There is no sense in which the presidency – finally created as a single person after months of debate near the very end of the Convention – was considered by anyone at the Convention as “directly accountable to the people.” In fact, the idea that the president would be responsible to voters is exactly what the Convention delegates wanted to avoid. They did not want the president to be able to claim he was responsible to the people. That, to them, was the foundation for dictatorial behavior.
To prevent just such a development, the Convention created an early form of the Electoral College to cut the connection between the popular vote and the election of the president, foreclosing an opportunity for the president to claim the very type of power that the Seila Law court contemplates – as an “elected monarch” or a dictator – if he were to be directly elected by a popular vote. After all, the Constitutional Convention occurred only 11 years after the colonies freed themselves from King George III, and creating another powerful ruler was out of the question.
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Based on the history described above, as well as the text of the Constitution itself, there is strong evidence that although the delegates at the Constitutional Convention considered the president as an essential office, it was only for the purpose of administering – not controlling – the government they were in the process of creating. That’s why the powers of the president in Article II are limited to commander-in-chief of the armed forces, making foreign treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate, appointing other officials, and taking “care that the laws be faithfully executed.” There was nothing at all suggesting that the president should control executive personnel or make policy in the way he does today. Indeed, according to Section 2 of Article II, the president “may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer of each of the executive departments” – an authority that would be unnecessary if the Constitutional Convention had thought he was intended to control all of the executive’s departments.
Nor does the “vesting clause” in Article II of the Constitution, which states that “[t]he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States” give him any such power. This was solely to allow the president to carry legislation into effect and was tempered by his limited powers.
