Historical Series: We've Always Elected Celebrities To The Presidency. They Were Called Generals: Introduction and Part 1

 

 

Even before the 2016 election, I had been hearing a variation on the same argument over and over from pundits, historians and supposedly educated people.

The argument was that for a long time Americans had chosen their leaders through logical reasoned debate on issues and political context. Then at some point, the type of Presidential candidate Americans got began to meet a much lower standard, one of performance more than qualifications. There’s no consensus as to when this happened exactly: some argued it started with Obama, some traced it back to Reagan, some argued in came with the rise of television for reducing complex arguments to sound bites or the rise of selecting Presidential candidates in primary campaigns. But it’s a truth now agreed upon by all of these talking heads that in the past the voters made informed decisions and didn’t let such things as celebrity guide them.

It's a nice story. It’s also a complete falsehood and one that even a casual student of American history should know well enough then to argue as the truth.

The reality is, since the start of the election of our Presidents by direct vote and arguably since the founding of the republic, the men who have served as President more often then not been far more well known to the public even before they were sworn in as President. The critical difference is that was the nation had a different definition of what a celebrity was, particularly what made you a national name.

That definition was military service. Very early in our nation’s history, there was a direct correlation between fame in battle being a qualification for the White House. As we increasingly developed a two-party system no matter how much the parties changed in the first century of direct elections, both parties came to realize that most voters equating prowess on the battlefield as the qualities that would make great leadership. Frequently in the nineteenth century, when this mindset was at its peak, this would turn out to be a false equivalence for our country but both parties would increasingly lean on this because it would lead to electoral success and they would worry about governing after the fact.

As celebrity has increasingly taken a hold in our electoral system at practically every level, it’s worth looking at how the United States decided that our leadership at the executive level was frequently tied to those who had held positions at the highest military level. From this we frequently get the conclusion that the best political leaders should have little, if no political experience, and no matter how many times we are proven wrong by history,  it seems this is a lesson we are unable to unlearn. So this series will take a look at why we decided the military would frequently be are best choices for the Presidency, when America was right with its choices and when it was wrong, and why we seem to have abandoned it. And we might as well start at the very beginning.

It’s generally known that George Washington was reluctant to serve as our nation’s first President. After leading America through the Revolution and presiding over the Constitutional Convention, he had wanted to go back to a quiet life in Mount Vernon. But America had other plans.

Despite the fact that he was chosen unanimously by the first ever electoral college, there were many who thought it might not be the best idea for a military man to be our first President. Some wanted Benjamin Franklin to be the first leader, and some had wanted John Adams. But the reason Washington was chosen was in part due to his national fame as well as the fact that he did not have the political baggage that men such as Adams and Franklin did.

Washington had been reluctant to serve but he took on the mantle of Cincinnatus, the legendary Roman who was a citizen soldier. He was twice granted supreme power but he didn’t hold it a day longer than absolutely necessary, constantly demonstrating great honor and integrity. Like the majority of the Founding Fathers Washington had studied the Romans and the Greeks and held it high-esteem. Washington had done so when he had relinquished control of the Continental Army and he would refuse to use his power to establish a monarchy or assume the powers of a king. This was exactly what our country, which already had one failed form of government behind it, needed to begin when it got started.

Washington went out of his way to form a cabinet with the most qualified people at the helm. Thomas Jefferson was his secretary of state, Hamilton his secretary of Treasury. The two men had been arch-rivals for a long time, putting them in the cabinet was a stroke of brilliance. Henry Knox served as his secretary of War and Edmund Randolph was his Attorney General. When Jefferson left as his position, Randolph took over as Secretary of State.

He also had to take the job of essentially forming the Supreme Court from scratch. John Jay, the first Chief Justice, was one of his best choses as was John Rutledge. Rutledge briefly succeeded Jay before he was replaced by Oliver Ellsworth in March of 1796.

Washington is considered one of the three greatest Presidents in history but he almost always is ranked behind Lincoln or FDR when it comes to being considered the greatest. Perhaps it is due to the fact that being first we give him less credit than his successor and maybe its because compared to all his manifold other accomplishments, calling him the greatest President might be a bit much. But he managed superb leadership at the founding of our republic and though he could have gotten a third term, like Cincinnatus he chose to return to Mount Vernon and let the first real Presidential election proceed in 1796. He believed neither in political parties – he only took on the label of Federalist because John Adams was – and famously warned about foreign entanglements in his farewell address. Both were noble ideas even if neither was likely to be sustainable.

Most historians don’t want to consider Washington – nor indeed the Founding Fathers themselves – as celebrities, no doubt because they believe it would diminish them in their eyes. But the fact remains that not only he but most of those who served in the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention and indeed the first five Presidents of the United states were the dictionary-definition of it. They were known throughout the known world for what they had achieved and who they had achieved it against. And I think it’s worth reminded those on the left as well other the minorities just what men like Washington were risking when so many of them, particularly minorities, dismiss them as ‘racist white men’.

To be clear, most of these scholars dismiss everybody in the West – Britain, France, every country except Russia – under the labels of colonialism and imperialism. That’s true. Then they tend to frequently disdain America as being a product of imperialism and falling under the racist, genocidal tropes of these Western nations. That’s also true. However, the question I have for those same leftists is would they have preferred the alternative when they denounce America as not a real democracy. Would they prefer to still be under the yoke of the British, who they will never waste an opportunity to call an imperialist nation? Would they prefer to still be singing ‘God Save The King’ and saluting the Union Jack?

This is the thing about those ‘racist white men’ that I think the left loves to ignore: the bravery it took for them to make their stand. Yes the soldiers were all doing the fighting for them, but let’s not kid ourselves. If the revolt had failed, the British would not have treated these revolutionaries kindly. We know this from how the Empire reacted to this both before and after the American Revolution to nations that tried to revolt and failed. When Ben Franklin said, “We must all hang together or we will all hang separately,” he wasn’t being rhetorical. He and every member of the Continental Congress who signed the Declaration of Independence were committing treason in the eyes of a ruling nation. They would have all been made examples of by the Crown and they would not have died swiftly or painlessly. When Patrick Henry said: “Give me liberty or give me death,” he knew far too well both options were equally possible.

This applied to Washington as well. If he had been captured by the British at any point during the battles he led, there is a good chance he would have been executed or at the very least, sent back to Britain to face a lifetime of imprisonment. Many of these men were indeed rich and plantation owners. If Jefferson or Madison had been imprisoned, the crown would have taken over their plantations and I assure you, the treatment of the slaves would not have improved and they sure as hell wouldn’t have been set free.

The same is true when Washington and the delegates at the Constitutional Convention tried to work out a government for the New Republic. The previous version, the Articles of Confederation, had ended in disaster and they knew if they failed again, this young country might die before it was born. So for five long, hot months they spent debated, compromising, yelling at each other, and indeed quite a few of them walked out altogether before they produced the Constitution. To this day, millions of Americans regard it and the people who helped create with contempt, primarily because it didn’t take into account what seemed obvious to those who have the fortunate benefit of more than two centuries of hindsight.

Well, the founders knew that when they were doing it. The  opening phrase of the Preamble includes the words: “in order to form a more perfect Union.” They’re not saying that they got it right the first time, that it’s perfect now, or perfection is even possible. All they were trying to do was do a better job than they had previously done, by themselves or everyone who had come before them. They did this, for the record, with no discernable road map for a democracy: there wasn’t a clear example of what before and many of them made several debates during the convention as to what to try to do just to get this far – many of which looked like it might cause the Convention to dissolve

Yes they did so in a time of slavery, with no acknowledgement of rights for women or acknowledgement of other minorities. They also had no idea the railroad, the telegraph or the electric light was going to become part of our society. They weren’t Gods the way the right sees them, or racist thugs the way the left sees them. They were ordinary men doing the best they could with what they had at the time.

And its worth noting they were all infinitely more educated than so many of those who run for political office even a century later. They had studied Latin and Greek; men like Jefferson were architects and mathematical prodigies, Washington had been a surveyor. I mention this because not merely Washington but the first five Presidents – all of whom fall under the heading of Founding Fathers – were all so overqualified for their positions its practically insane.

Washington had served as general of the Continental Army and presided over the Constitutional Convention. Adams and Jefferson had played critical roles in the creation of the Declaration of Independence and had key roles in the diplomatic corps; Adams had been Envoy to France, Minister to Britain and the Netherlands before returning to America. Jefferson had been governor of Virginia and Minister to France before becoming Secretary of State. James Madison essentially wrote the Constitution, used the Federalist Papers to defend it and helped create the Bill of Rights. He’d served under Washington as part of the Virginia Militia, was a Congressmen in the first House of Representatives and Jefferson’s Secretary of State. James Monroe’s wasn’t quite there at the start, but he had a remarkable resume: one of the first Senators from Virginia, Minister to France and Britain, Secretary of War and Secretary of State under Madison.

For that matter most of the men who ran in the first elections for the Presidency were similarly more than qualified. Charles Pinckney, who Jefferson defeated when he ran for reelection and Madison’s first term., had signed the Constitution, served in the Senate for two terms for South Carolina and was Jefferson’s Minister to Spain. Madison defeated DeWitt Clinton for reelection in 1812, who from 1802 to 1828 held every conceivable elected office for the state of New York. Rufus King who Monroe trounced when he won the Presidency in 1817 signed the Constitution, served as minister to the U.K. and Senator from Massachusetts.

None of these men, it should be admitted, ran for President in the sense that would be true by the middle of the century or even with the force of a two-party system. The Federalist Party was in decline by the end of Jefferson’s term and by the time of Monroe’s election it was dead. But they were all more than competent leaders and figures in the electoral process. As America moved more into a direct democracy system at the end of the Era of Good Feelings, it was unlikely this peace would have lasted – there were other problems, including the slavery question that were becoming a national issue. And bringing the right of suffrage to the many was something that needed to be done for democracy to truly flourish.

Unfortunately when it occurred in the first Presidential election in 1824, it was done in the name of a man who was by far the most unqualified Presidential candidate to that point in history and whose temperament and rabid populist following would lead to the balance of separation of powers beginning to tilt far more in favor of the executive branch. And it did so in the name of a military figure whose national reputation was built on a shaky foundation.

In the next article in the series I will deal with the rise of Andrew Jackson, and how the man who brought about Jacksonian Democracy himself had little use for the term as it traditionally existed.