The Fathers and the Wise Guys
ROCHE, JOHN P.
THINKING ALOUD The Fathers and the Wise Guys By John P Roche Perhaps it is age, perhaps only the impact of some of the mail I have been getting on Vietnam, but for the first time in my life...
...I bought myself a set second-hand and started to read...
...a "bunch of wise guys" indeed...
...The future was left to cope with the problem of what to do with this Rube Goldberg mechanism...
...While I was trying to figure out how to explain the Electoral College to her, she vanished and became wholly wrapped up in the manufacture of "creepy crawlers...
...It didn't take me long to find the source: an Associated Press background piece headlined (in our local paper) "natural aristocracy YIELDING TO ELECTORAL CHANGES...
...Moreover, the nation's founders were great men precisely because they were great politicians-and as such never took the Electoral College seriously...
...I was even more encouraged by the fact that a summary of my thesis was included in the Hearings...
...Oh, nothing," she said and drifted off...
...68 as a source on the intention of the Framers...
...I fended it off: "But they did want HumphreyJohnson...
...The Brearley Committee on Postponed Matters was a superb aggregation of talent and its compromise on the Executive was a masterpiece of political improvisation...
...Hadn't I pointed out with sufficient clarity that Hamilton in the Convention had urged a President elected for life, "the election to be made by Electors chosen by the people...
...There is one massive primary source, The Records of the Federal Convention, edited in four volumes by Max Farrand...
...The Associated Press story suggests belief in a "natural aristocracy": The untutored reader could easily emerge with the view that the Fathers were elitists...
...The nation's Founding Fathers were great men, but being human they were not omniscient...
...The objective of this scheme is nothing less than to undermine the reputation of the Founding Fathers-and by implication their Constitution-by suggesting that they had a high opinion of the Electoral College as a technique for choosing Presidents...
...The list was obviously capable of infinite expansion in Massachusetts alone, so I took the offensive: "Who told you that...
...No one seemed to think well of the College as an institution...
...Italics mine, J.P.R...
...I said that of course we had, in fact nobody in Massachusetts had voted for Goldwater...
...Being young and innocent, I assumed that the obvious thing to do was head for the sources and find out whether the Framers were in fact patterning the Electoral College on the College of Cardinals, were attempting to take the selection of the Chief Executive "out of politics...
...Cagily, recalling the Puritans, "Oh, someone...
...learned professors noted, somewhat patronizingly, that the Founding Fathers opposed "factions" and did not "anticipate the rise of political parties," and in general there was a massive consensus...
...They thought up a system for electing Presidents which did not work...
...Or to put it more academically, each viewpoint could leave the Convention and argue to its constituents that it had really won the day...
...The worst of it is that this campaign is directed toward the tender minds of the young, and-if my experience is any indication-can only lead to disillusion and alienation...
...A father who writes books and articles must accept the conclusiveness of the written word...
...The overall re-evaluation of the Constitutional Convention which I undertook is irrelevant here, but with respect to the method of selecting the President I submitted, and documented, the following propositions: "There were [in the convention] a number of proposals: election by the people, election by state governors, by electors chosen by state legislatures, by the National Legislature (James Wilson, perhaps ironically, proposed at one point that an Electoral College be chosen by lot from National Legislature...
...Elaborate Congressional hearings were held and, curiously, those who favored change seemed to agree with those opposing it on the historical proposition that the Framers set up the Electoral College to protect the people from demagoguery and passion...
...Later she was back...
...George Mason observed casually that the selection would be made in the House 19 times in 20 and no one seriously disputed this point...
...However, I reflected, it was probably too much to expect Senator Kefauver to revise the habits of a rhetorical lifetime at one fell swoop...
...From the first election on, they sent good, reliable workers,-that is, "hacks"-and Alexander Hamilton, for one, did not want them thinking for themselves...
...The public at large was not considered equipped with enough information or sound judgment to make the selection...
...And the next day, after I had figured out a good line of approach, she brushed me off with the cold observation that they would not have current events again until next Monday: "Forget it Dad-it's not important...
...Suppose they didn't want Humphrey-Johnson...
...She has a certain ADA bias...
...I first became aware of it when my 11 year-old daughter came up to me one evening and asked-in an unusually suspicious tone-"Daddy, I thought you voted for Humphrey-Johnson...
...In the minds of many of the makers of the U.S...
...Your teacher...
...Constitution was the idea that there is a 'natural aristocracy'-composed of men with such qualities as virtue, talent, public spirit, wealth, learning and so on...
...We read it...
...In a moment of weakness I thoughtlessly informed my daughter that the Massachusetts Bay Colony had been founded so the Puritans could obtain the freedom to persecute other religious groups...
...And there it stayed until last week when my daughter convinced me that the framers are still the victims of a planned campaign of defamation by idealization...
...Of course, there has never been a politician in history who was not opposed to "divisive factions,' i.e., his opponents, but surely no one could be taken in by this semantic ploy-it would be analogous to believing that the President of the United States can make a "non-political" speech...
...Imagine, filling the minds of these innocent children with such subversive doctrine...
...The inevitable Federalist paper (No...
...How could one ever expect a child nurtured on the notion that the President of the United States is chosen by a "bunch of wise guys" to grow up into a responsible, patriotic American...
...It was merely a jerry-rigged improvisation which has subsequently been endowed with a high theoretical content...
...in other words, everybody present knew that under any system devised, George Washington would be President...
...This hot tip, retailed in class, had brought her eyeball to eyeball with the teacher-who was sticking by the "religious freedom" line...
...She pressed on: "You don't vote for HumphreyJohnson...
...Just vote Democratic and don't worry about it...
...Following Hamilton's scenario, a number of electors scattered their second votes...
...When, as usual, nothing happened to the various proposed amendments to the Constitution, I pushed the whole business into the hold file and went on to other concerns...
...This sort of idealization of the Founding Fathers' motives was nothing new to me...
...The vital aspect of the Electoral College was that it got the Convention over the hurdle and protected everybody's interests...
...With this scholarly arsenal I was fully prepared for the next round of argument: When about five years ago the inevitable amendments to alter the election process were introduced, I submitted my material to the Senate Judiciary Committee...
...THINKING ALOUD The Fathers and the Wise Guys By John P Roche Perhaps it is age, perhaps only the impact of some of the mail I have been getting on Vietnam, but for the first time in my life I think I have evidence of a sinister conspiracy directed against the moral foundations of the Republic...
...And what state ever sent out its "wisest men...
...Finally, how can we get a contemporary generation of politicians to accept the experimental, improvising spirit which dominated the early Republic and reorganize our institutions-as they did theirs-to meet the demands of a new epoch...
...Could they pick McCormack...
...The kid decided not to fight city hall...
...But the definition of a "natural aristocracy" is simply the description of a politician: virtuous, talented, public spirited, etc...
...How can we restore the reputation of the Founding Fathers, particularly in the minds and hearts of the young...
...Then came the crusher, said with a mixture of triumph and unease: "I learned in school that you don't vote for Humphrey-Johnson, you vote for a bunch of wise guys...
...but I have a peculiarly sensitive position vis...
...I had not done much heavy research into the period, but it seemed inconceivable to me on the basis of what little I knew that such active factionalists as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison could be written off as anti-political ideologues on the basis of a few essays in The Federalist...
...In the first Presidential election of 1788 Hamilton organized the electoral vote to guarantee that Washington would come out well ahead of John Adams, that no freak situation (such as occurred in 1800) could develop...
...Finally, after opening, reopening, and re-reopening the debate, the thorny problem was consigned to a committee for resolution...
...The information must have arrived in print, in connection with President Johnson's recent proposals to alter the electoral system...
...You vote for some wise guys who are supposed to think for you...
...What bothered me then was that this consensus turned a group of the shrewdest political operators who have ever walked the earth into an assemblage of Platonic sages...
...All parents have to do this in some contexts ("Daddy, what is rape...
...indeed, what evidence there is suggests that there was an assumption that once Washington had finished his tenure as President, the electors would cease to produce majorities and the Chief Executive would usually be chosen in the House...
...Thus when the "wise guys" suddenly came up, I took off across country with the always useful, "What do you mean...
...The point of departure for all discussion about the Presidency in the Convention was that in immediate terms, the problem was non-existent...
...But since then she has taken a very dim view of my authoritative statements on American history-"I believe you Daddy, but we are not that advanced...
...For God's sake,' Hamilton wrote James Wilson, "let not our zeal for a secondary object [the election of Adams as Vice President] defeat or endanger a first [the election of Washington...
...Could anything be more "un-American" that the notion that the Constitution should be sacrosanct...
...This compromise was almost too good to be true, and the Framers snapped it up with little debate or controversy...
...It was so fascinating that I spent the better part of two years reading and annotating and, because I belong to the "publish or shrivel" school (which holds that anyone who does not feel impelled to communicate his ideas to his peers as well as his students is probably going to shrivel up as soon as he exhausts the primitive intellectual capital accumulated in graduate school), I brought out my findings in the American Political Science Review in 1961: "The Founding Fathers-A Reform Caucus in Action...
...But how to do it...
...And while those who make this patently libelous charge rarely surface their true motivation, the inference is clear: No nation started by men who could take the Electoral College seriously deserves to triumph over World Communism...
...This was said in a decisive tone...
...and finally, if no candidate received a majority in the College, the right of decision passed to the National Legislature with each state exercising equal strength...
...I began desperately to tread water...
...third, if the state legislatures agreed (as six did in the first Presidential election), the people could be involved directly in the choice of electors...
...I had first encountered it over a decade ago when various constitutional amendments were proposed to alter the method of electing Presidents...
...Backpedalling: "No, not exactly...
...The late Senator Estes Kefauver was "most grateful"as he wrote me-and I assumed that once and for all the Founding Fathers would be exonerated of Platonic tendencies...
...with all the innocence of the auto-didact, I felt that publication in such an official document must prove conclusive...
...I was, I told her, never surer of anything in my life...
...Are you sure you voted for HumphreyJohnson...
...Hamilton had wanted a Republican Kinga "state-holder" in the Dutch and Cromwellian tradition-but like Madison he was prepared to be a good soldier and argue in The Federalist for compromises that he had opposed in the secret sessions at Philadelphia...
...No good: "But what if they didn't like HumphreyJohnson...
...That doesn't sound fair...
...and there was some resemblance to three-dimensional chess in the dispute because of the presence of two variables, length of tenure and re-eligibility...
...There was no problem...
...Fortunately her interest span is limited...
...In short, the Framers did not in their wisdom endow the United States with a College of Cardinalsthe Electoral College was neither an exercise in applied Platonism nor an experiment in indirect government based on elitist distrust of the masses...
...68) was trotted out...
...Such ingrained disrespect for the Constitution could even lead to a breakdown of consensus...
...second, the small states received a bonus in the Electoral College in the form of a guaranteed minimum of three votes while the big states got acceptance of the principle of proportional power...
...Naturally the President should be selected from among the best of these men...
...The teacher was obviously not at fault...
...How can we insure that the teachers, who play such a vital role in shaping the views of future generations, will rescue the Framers from the category of bumbling philosophers and treat them on their merits as brilliant, cold-blooded politicians-who knew a loser like the Electoral College when they saw one...
...True, the Fathers have survived various campaigns of vilification alleging, for instance, that they were agents of the rentier class, heavy drinkers, or pious, but never before has there been so direct, and so clever, an assault on their ability to see political realities...
...Could they pick anybody...
...It is hard to know what to say about such a subtle defamation...
...vis her social studies teacher...
...So the Constitution makers hit on the idea of electors...
...True, I was a bit startled when Senator Kefauver-in an article in a law journal-still quoted Alexander Hamilton in Federalist paper No...
...Thus they were dealing in the future tense and to a body of working politicians the merits of the Brearley proposal were obvious: everybody got a piece of cake...
...Each state would choose some of its wisest men...
...First, the state legislatures had the right to determine the mode of selection of the electors...
...Could they pick Senator Kennedy...
...The more I ruminated on it, however, the more important it became...
...How can this campaign of calumny be stopped...
...Could they pick you...
Vol. 49 • April 1966 • No. 8
