This article explores the debates and compromises surrounding the creation of the American presidency during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It highlights the delegates' anxieties about creating a powerful executive while avoiding the pitfalls of monarchy. The challenges in defining presidential powers, term limits, and removal procedures are detailed, emphasizing the lasting impact of these decisions on American governance.
The young nation had seen many things, but a single executive? Surely not.“How do you like our new Constitution?” Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams in mid-November 1787. Jefferson mostly wanted to vent. The two-month-old document left him reeling, especially in its provisions for a new chief executive. The American president, grumbled Jefferson, “seems a bad edition of a Polish king.”
Pointing out that even Turkish sultans relied on councils, Virginia’s George Mason proposed a six-person executive board, appointed by the House or the Senate and composed of two members from each region of the country. Benjamin Franklin suggested a sort of privy council, adding that it “would not only be a check on a bad president, but be a relief to a good one.” Both ideas were rejected.
If few could imagine a national executive who was not a monarch, most in that airless Philadelphia room knew what one looked like. He was a six-foot-tall colossus who presided over the convention as he had presided over the Continental Army. George Washington was 55; it was generally assumed that he would serve as president until his death.
CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION PRESIDENCY UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT CHECKS AND BALANCES FEDERALISM
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