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Jefferson contra the imperial presidency
While there is much to criticize and disapprove about Thomas Jefferson, one thing for which he deserves credit was his prescient fears of an imperial presidency. Jefferson did not want the president to be an object of awe, surrounded by flattering courtiers. Of course, his fears in this regard were so overwrought that he even saw in the presidency of George Washington, which by today’s standards was staggeringly modest, the elements of a “monarchical” presidential style, which horrified him. Jefferson conducted his own presidency at the extreme opposite pole from what he saw as the monarchical style. As Joseph Ellis tells in American Sphinx, Jefferson gave only two public speeches during his presidency, his inaugural addresses, and spoke so quietly on both occasions that only the people sitting in the first row of the Senate chamber could hear him. Washington had understood that for most people the president was the one tangible symbol of what was then the rather distant and abstract federal government, and during his first term he conducted two arduous months-long journeys through New England and the South (accompanied only by his valet and hostlers), partly in order that the people could simply see him and so experience the reality of the new government. By contrast, Jefferson almost never appeared in public. The only times people saw him were at his frequent private dinners at the White House. He conducted most of his business with his cabinet through written memos rather than face-to-face meetings (which makes him sound like Richard Nixon, though Nixon of course loved the imperial aspects of the presidency). His basic idea was that the president should be close to invisible, since the more conspicuous the president was, the more power would accrue to him and the federal government, which Jefferson of course sought to prevent. As a typical liberal, or rather as the prototypical liberal, Jefferson was uncomfortable with the very idea of power, and imagined a society of equals in which no one would have authority over anyone else.
All that makes Jefferson look rather silly. Yet the core of his concern, that the concentration of power leads to an imperial-style government and robs the liberty and virtue of a society, was valid. How can we look on today’s presidency (not to mention the hideous leviathan of the federal government over which the president presides), with its powers and perks, its vast security apparatus, its visiting motorcades that cause entire cities to shut down, and not think that Jefferson was onto something? Email entry |