[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.But the makers ofthe Constitution were not enacting Whig theory, they were not making lawswith the expectation that, not the laws themselves, but their opinions, knownby future historians to lie back of them, should govern the constitutional actionof the country.They were statesmen, not pedants, and their laws are sufficientto keep us to the paths they set us upon.The President is at liberty, both in lawand conscience, to be as big a man as he can.His capacity will set the limit;and if Congress be overborne by him, it will be no fault of the makers of theConstitution, it will be from no lack of constitutional powers on its part, butonly because the President has the nation behind him, and Congress has not.He has no means of compelling Congress except through public opinion.That I say he has no means of compelling Congress will show what I mean,and that my meaning has no touch of radicalism or iconoclasm in it.There areillegitimate means by which the President may influence the action of Con-gress.He may bargain with members, not only with regard to appointments,but also with regard to legislative measures.He may use his local patronageto assist members to get or retain their seats.He may interpose his powerfulinfluence, in one covert way or another, in contests for places in the Senate.He may also overbear Congress by arbitrary acts which ignore the laws or vir-tually override them.He may even substitute his own orders for acts of Con-gress which he wants but cannot get.Such things are not only deeply immoral,they are destructive of the fundamental understandings of constitutional gov-ernment and, therefore, of constitutional government itself.They are sure,moreover, in a country of free public opinion, to bring their own punishment,to destroy both the fame and the power of the man who dares to practise them.No honorable man includes such agencies in a sober exposition of the Con-stitution or allows himself to think of them when he speaks of the influencesof  life which govern each generation s use and interpretation of that greatinstrument, our sovereign guide and the object of our deepest reverence.Noth-ing in a system like ours can be constitutional which is immoral or whichtouches the good faith of those who have sworn to obey the fundamental law.The reprobation of all good men will always overwhelm such influences withshame and failure.But the personal force of the President is perfectly consti-tutional to any extent to which he chooses to exercise it, and it is by the clearlogic of our constitutional practice that he has become alike the leader of hisparty and the leader of the nation.08_069 Ch 13.qxd 4/7/08 1:39 PM Page 164164 Woodrow WilsonThe political powers of the President are not quite so obvious in their scopeand character when we consider his relations with Congress as when we con-sider his relations to his party and to the nation.They need, therefore, a some-what more critical examination.Leadership in government naturally belongsto its executive officers, who are daily in contact with practical conditions andexigencies and whose reputations alike for good judgment and for fidelity areat stake much more than are those of the members of the legislative body atevery turn of the law s application.The law-making part of the governmentought certainly to be very hospitable to the suggestions of the planning andacting part of it.Those Presidents who have felt themselves bound to adhereto the strict literary theory of the Constitution have scrupulously refrainedfrom attempting to determine either the subjects or the character of legisla-tion, except so far as they were obliged to decide for themselves, after Con-gress had acted, whether they should acquiesce in it or not.And yet the Con-stitution explicitly authorizes the President to recommend to Congress  suchmeasures as he shall deem necessary and expedient, and it is not necessaryto the integrity of even the literary theory of the Constitution to insist thatsuch recommendations should be merely perfunctory.Certainly GeneralWashington did not so regard them, and he stood much nearer the Whig the-ory than we do.A President s messages to Congress have no more weight orauthority than their intrinsic reasonableness and importance give them: butthat is their only constitutional limitation.The Constitution certainly does notforbid the President to back them up, as General Washington did, with suchpersonal force and influence as he may possess.Some of our Presidents havefelt the need, which unquestionably exists in our system, for some spokesmanof the nation as a whole, in matters of legislation no less than in other mat-ters, and have tried to supply Congress with the leadership of suggestion,backed by argument and by iteration and by every legitimate appeal to pub-lic opinion.Cabinet officers are shut out from Congress; the President him-self has, by custom, no access to its floor; many long-established barriers ofprecedent, though not of law, hinder him from exercising any direct influenceupon its deliberations; and yet he is undoubtedly the only spokesman of thewhole people.They have again and again, as often as they were afforded theopportunity, manifested their satisfaction when he has boldly accepted ther�le of leader, to which the peculiar origin and character of his authority en-title him.The Constitution bids him speak, and times of stress and changemust more and more thrust upon him the attitude of originator of policies.His is the vital place of action in the system, whether he accept it as suchor not, and the office is the measure of the man, of his wisdom as well as ofhis force.His veto abundantly equips him to stay the hand of Congress whenhe will.It is seldom possible to pass a measure over his veto, and no Presi-08_069 Ch 13.qxd 4/7/08 1:39 PM Page 165The President of the United States 165dent has hesitated to use the veto when his own judgment of the public goodwas seriously at issue with that of the houses.The veto has never been suf-fered to fall into even temporary disuse with us.In England it has ceased toexist, with the change in the character of the executive.There has been noveto since Anne s day, because ever since the reign of Anne the laws of Eng-land have been originated either by ministers who spoke the king s own willor by ministers whom the king did not dare gainsay; and in our own time theministers who formulate the laws are themselves the executive of the nation;a veto would be a negative upon their own power.If bills pass of which theydisapprove, they resign and give place to the leaders of those who approvethem [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Tematy