I May Here
Explain That The Vice-President, As Such, Has No Power Either
Political Or Administrative.
He is, ex-officio, the Speaker of the
Senate; and should the President die, or be by other cause rendered
unable to act as President, the Vice-President becomes President
either for the remainder of the presidential term or for the period
of the President's temporary absence.
Twice, since the Constitution
was written, the President has died and the Vice-President has taken
his place. No President has vacated his position, even for a
period, through any cause other than death.
Then come the rules under which the President and Vice-President
shall be elected - with reference to which there has been an
amendment of the Constitution subsequent to the fourth Presidential
election. This was found to be necessary by the circumstances of
the contest between John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr.
It was then found that the complications in the method of election
created by the original clause were all but unendurable, and the
Constitution was amended.
I will not describe in detail the present mode of election, as the
doing so would be tedious and unnecessary. Two facts I wish,
however, to make specially noticeable and clear. The first is, that
the President of the United States is now chosen by universal
suffrage; and the second is, that the Constitution expressly
intended that the President should not be chosen by universal
suffrage, but by a body of men who should enjoy the confidence and
fairly represent the will of the people. The framers of the
Constitution intended so to write the words that the people
themselves should have no more immediate concern in the nomination
of the President than in that of the Senate. They intended to
provide that the election should be made in a manner which may be
described as thoroughly conservative. Those words, however, have
been inefficient for their purpose. They have not been violated.
But the spirit has been violated, while the words have been held
sacred; and the presidential elections are now conducted on the
widest principles of universal suffrage. They are essentially
democratic.
The arrangement, as written in the Constitution, is that each State
shall appoint a body of electors equal in number to the Senators and
Representatives sent by that State to Congress, and that thus a body
or college of electors shall be formed equal in number to the two
joint Houses of Congress, by which the President shall be elected.
No member of Congress, however, can be appointed an elector. Thus
New York, with thirty-three Representatives in the Lower House,
would name thirty-five electors; and Rhode Island, with two members
in the Lower House, would name four electors - in each case two being
added for the two Senators.
It may, perhaps, be doubted whether this theory of an election by
electors has ever been truly carried out. It was probably the case
even at the election of the first Presidents after Washington, that
the electors were pledged in some informal way as to the candidate
for whom they should vote; but the very idea of an election by
electors has been abandoned since the Presidency of General Jackson.
According to the theory of the Constitution, the privilege and the
duty of selecting a best man as President was to be delegated to
certain best men chosen for that purpose.
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