Adams and the Executive

John Adams: Executive Power and His Presidency
By Gary J. Schmitt  and Joseph M. Bessette
Social Science Research Network

This essay analyzes John Adams’s understanding of executive power and Adams’s practice as president. Its principal focus is the constitutional issues surrounding Adams’s handling of the national security crisis with France and the resulting Quasi-War. It examines Adams’s views on executive leadership, his administration’s relationship with Congress, and Adams’s relationship with his own cabinet–all within the context of the rise of national partisan politics and the emergence of the Republican Party.

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 In his writings Adams had advocated that a nation’s chief executive should provide balance to the political order by standing above and, when needed, resolving disputes between the lower and upper legislative chambers—and more deeply, the classes they would represent. The problem was, this was not really America where the real political divide had become one of parties, not social class.Adams’s desire to stand above this political divide meant that he never considered the possibility of using his leadership position to balance the growth of the Republican party with a coherent, more populist Federalist party agenda of its own. Instead, the High Federalists, who believed that the government’s design and practice was to minimize its republican character as much as was feasible, were free to drive the Federalist persuasion into a political dead end. Yet, not to be forgotten, it was also Adams’s sense of independence, when combined with the  constitutional and institutional tools at the president’s disposal, which allowed him to bring the crisis with France to a successful conclusion.

Public Virtue

David French at The Dispatch:

Now let’s move to the two sentences from Adams—two sentences that help explain our broken nation and our broken politics. We’ve weathered many of the challenges that Jefferson worried about, including the threat of tyranny. And now we’re facing the crisis that concerned Adams.

Writing eleven years after the ratification of the Constitution, Adams wrote to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts to outline the responsibilities of the citizens of the new republic. The letter contains the famous declaration that “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” But I’m more interested in the two preceding sentences:

Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net.

Put in plain English, this means that when public virtue fails, our constitutional government does not possess the power to preserve itself. Thus, the American experiment depends upon both the government upholding its obligation to preserve liberty and the American people upholding theirs to exercise that liberty towards virtuous purposes.

Guns and the Social Compact

David French:

We know the obligation of the government, but what about the obligation of the citizen? Here’s where we turn to Thomas Jefferson’s rival, John Adams. And Adams gives us the second quote that frames our constitutional republic. Writing to the Massachusetts militia, he says, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

But that’s not all he said. In a less-famous section, he wrote, “We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net.” Our government wasn’t built to force men to be moral. Instead, it depends on man’s morality for the system to work.

Thus, the American social compact—the government recognizes and defends fundamental individual liberty, and the individual then exercises that liberty virtuously, for virtuous purposes. Or, to kinda-sorta paraphrase Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, with great liberty comes great responsibility.

That brings me to American gun rights and to Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man who killed two people and wounded one during a series of encounters with protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Let me be clear: I’m not going to use this newsletter to adjudicate his case. The investigation is ongoing, and there is both evidence that he acted in self-defense during the fatal encounters, and evidence he threatened at least one innocent individual prior to the encounters by pointing his weapon at him without justification. There is still much we don’t know.

But here are some things we do know. By arming himself and wading into a riot, Rittenhouse behaved irresponsibly and recklessly. I agree completely with Tim Carney’s assessment here:

The 17-year-old charged with two homicides in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was not a hero vigilante, nor was he a predatory white supremacist. He was, the evidence suggests, a foolish boy whose foolish decisions have taken two lives and ruined his own.

If you go armed with a rifle to police a violent protest, you are behaving recklessly. The bad consequences stemming from that decision are at least partly your fault

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Jefferson, Adams, Citizenship, Friendship

Alexander Khan at National Review:

Citizenship in America is in a troubling state. In 2015, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni conducted a survey of college graduates which found that only 28.4 percent could name James Madison as the father of the Constitution. Thirty-nine percent did not know that Congress had the war power, and roughly 45 percent did not know the length of congressional terms. In 2017, the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 37 percent of Americans could not name any of the rights in the First Amendment, and that only 26 percent could name all three branches of government. Gallup poll results from 2018 reveal that young Americans’ views of capitalism and socialism have switched since 2010, with only 45 percent of respondents now professing a positive view of the capitalist system. A November 2018 YouGov poll revealed that Americans’ patriotism and knowledge of civics was troublingly low. More recently, in January 2019, Gallup released survey results which showed that 30 percent of younger Americans, a record high, would like to permanently leave the U.S. Unfortunately, these results are not shocking. Each new poll extends the long line of depressing findings.

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 While liberal education will never be a cure-all for the disgraceful state of civic life and historical knowledge in America, its renewal in a spirit of friendship is essential if we seek to tackle our citizenship deficit. Students educated in such an environment will not only deeply understand the ideas and principles of the Founders and of Americans throughout history, but they will also come to understand their own connection to those ideas. They will feel invested in the future of their country and in the principles that form its foundation. This educational environment will also affect the concern and interest students have in what government does, how it acts, and the way in which they see their rights and duties. Robust engagement in the classroom naturally translates to the open marketplace of ideas and the active world of citizenship. These students will serve as examples to their fellow citizens, expanding the education of the classroom to the entire country. In the fight to restore civic life and knowledge in America, the rebuilding of liberal education in the spirit of Jefferson and Adams’s friendship is an essential component.

Don't Elect Tyrants

Benjamin Wittes writes at Lawfare:

John Adams's famous aspiration is not our reality: We live in a government of men, as well as laws.

One of those men, the most powerful of them all, may soon be Donald Trump.

So as the late Joan Rivers might have said, "Can we talk?"

The possibility of Trump's election warrants a serious conversation about the nature of the American presidency and what it would mean for someone of Trump's dubious mental health to occupy the office. I am not a clinician, but I think it's safe to say without fear of libeling the man that Trump's speeches reflect a degree of grandiosity, narcissicm, impulsivity, lack of self command, and instinct to attack political opponents that are unusual even within the end-of-the-bell-curve emotional zone reserved for politicians. This is a highly unusual man, one with a pronounced instinct to threaten and verbally attack those who disagree with him or whom he just dislikes. He goes after foreign countries, news reporters, opponents, and anyone else who criticizes him. When you're talking about putting such a man into a unique office with atypical powers to carry out threats, it is worth dwelling on the compatibility of the two.
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The soft spot, the least tyrant-proof part of the government, is the U.S. Department of Justice and the larger law enforcement and regulatory apparatus of the United States government. The first reason you should fear a Donald Trump presidency is what he would do to the ordinary enforcement functions of the federal government, not the most extraordinary ones.

A prosecutor—and by extention, a tyrant president who directs that prosecutor—can harass or target almost anyone, and he can often do so without violating any law. He doesn't actually need to indict the person, though that can be fun. He needs only open an investigation; that alone can be ruinous. The standards for doing so, criminal predication, are not high. And the fabric of American federal law—criminal and civil law alike—is so vast that a huge number of people and institutions of consequence are ripe for some sort of meddling from authorities.

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 The presidency's very virtues as an office—relative unity and vertical integration—make it impossible to render abuse-proof. It is vested with a truly awesome thing:"the executive power" of the entire federal government. There are simply too many ways to abuse that power to imagine we can denude the office of the ability to behave tyranically.

There is, in fact, only one way to tyrant-proof the American presidency: Don't elect tyrants to it.

To a degree we don't choose to acknowledge, our system does rely on civic virtue and decency. Trump has campaigned against that decency. He has actively promised countless abuses of power. He has promised retaliations against his enemies. A country that, having been so clearly forewarned, nonetheless chooses to elect such a man cannot then treat his midconduct as indicating a deficiency in the office in which it knowingly installed him.

A Critical View of State of the Union Speeches

George Will deplores the practice of delivering the State of the Union as a speech instead of a written message:

When the Founding generation was developing customs and manners appropriate to a republic, George Washington and John Adams made the mistake of going to Congress to do their constitutional duty of informing and recommending. Jefferson, however, disliked the sound of his voice — such an aversion is a vanishingly rare presidential virtue — and considered it monarchical for the executive to lecture the legislature, the lofty instructing underlings. So he sent written thoughts to Capitol Hill, a practice good enough for subsequent presidents until Wilson in 1913 delivered his message orally, pursuant to the progressives’ belief in inspirational and tutelary presidents.

It is beyond unseemly, it is anti-constitutional for senior military officers and, even worse, Supreme Court justices to attend these political rallies where, with metronomic regularity, legislators of the president’s party leap to their feet to whinny approval of every bromide and vow. Members of the other party remain theatrically stolid, thereby provoking brow-furrowing punditry about why John Boehner did not rise (to genuflect? salute? swoon?) when Barack Obama mentioned this or that. Tuesday night, the justices, generals and admirals, looking as awkward as wallflowers at a prom, at least stayed seated.

In any case, the speech is no longer meeting the Wilsonian goal of swaying public opinion, because the public is not watching.  Constitution Daily reports:

The final TV viewership numbers are in for President Obama’s State of the Union speech, and the broadcast hit a historic low in one of two key ratings categories.

Nielsen says the State of the Union was seen by 33.5 million people, which is the lowest number since 2000 and the second-lowest total since 1993, when the agency first started combined measuring for the event.

The combined rating for the 2013 speech was 21.5, which is the lowest in history. President Bill Clinton’s speech in 2000 had a rating of 22.4. The rating number represents the percentage of possible households that have TV sets and could watch the speech.

In other words, nearly 80 percent of American households skipped watching the State of the Union live or on a tape-delayed basis on TV.

John Adams and American Exceptionalism

At several points in our text, and multiple times at this blog, we discuss American exceptionalism.  Sarah Beth Vosburg of Louisiana State University has a new paper on the subject:  "American Exceptionalism, Responsibility, and the Limits of Politics: America's Purpose and Liberty's Progress in the Political Thought of John Adams."  Here is the abstract:

Like America’s Puritan forefathers, whose efforts he affirmed he was extending, John Adams (1735-1826) advanced the theme of America as a remarkable political undertaking, conducted before God and the watching world. For Adams, America was exceptional not because she was a new Israel but because she was by divine providence the site of an ongoing political experiment. That experiment would test whether it was possible to secure right order and so to advance liberty, against the alternatives of chance and caprice as ruling forces in human affairs. The purpose of this essay is to examine Adams’ understanding of the American political experiment, its origin, aim, obligation, and special significance for “all mankind.” The essay’s three main sections explore (1) Adams’ evaluation of the American experiment and his political science, (2) his view of America’s responsibility to advance well-ordered liberty before God and all people, and (3) his conception of the limits of politics. It concludes by examining Adams’ thought that continued success for America depended upon the choice by members of subsequent generations to advance the difficult experiment in liberty.

Flag Day 2012

From the Census Bureau:

This is Flag Day -- marking the date in 1777 when John Adams proposed the stars and stripes as the official flag of the United States. One of many ceremonies will be held at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. It was the sight of the flag still flying there after an overnight battle with the British in the War of 1812 that inspired Francis Scott Key to write a poem, which became the words of the national anthem. Flag Day events often center around reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, written by Francis Bellamy and first recited in public in 1892 by schoolchildren at a Columbus Day ceremony. Making flags, banners, and pennants is a nearly $5 billion annual business in the U.S.

The Boston Globe reports:

A Middlesex Superior Court judge has rejected a lawsuit by an atheist couple and their children who sued the Acton-Boxborough Regional School District and the Acton schools challenging the use of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Judge S. Jane Haggerty, in a ruling released Friday, said the daily recitation of the pledge with those words did not violate the plaintiffs’ rights under the Massachusetts Constitution, did not violate the school district’s antidiscrimination policy, and did not violate state law.

The plaintiffs, while acknowledging that the children had the right to refuse to participate in the pledge, asserted that the phrase “under God” was a “religious truth” that contradicted their beliefs, Haggerty said.

The defendants argued that the pledge, rather than a religious document or ceremony, is a patriotic exercise and statement of political philosophy, according to the ruling.

The judge observed that the case presents a “familiar dilemma in our pluralistic society — how to balance conflicting interests when one group wants to do something for patriotic reasons that another group finds offensive to its religious (or atheistic) beliefs.”

The judge ruled in her 24-page opinion that the phrase “under God” was not a religious truth.
Citing previous opinions, she said that the daily flag salute and pledge in schools are “clearly designed to inculcate patriotism and to instill a recognition of the blessings conferred by orderly government under the constitutions of the state and nation.”

“The Pledge is a voluntary patriotic exercise, and the inclusion of the phrase ‘under God’ does not convert the exercise into a prayer,” she wrote.

The Armed Forces Press Service reports:

Ten Navy ships, including USS Fort McHenry, are commemorating Flag Day today at the site of the historic War of 1812 battle 200 years ago that inspired the National Anthem.
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The War of 1812 centered on maritime disputes between the United States and Great Britain...[W]ith naval battles in North America, off South America and Great Britain, and in the Pacific and Indian oceans, the War of 1812 was predominantly a sea campaign. It served as a defining moment for the fledging U.S. Navy, which fought the British as they tried to blockade the Atlantic coast and support land forces from Lake Erie and Lake Champlain, leading to the birth of America’s modern sea services.

“The War of 1812 is significant because it paved the way for future development of the U.S. Navy,” said U.S. Naval War College Professor Kevin McCranie, author of the soon-to-be-released book, “Utmost Gallantry: The U.S. and Royal Navies at Sea in the War of 1812.”

"Challenging the most dominant naval power of the time, the less powerful U.S. Navy found ways to protract the war and incurred significant costs for Great Britain,” he said. “That’s why the War of 1812 is important for national leaders to study.”

Is 2012 More Like 1948, 1996 ... or 1800?

The year before the presidential election, the Democratic incumbent grapples with unfavorable poll numbers and strong Republican opposition on Capitol Hill. That's the situation facing President Obama today. The description also applies to President Truman in 1947 and President Clinton in 1995. Truman and Clinton ended up winning, so a natural question is whether their campaigns could be models for the current president.

Truman ran against the "do-nothing" 80th Congress, reckoning that it was far less popular than GOP presidential candidate Thomas Dewey. In his famous acceptance speech, Truman spent much of his time lambasting the Republicans in Congress and did not even utter Dewey's name.

Clinton took a different approach, attacking Republican nominee Bob Dole by linking him to the much-disliked GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich. At the same time, however, he "triangulated" by separating himself from Democrats in Congress over issues such as welfare reform.

Some say that the path to victory lies in the Truman strategy, while others point to the Clinton path. But both are flawed models for 2012.

First of all, whereas both chambers had GOP majorities in 1948 and 1996, only the House is in Republican hands now. Democratic control of the Senate greatly complicates any effort to run against Congress.

Second, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are more adept at national politics than their counterparts in the earlier elections. Their poll numbers are currently unfavorable, but neither is prone to gaffes.

Third and most important, the economy is in a slump, and will probably stay there through 2012. The White House itself projects that high unemployment will persist. In 1948 and 1996, by contrast, growth was strong in the months before the election. One could argue that the economy had much more to do with the victories of Truman and Clinton than their campaigns did.

So what can President Obama do? After talking to top Democrats inside the White House and Congress, Reporter Howard Fineman has the answer:

"It's not going to be a 'Morning in America' campaign, it's going to be a darkness at midnight campaign about the Republicans. It's going to be about the fact that the Republicans in Congress pushed Paul Ryan's bill Medicare, about how they pushed Cut, Cap and Balance. It's about how Republicans wanted to dismantle Wall Street reform. It's going to be about how the Republican presidential candidates have embraced the Tea Party."

"Those are going to be the two central messages of a campaign that's mostly going to be about attack. I think this is -- just like 2008 was in some respects an uplifting campaign, from both sides, this one is going to be down and dirty from the beginning from both sides."

In that sense, the election will be like that of 1800, which supporters of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson filled the papers with scurrilous verbal assaults.See some mock TV ads based on actual statements from the 1800 campaign:

The difference is that the 2012 campaign won't result in the election of an Adams or a Jefferson.