration opponents: when top positions are left unfilled, the chance to effect policy through personnel is diminished...
...86 The American Spectator April /May 1994...
...While Mrs...
...So, although it was not clear whether Bernard Nussbaum, Vince Foster, or Webster Hubbell reported to Hillary, whatever she does in the Clintons' presidency for good or ill will be accounted to Bill at the ballot box should he—I mean they—run for re-election...
...When the idea didn't fly with the public, Mrs...
...For it was Hamilton who warned of "irreconcilable factions adhering differently to the different individuals" who comprise the presidency...
...Clinton does not touch foreign policy, but her involvements elsewhere are so substantial as to suggest that it is a mistake to speak of her husband's administration...
...Should fatal differences of opinion emerge on a key issue—and note that some differences between Bill and Hillary exist on healthcare reform—administration opponents can trace their political good fortune to plurality in the executive...
...Given her relative inaccessibility on Whitewater, plurality in the executive has worked as Hamilton predicted: the public has been deprived of "the opportunity of discovering with facility and clearness the misconduct of the persons they trust, in order either to [effect] their removal from office, or to [effect] their actual punishment in cases which admit of it...
...Clinton's predecessors to one degree or another influenced their husbands, she is the first First Lady to superintend the most important policy initiative of her husband's presidency (health care reform...
...Clinton remade herself into the more traditional-looking and -behaving spouse...
...Hamilton showed that plurality works not just against the executive itself but against the public, by tending "to conceal faults and destroy responsibility...
...It often becomes impossible," he wrote, "to determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures, ought really to fall...
...By month's end, Hillary's "constituents" Ann Lewis and Lynn Cutler were buying advertising in the New York Times to herald Hillary's public-policy contributions...
...Fortunately for the Constitution and its friends, Bill Clinton's (or is it Hillary's...
...Cleverly using plurality, Bill has defended his wife in terms that absolve her from any wrongdoing on the tough Whitewater questions ("No one I know has a stronger sense of right and wrong . . .") while urging inquiring reporters to let her "speak for herself' on some of her more outlandish claims, such as that a cabal of right-wing financial interests has concocted Whitewater to slander her...
...As Hamilton predicted, this White House has been notoriously slow in selecting individuals for high executive office, and one reason surely must be related to the plurality of presidential interests that certain choices—especially those for top posts at Justice, Health and Human Services, and Education—must satisfy...
...The framers opted for what they called "unity" in the executive, explicitly rejecting an executive in which power is vested in two or more persons...
...In the Clintons' share of the matter now known simply as Whitewater, it has been impossible to sort out how much blame to place upon whom...
...The reality at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is closer to a plural presidency...
...The arguments for unity and against plurality are found in Federalist 70, the composition of Alexander Hamilton...
...Hamilton contended that unity in the exTerry Eastland is the author of Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency, now available in a paperback edition from the Free Press...
...Hamilton Warned Us by Terry Eastland E arly in the 1992 campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton remarked, in response to the question of how come she didn't run for president herself, "If you vote for him, you get me...
Vol. 27 • April 1994 • No. 45
