Presidency and campaigns explained : NPR

The American president is now known as the most powerful person in the world, but that was not what the Founding Fathers intended.

In fact, when the United States was born, there wasn’t much of a plan for the executive branch. After years of rule by the British monarchy, the framers of the Constitution feared giving too much power to the new nation’s leaders.

“The Framers of the Constitution never intended the presidency to be a public office. It was merely a clerical role that controlled the executive branch,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “It wasn’t like a flip of a switch made the presidency a public office. It happened gradually.”

The country’s first president, George Washington, understood the potential importance of this role. Historians tell NPR that Washington helped establish the balance of being a strong leader without imitating the rule of the British monarchy or established traditions that we still see today.

As we approach the final two months Ahead of Election Day, learn about the history of the presidency, how Washington has influenced the presidency today, and how the path to the White House has changed.

The founders didn’t have much of a plan for the management team.

In the early years after the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers struggled with how the nation should be governed, said Catherine O’Donnell, a history professor at Arizona State University.

Their executive leadership experience is that of kings and royal governors – “not a very good model,” she says.

The founders had serious doubts about having a single executive in the U.S. At one point they considered a three-man leadership, but the founders quickly settled on one executive.

Still, O’Donnell says, one of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, felt the need to defend the choice. In the Federalist Papers, Hamilton argued that a single executive would be more energetic and ultimately less risky because Americans could keep a close eye on that single person, he says.

It was decided that there would be one leader, the president. But there was still doubt as to what that role should be. In fact, it seemed like there was a better idea of ​​what the role of the president should be. Shouldn’t That means not being overbearing, never a king, but a man of the people, O’Donnell says.

“People were worried from the beginning,” she said.

George Washington, first President of the United States, circa 1789.

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The man who set the precedent

Enter our first president, George Washington. He was commander in chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and was well-respected after the war, says Denver Brunsman, a history professor at George Washington University. Though Washington never aspired to the highest office, “he had an incredible reputation across the country,” Brunsman says. “It was a given that he would become president, and then we had to convince him to stay on for a second term.”

Washington is the only president to be elected twice by unanimous vote of the Electoral College, Brunsman said. “Selecting Washington as the first president established the presidency as an important position from the beginning,” he said.

O’Donnell points out that Washington was extremely cautious every step of the way, knowing the precedent its actions would set.

“He really thought the office should command respect,” she said. “A lot of people You can’t call him ‘Your Royal Highness’. You can’t call him ‘George’.”

They settled on “Mr. President,” and Washington took to the role formally, O’Donnell says.

While the president’s role has changed and evolved along with America’s presence on the world stage, many traditions and precedents started by Washington remain, so “I think the president will recognize the broad elements of the job,” Brunsman said.

he American made brown suit She said the suit was made specially for the inauguration and the president wore this special presidential suit whenever he met with people.

The president took his task of meeting with politicians, foreign dignitaries, and other visitors to the president very seriously and wanted to ensure that the public understood that they had access to their nation’s leader. He set dates and times for these face-to-face interactions, including meetings and state dinners. Today, presidents regularly host state dinners for foreign leaders visiting the United States.

Washington created his own cabinet, which met regularly with his military advisers, much like the war cabinet during the Revolutionary War, a system that continues to this day.

Washington’s cabinet was quite different from the British government of the time. To get a position in the British government, it was important who you knew. Washington placed emphasis on selecting competent people with relevant experience to run the government. George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon.

Whereas Washington’s cabinet had consisted of just four members — Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph — there were now 16 offices (including the vice president and the heads of 15 departments).

Washington also Inaugural Address and farewell addressHis final speech, in which he called for political unity among Americans, is still revered today. Read annually by the United States Senate.

Washington retired from office after serving two terms as president, a tradition that continued until President Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a third term in 1941. The two-term limit was later lifted. Enshrined in the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.

Presidents didn’t campaign until the 19th century.

Texas Governor George W. Bush, then the Republican presidential candidate, attended a Hispanic community breakfast at Jalapeño’s Restaurant in Davenport, Iowa, on August 13, 1999.

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Kissing babies, eating hot dogs and stopping by state fairs are common practices for presidential candidates eager to connect face-to-face with voters while campaigning.

But historians NPR spoke to say it’s a purely modern tactic that would have been unthinkable in Washington’s time, when a national movement as we know it today didn’t exist.

“It was considered ungentlemanly, vulgar, even crude, to say you wanted the job,” said Justin Vaughn, an associate professor of political science at Coastal Carolina University.

As political parties began to form in the 19th century, candidates began to be selected by party leaders, said George Washington University’s Brunsman.

On the other hand, Washington was against the formation of political parties. Inflame partisanship And it weakened the state. But this development was outside of his control, says Brunsman, and political parties were beginning to form by the end of his first term.

Until the 1960s, the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful men and political bosses chose their party’s presidential nominee in “smoke-filled rooms,” Vaughn said. It wasn’t until the chaos of the 1968 Democratic National Convention that the party introduced a presidential primary system to choose its nominee, and the Republican Party soon followed suit.

In the early days of political parties in the 1790s, newspapers affiliated with the major parties of the time, the Federalist Party or the Democratic-Republican Party, were important outlets for promoting their party ideals and candidates across the country, Brandsman said.

“This is really the beginning of the modern movement,” he says.

Historians consider the election of 1840 (Democrats versus Whigs) to be the first truly modern presidential election.

“Both sides used all the latest techniques of commercializing politics: posters, songs, media of all kinds,” Brunsman said.

In the 1840 presidential election, Whig candidate William Henry Harrison (known as “Old Tippecanoe”), who had risen from his military victories over Native Americans in 1811, Battle of Tippecanoe to then-President Martin Van Buren, a Democrat.

At that time, the Whigs created the “Log Cabin” campaign and the famous song “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”, which praised the work of Harrison and future Vice President John Tyler.

The log house campaign Democratic Newspapers Ridicule Attempts Harrison, In essence He was a simple man who was too old for the job.

Then-U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris prepares pork burgers in the Iowa Pork Producers Association tent during the 2019 Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa.

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Instead of fighting back, the Whigs embraced the ridicule, presenting Harrison as a log-cabin, cider-drinking “common man” frontier warrior in contrast to the wealthy but unrealistic Van Buren, despite the fact that Harrison came from a wealthy Virginia plantation-owning family.

The Harrison campaign featured the log cabin in various campaign items. Cups and teapotsand was held.”Log cabins and hard cider“He held rallies to promote the idea that he was on the side of the people, and it worked. Harrison won the election of 1840.”

Washington’s successors “understood that in a democratic America they had to campaign and put themselves out there,” Brandsman said.