The American Vice Presidency (2 page)

To sidestep the direct voting for president by members of the national legislature, Wilson proposed that each state legislature choose as the presidential electors private citizens equal to the number of its congressional delegation—two senators plus the number of legislators in the House of Representatives as determined by population. From this so-called electoral college, which would meet in the individual states to minimize collusion among them, the candidate achieving a majority would be elected president, and the runner-up, vice president.

When Madison reported this solution to the convention, he offered only a mild caution. “The only objection which occurred,” he wrote, “was that each Citizen after having given his vote for his fellow Citizen [from his own state] would throw away his second on some obscure Citizen of another state, in order to ensure the object of his first choice.” Then he
added, too optimistically as history would show, “But it could hardly be supposed that the Citizens of many States would be so sanguine of having their favorite selected, as not to give their second vote [for vice president] with sincerity to the next object of their choice.”
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Indeed, the so-called double balloting was greeted with some optimism. Delaware’s John Dickinson decided that each state’s “partiality” for its own favorite son would work to the advantage of all. “Let the people of each State choose its best Citizen,” he said. “The people will know the most eminent characters of their own State, and the people of a different State will feel an emulation in selecting those of which they have the greatest reason to be proud” for the two top executive posts.
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In a moment of prescience, Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts urged that the Senate be required to confirm the plurality of the vice president, but he was ignored. Madison subsequently wrote, “As the regulation stands, a very obscure man with a very few votes may arrive at the appointment.”
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That outcome did not occur under the double-balloting system, but in due time under a subsequent and different method of choosing the vice president, Madison’s warning would echo in regrettable vice presidential selections.

At a time that political parties did not yet exist in the young nation, there was no anticipation that this arrangement might produce a president and vice president of sharply differing political loyalties. Indeed, the notion of factions was widely disparaged as the new country generally demonstrated strong unity in the task of creating a new self-government distinct from the one in England, from which it had just achieved independence.

Hugh Williamson of North Carolina, a member of the convention’s Committee of Eleven, assigned to draft the Constitution, sounded a sour postmortem on the creation of the presidential standby. “Such an office as vice president was not wanted,” he said. “It was introduced only for the sake of a valuable mode of election which required two be chosen at the same time.”
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When a vice presidency was first proposed, many delegates to the Constitutional Convention pondered what the officeholder would do while he stood by to take over the duties and powers of the presidency of a deceased or disabled chief executive. Thus came the patchwork of having the vice president simultaneously serve as president of the Senate, with a single right and assignment—to cast the deciding vote in case of a tie.

This idea also had its opponents, who cited an apparent breach of the separation of executive and legislative powers, with the vice president having a foot in each branch. One who objected was Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, later himself the fifth vice president. “We might as well put the President himself at the head of the legislature,” he warned. “The close intimacy that must subsist between the President and Vice President makes it absolutely improper.” Gouverneur Morris quipped about that expected kinship: “The vice president will be the first heir apparent that ever loved his father.” But Roger Sherman saw the practical utility of making the vice president the presiding officer of the Senate. Without it, he noted, the man “would be without employment.”
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In point of fact, presiding would not be much employment at all, inasmuch as the man in the chair would not really be a senator and would have no other function than breaking a tie. He would have no explicit power to join in debate on the issue at hand or any other business on the floor of the Senate. Delegate Luther Martin of Maryland ridiculed the proposed vice president as “that great officer of government.” With the candidate needing only to finish second in the presidential balloting, he said, it would be “very possible, and not improbable, that he may be appointed by the electors of a single large state,” conceivably his own. An apparently disgusted Martin later reported to his state legislature, “Every part of the system which relates to the Vice President, as well as the present mode of electing the President, was introduced and agreed upon after I left Philadelphia.”
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On the other hand, William R. Davie of North Carolina saw particular advantage in having the relatively unoccupied vice president available to break Senate tie votes. “From the nature of his election and office,” Davie said, he “represents no one state in particular, but all the states.” Therefore, he reasoned, “it is impossible that any officer could be chosen more impartially. He is, in consequence of his election, the creature of no particular district or state, but the office and representation of the Union. He must possess the confidence of the states in a very great degree, and consequently be the most proper person to decide in cases of this kind.”
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Another prominent delegate, George Mason of Virginia, argued instead for a “Council of State” acting as an advisory body to the president, chaired by a “Vice President of the United States pro tempore,” who would succeed the president “upon any vacancy or disability of the chief magistrate.”
Having one individual serve as both vice president and president of the Senate, Mason feared, would be “a fatal defect … dangerously blending” the executive and legislative branches.
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In all this, the drafters seemed to be more worried about having the vice president take on the limited role of president of the Senate than themselves clarifying how and under what circumstances he would succeed to the presidency if destiny were to require it. They also left ambiguous whether in such an event the vice president would actually become president, or would merely assume the functions and responsibilities of the office as an acting president until another person was elected or until a surviving incumbent could resume them.

Alexander Hamilton of New York, discussing the vice presidency in terms of presidential succession, made clear his belief that a vice president would take over only temporarily. It would happen, Hamilton proposed, only in case of “the death, resignation, impeachment, removal from office or absence from the United States of the President.” Then, the vice president would “exercise all the powers of this Constitution vested in the President until another shall be appointed, or until he shall return to the United States if his absence was with the Consent of the Senate and Assembly.”
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The Committee of Eleven, charged with drafting the final language on succession, deleted the reference to a president’s physical absence from the country. Considering the possibility that the vice president might die first or be disabled, or that both the president and vice president might perish at the same time, Delegate Edmund Randolph of Virginia won approval of another resolution providing in such an event “the Legislature may declare by law what officer of the United States shall act as President … until such disability be removed or a president shall be elected.”
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Surprisingly, considering the criticality of the matter in presidential succession, the convention’s Committee on Style, which wrote the final language, left unspecified the means whereby Congress would identify and choose that officer to “act as President” in such circumstances. Eventually, Article II, Section 1, read that in the case of a vacancy in the presidency, “the Powers and Duties … of the Same” were to “devolve on the Vice President,” creating confusion later as to whether “the Same” referred to transferring the powers and functions only or to the office itself.

In such manner did the matter rest. The U.S. Constitution was adopted
by the convention in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, and was presented to twelve of the thirteen original states for ratification, absent only Rhode Island. The document was signed by thirty-nine of the forty-two delegates present, with George Washington of Virginia presiding. Nine months later, on June 21, 1788, the Constitution became effective with the ratification of the ninth state, New Hampshire.

In September, the Congress under the expiring Articles of Confederation, which had called the Constitutional Convention, set late 1788 and early 1789 for the election of the first president and vice president of the United States and their inauguration on April 21, 1789. Of the thirteen original states, only ten chose electors under the newly adopted procedure; North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified the Constitution, and a factional split in the two houses of the New York State Assembly resulted in no electors selected. The choices were made in January by members of the legislature in four states, by popular vote in four others, and the rest by a combination thereof.

As noted, the first national election took place in the absence of political parties of the sort that later came to be an integral and divisive aspect of the system. Factions based on a rough combination of personal relations among the politically engaged and general philosophies held by region, social standing, and means of employment, however, soon emerged. Those who advocated a strong central government came to be known as Federalists; their critics bore no special name and were referred to at first simply as Anti-Federalists.

Some of the loyal followers of Washington also possessed strains of personal ambition that would in the future disturb the harmony of the new and expanding nation. Notably Hamilton, one of Washington’s principal lieutenants and allies, harbored these. He was given to political intrigue that in time was to plague another Federalist and arguably the second most highly regarded man in the newly formed union, the lawyer-farmer John Adams of Massachusetts. In this climate of intrigue the election of the first American president and vice president proceeded; the only question about the outcome concerned which worthy patriot would be chosen to stand in the wings when the icon George Washington was officially crowned as the young nation’s supreme leader.

JOHN ADAMS

OF MASSACHUSETTS

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n the first presidential election in American history, neither George Washington, nor John Adams, nor any of the other candidates waged open campaigns. They all considered any overt effort to pursue the highest office demeaning, and in any event the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Washington expressed little interest, to the point that Alexander Hamilton felt compelled to write to him: “On your acceptance of the office of President, the success of the new government may materially depend.”
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Adams readily recognized that the presidency should and would go to Washington as the young country’s unchallenged leader in peace as well as war. At the same time, he allowed himself to believe, in light of his own record during and after the Revolution, that he was entitled to be vice president and that the vote would clearly indicate so. Neither in appearance nor demeanor did Adams command great approval or warmth; he was short, portly, and balding and often given to irascibility. But his intelligence, loyalty, and persistence were unchallenged, except by bitter political foes, among whom Hamilton was in the forefront.

In advance of the actual presidential balloting, Hamilton, as a man of ambition and cunning, saw Adams as a challenge to him in the Federalist ranks and took steps to reduce the New Englander’s vote. He urged electors in several northern states to deny their second ballots to Adams, lest
he somehow edge out Washington for the presidency or at least see himself as the successor to Washington, a role Hamilton himself coveted.

In New York, a serious effort for the vice presidency was made in behalf of Governor George Clinton, a brigadier general in the revolutionary army, charged with defending the state’s Hudson Highlands, and a close friend of Washington. From Virginia, the revolutionary hero Patrick Henry was said to be behind it.

James Madison, regarding the prospects of a New York–Virginia coalition in behalf of Clinton, turned to Hamilton for clarification. “I cannot … believe that the plan will succeed,” Hamilton replied. “Nor indeed do I think that Clinton would be disposed to exchange his present appointment [as governor of New York] for that office [of the vice presidency] or to risk his popularity by holding both.” Nevertheless, he wrote, the notion “merits attention and ought not to be neglected as chimerical or impracticable.”
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