Matters may be so arranged that elections can do no more than make changes among the players in the same old game. The result then illustrates the French proverb that the more change you have the more you get of the same thing. Whichever party wins at the polls, jobbery in office and traffic in legislation will still continue. Party succession then tends to form what in European politics is known as the Rota, and in American politics as machine rule. The great consideration then will be not what will benefit the people, but what will please the districts, and cadging for patronage and sparring for points in the electioneering game will become the principal occupation of legislative bodies (9).In typical progressive fashion, Ford demands greater presidential control over the legislative process and insists on granting the president exclusive control over political appointments. All this is consistent with the broad constitutional vision most famously set out by Woodrow Wilson in Congressional Government (1885) and Constitutional Government (1908), and indeed Wilson was himself deeply indebted to Ford’s 1898 The Rise and Growth of American Politics. (I believe Wilson was so impressed with Ford that he hired him to teach at Princeton).
I want to flag two pieces of Ford’s Presidential Address of particular interest: (1) His identification of the presidency with the democratic triumph of absolute monarchy over feudal aristocracy; and (2) His invocation of Joseph Story in warning of legislative corruption and irresponsibility.
1. The Historical Narrative
Ford provides the following sketch of modern European state formation:
It is a commonplace of history that the people of Europe were rescued from the manifold oppressions of feudalism by the development of absolute monarchy; but it is not sufficiently remarked that this was a popular process. The diets, parliaments and assemblies that abounded in the Middle Ages were regarded by the people as organs of class privilege and rapacity, and hence the people energetically supported any movement to wipe them out. Far from absolutism being the result of royal usurpation, kings were simply dragged along by the force of the movement. Powers were forced upon them that they were reluctant to accept. … No fact of European history is better established than that absolute monarchy was erected by public opinion and its burden of responsibility was forced upon kings by the insistence of the people. If there is now an extensive revolt of popular sentiment against legislative assemblies, it is no new thing, but is the revival of a feeling that was for centuries the strongest political force (7-8).In broad strokes, this juxtaposition of absolute monarchy/democracy/civil liberty against medieval aristocracy/feudalism/oppression is familiar. We find such arguments in the great Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, Adam Smith and David Hume. I have written a pair of articles arguing that Smith, for example, identified the triumph of liberty with the alliance between the king and the people against the predatory, baronial aristocracy.
My advisor, Eric Nelson, has an excellent article showing how these Scottish Enlightenment arguments (which derived from Stuart royalist historiography) were adopted by major American figures in the 1770s and 1780s. Alexander Hamilton, for example, appears to quote Adam Smith in his description of “feudal anarchy” in Federalist 17. The broad narrative—monarchical triumph over the feudal aristocracy in service of securing popular liberty—is deployed to justify a centralized state and a powerful presidency. William Selinger extends this argument, showing how thinkers from Jean Louis De Lolme to Alexis de Tocqueville to John Stuart Mill all offered parallel accounts of the “monarchical origins of modern liberty.” Ford heavily relies on Mill for his account of representative government, so he may be just the next generation to inherit the argument.
(Tocqueville, it should be said, offers a version of that narrative with an inverted normative valence. He famously identifies the radical democracy of the French Revolution as an extension of the state-building, centralizing project undertaken by Louis XIV. But his point there is to defend the medieval model of polycentric authority against the uniformity established by both a nationalized, bureaucratic monarchy and a nationalized, bureaucratic democracy. He also praises the medieval French aristocratic constitution for preserving a kind of local democracy akin to that of his celebrated New England township).
The broad shape of this argument is familiar. That said, I don’t believe I have seen it often made by American political thinkers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though it is common for progressives to celebrate presidentialism and attack legislative corruption, I was surprised that Ford makes the argument with this particular historical narrative in mind. It is striking to see the president so directly identified with absolute monarchy and the congress with the abusive feudal aristocracy. His presentation also breaks from earlier articulations—at least in emphasis—by insisting on the essentially democratic nature of absolute monarchy. It is one thing to say that the only way to secure popular liberty was to establish a powerful king who could crush the rapacious barons. It is another thing to say that quasi-democratic public opinion compelled European kings to seize this power.
The argument appears to recur throughout Rise and Growth, where Ford notes that “the abolition of serfdom, the removal of many feudal oppressions, the betterment of social conditions, and the enlargement of liberty of thought were derived from the exercise of royal power” (22). And again: “the main instrument for the destruction of the feudal characteristics which deface our form of government will be executive authority” (364). In that latter discussion, Ford clarifies that our other institutional arrangements will keep presidentialism from collapsing into despotism.
2. The Joseph Story Reference
Drawing on Mill, Ford insists that America must unite legislative and executive power:
At any event, these progressive arguments are typically seen as new developments in American political thought, revisionist critiques of the constitutional theory of the founders (though Jeremy Bailey’s wonderful history of “presidential representation” identifies their many antecedents). That’s why I was surprised to see the reference to Joseph Story, a much more canonical constitutional commentator. Though the founding generation was directly steeped in Scottish-Enlightenment inflected monarchical historiography, my impression was that these arguments had faded by the early nineteenth century. Ford’s presidential address does not provide a citation, but the appendix to Rise and Growth includes a lengthy quotation from section 869 of Story’s Commentaries, so I assume that is the reference. Story is commenting here on the second part of Article I Section 6 of the constitution, which reads: “no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.”
This is a monumentally significant provision. By establishing the strict separation of legislative and executive offices, it rules out any parliamentary government in the United States. It serves, in other words, as the basis of our system of checks-and-balances between the presidency and the congress.
Story notes that this clause has been “universally applauded, and has been vindicated upon the highest grounds of public policy.” It is indispensable for protecting the states against federal encroachment. And yet, Story (the Federalist, nationalist) continues:
The broad shape of this argument is familiar. That said, I don’t believe I have seen it often made by American political thinkers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though it is common for progressives to celebrate presidentialism and attack legislative corruption, I was surprised that Ford makes the argument with this particular historical narrative in mind. It is striking to see the president so directly identified with absolute monarchy and the congress with the abusive feudal aristocracy. His presentation also breaks from earlier articulations—at least in emphasis—by insisting on the essentially democratic nature of absolute monarchy. It is one thing to say that the only way to secure popular liberty was to establish a powerful king who could crush the rapacious barons. It is another thing to say that quasi-democratic public opinion compelled European kings to seize this power.
The argument appears to recur throughout Rise and Growth, where Ford notes that “the abolition of serfdom, the removal of many feudal oppressions, the betterment of social conditions, and the enlargement of liberty of thought were derived from the exercise of royal power” (22). And again: “the main instrument for the destruction of the feudal characteristics which deface our form of government will be executive authority” (364). In that latter discussion, Ford clarifies that our other institutional arrangements will keep presidentialism from collapsing into despotism.
2. The Joseph Story Reference
Drawing on Mill, Ford insists that America must unite legislative and executive power:
There must be a direct connection between the executive department and the representative assembly. The proper function of a representative assembly is to exercise control over the government in behalf of the people. It is a board of directors whose business is to keep the administration steadily confronted with its responsibilities. The directors cannot do this intelligently unless the administration is present at their meetings. Who would expect honesty and efficiency in a business corporation in which the board of directors and the executive management were separate, rival concerns, each trying to master the other, and each appealing to the shareholders against the other. Either this situation must be corrected or the business will collapse. This risk to the Constitution of the United States is distinctly pointed in in Justice Story’s Commentaries, published in 1833 (10).Again, this argument against the separation of powers was standard among progressive political scientists. Woodrow Wilson’s first published article makes the case for amending the constitution to formally establish Westminster-style cabinet government. Later on, Wilson would move away from that full conclusion, arguing instead that a strong party system and strong presidential leadership would provide sufficient de facto alignment of legislative and executive power. (John Dearborn has a nice article describing these two dimensions of Wilsonian constitutional theory).
At any event, these progressive arguments are typically seen as new developments in American political thought, revisionist critiques of the constitutional theory of the founders (though Jeremy Bailey’s wonderful history of “presidential representation” identifies their many antecedents). That’s why I was surprised to see the reference to Joseph Story, a much more canonical constitutional commentator. Though the founding generation was directly steeped in Scottish-Enlightenment inflected monarchical historiography, my impression was that these arguments had faded by the early nineteenth century. Ford’s presidential address does not provide a citation, but the appendix to Rise and Growth includes a lengthy quotation from section 869 of Story’s Commentaries, so I assume that is the reference. Story is commenting here on the second part of Article I Section 6 of the constitution, which reads: “no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.”
This is a monumentally significant provision. By establishing the strict separation of legislative and executive offices, it rules out any parliamentary government in the United States. It serves, in other words, as the basis of our system of checks-and-balances between the presidency and the congress.
Story notes that this clause has been “universally applauded, and has been vindicated upon the highest grounds of public policy.” It is indispensable for protecting the states against federal encroachment. And yet, Story (the Federalist, nationalist) continues:
The universal exclusion of all persons holding office is (it must be admitted) attended with some inconveniences. The heads of the departments are, in fact, thus precluded from proposing or vindicating their own measures in the face of the nation in the course of debate, and are compelled to submit them to other men, who are either imperfectly acquainted with the measures, or are indifferent to their success or failure. Thus, that open and public responsibility for measures which properly belongs to the executive in all governments, and especially in a republican government, as its greatest security and strength, is completely done away with. The executive is compelled to resort to secret and unseen influence, to private interviews and private arrangements, to accomplish its own appropriate purposes, instead of proposing and sustaining its own duties and measures by a bold and manly appeal to the nation in the face of its representatives. One consequence of this state of things is, that there never can be traced home to the executive any responsibility for the measures which are planned and carried at its suggestion. Another consequence will be, (if it has not yet been,) that measures will be adopted or defeated by private intrigues, political combinations, irresponsible recommendations, and all the blandishments of office and all the deadening weight of silent patronage. … If corruption ever eats its way silently into the vitals of this republic, it will be because the people are unable to bring responsibility home to the executive through his chosen ministers. They will be betrayed, when their suspicions are most lulled by the executive, under the disguise of an obedience to the will of Congress. (614-5, emphasis added)I do not know Story well, but I was surprised to see such a striking warning of executive irresponsibility. It makes perfect sense that Ford would favorably cite this passage, for the entire thrust of progressive political science emerged as a critique of the apparent corrupt, invisible legislative domination of national governance. It seems that Story here is playing with Hume’s famous argument in favor of corruption developed in his 1742 “Of the Independency of Parliament.” Hume, as indicated above, was a champion of powerful monarchical authority, and he feared that the British constitution had given too much power to the Commons. Without the power of veto, the post-1688 monarch no longer had a formal means of checking the parliament. His sole power was that of patronage, with which he could buy off individual parliamentarians:
I answer, that the interest of the body is here restrained by that of the individuals, and that the house of commons stretches not its power, because such an usurpation would be contrary to the interest of the majority of its members. The crown has so many offices at its disposal, that, when assisted by the honest and disinterested part of the house, it will always command the resolutions of the whole so far, at least, as to preserve the antient constitution from danger. We may, therefore, give to this influence what name we please; we may call it by the invidious appellations of corruption and dependence; but some degree and some kind of it are inseparable from the very nature of the constitution, and necessary to the preservation of our mixed government.(This argument was well known to at least Hamilton, who favorably cites Hume on this point in the constitutional convention: “It was known that one of the ablest politicians (Mr Hume) had pronounced all that influence on the side of the crown, which went under the name of corruption, an essential part of the weight which maintained the equilibrium of the constitution” (376). Eric Nelson treats this in his Royalist Revolution on pages 196-7. That said, Hamilton in Federalist 76 praises the provision for establishing one of several “important guards against the danger of executive influence upon the legislative body.” It is hard to reconcile that comment with the bulk of Hamilton's vigorous presidentialism).
Where Hume hoped that patronage powers would allow the king to exert influence over the legislature, Story fears that even when combined with the veto, these informal powers would be insufficient to resist the irresponsibility produced by Congressional domination. For Ford and other progressives, Story’s fears had become a reality. Without being able to direct the work of the legislature, the president was powerless to resist the partial, irresponsible, corrupt practices of a fragmented Congress that served the interest of local machines and bosses, not the nation. Theodore Roosevelt made this point most directly in his final annual message to Congress:
The danger to American democracy lies not in the least in the concentration of administrative power in responsible and accountable hands. It lies in having the power insufficiently concentrated, so that no one can be held responsible to the people for its use. Concentrated power is palpable, visible, responsible, easily reached, quickly held to account. Power scattered through many administrators, many legislators, many men who work behind and through legislators and administrators, is impalpable, is unseen, is irresponsible, can not be reached, can not be held to account. Democracy is in peril wherever the administration of political power is scattered among a variety of men who work in secret, whose very names are unknown to the common people. It is not in peril from any man who derives authority from the people, who exercises it in sight of the people, and who is from time to time compelled to give an account of its exercise to the people.
A familiar presidential sentiment in our time.
