The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Presidential Power Since Washington It was Senator Bricker who pushed me into my rather over-pious celebration of our February holy week. I am referring to the...
...I am referring to the period between February 12 and 22...
...Yet, he did more than any other to extend the powers of the President...
...We can turn him out every four years...
...When judges issued injunctions which interfered with the operation of the draft law, he threatened to throw them into jail...
...he seems to have had but one rule of conduct, always that of practical and useful politics, to let himself be guided by events, when they were sure to bring him where he wished to go...
...Judged by the results thus far achieved, it is one of the most successful of political devices...
...The Presidency is an American invention...
...No man was ever more conscientious than Lincoln or more sensitive to criticism...
...George Washington had courage and initiative enough to give it a good start...
...The President had issued a proclamation ordering all citizens to maintain neutrality as between Britain and France...
...He forms the center of the country...
...for he was the incarnate common sense of the people...
...It is weak governments that are taken over by Mussolinis and Hitlers...
...It is amusing to discover that the very argument which has been going on between the Brickerites and their opponents was carried on in Washington's time...
...Hyman closes his discussion of this matter with a doubt or two: "History has generally rendered its verdict on Hamilton's side of the case, without too close attention to Constitutional issues...
...He can't get very far without money...
...Again and again, he suspended the right of habeas corpus...
...James Russell Lowell wrote of him: "Never was a ruler so absolute as he, nor so little conscious of it...
...The President, after all, depends on Congress...
...Some of my correspondents are concerned lest a President, endowed with such powers, turn dictator...
...But in the present epoch of cold wars, half wars and undeclared wars, it has appeared at times that the President's power to 'make war' has virtually swallowed up the Congressional power to 'declare war.' " Thomas Jefferson had been an eloquent advocate of government by Congress rather than by the executive...
...Hamilton defended the executive's right to take this action...
...No one has ever thought ill of him for thus laying the basis of the America of today...
...I try to assure them that a powerful executive is precisely our best guard against dictators...
...I re-read the essential parts of Freeman's Washington and Sandburg's Lincoln...
...He takes the initiative in foreign affairs, largely influencing the issue of peace or war...
...The man who had refused to be king did not hesitate...
...So far, our method of government, with its carefully calculated division of powers, has served us well...
...I have emerged from this devotional period with heightened regard for our greatest Presidents and increased confidence in the machinery of government devised 157 years ago and only slightly modified since then...
...No Congress, no cabinet, no committee or commission could do what this one man can do...
...This, far more than the 4th of July, is our time for concentration on patriotism...
...But, during his term of office, he had a chance to put across the Louisiana Purchase...
...In the meantime, he wields effective power in war and peace...
...He sent Alexander Hamilton into the mountains with a detachment of troops, and the rebellion was soon over...
...He sent his men to Paris and had the bargain all tied up before Congress knew what was up...
...James Madison, with Jefferson's support, countered by saying that such authority belonged to Congress, since it was, he thought, tied in with the right to declare war...
...In the campaign of 1864, the chief cry of the Democrats was that he was a dictator...
...There is nothing like it in any other government...
...Hot letters in support of Bricker's proposed Constitutional amendment—since then defeated—were coming in from my beloved correspondents...
...Without any king or hereditary nobility, we achieve stability through the election every four years of an executive who, with the cooperation of Congress, has power to meet any emergency which may arise...
...The whiskey-makers of Pennsylvania objected to paying their internal-revenue tax—and George had a rebellion on his hands...
...I am more than ever convinced that we may go on into the future with full confidence in its framework...
...In addition, I read—and with great pleasure—Sidney Hyman's new book, The American President (Harper, 342 pp., $4.00...
...It was, he maintained, inherent in the authority to conduct foreign affairs...
...So I just naturally turned back to the saints to see what they had to say on this matter...
...He heads up our domestic policies, instituting measures which may lead to prosperity or depression...
...Hyman has written a lively but informative book full of picturesque instances of how the job of the man in the White House has expanded with the growth of the country...
Vol. 37 • March 1954 • No. 10
