Al Weed - A Democrat for Virginia

Unable to decide just what to do about the number of the executive, they postponed the issue briefly and went back to the question of executive powers. For all their indecision about some questions, the delegates were definitely and unanimously clear on one: The Executive should not have the power of war and peace. The issue was one of enormous moment, for their own time and for the future - but it required hardly any debate, so eloquent and settled were the lessons of history. None of the delegates wanted an executive who could take them to war on his own judgment or that of himself and a few hand-picked advisors. None wanted him to be able to plan an aggressive action in secret and then claim that a sudden emergency compelled him to act. None wanted him to define ever increasing areas that needed defending and so have the country constantly responding to attacks on its "interests." None wanted an executive who could use the excuse of sudden or continuing crisis to gather more and more powers to himself, to draw political power away from states and communities to the central government, and, within the central government, away from the legislature and the judiciary to the office of the executive. In sum, none wanted him to use the war-making power, the assumed ultimate responsibility for the nation's security, as a ruse to transform his office into that of an elective monarch, with all the inevitable consequences which would finally reduce citizens to mere petitioners whose needs and wisdom would be commonly sacrificed in the name of national defense, and whose criticisms would bring charges of disloyalty against them. The vote against giving the executive the powers of war and peace was informed by centuries of experience, and it could not have been more emphatic.

As for the other duties of the executive, the delegates were able to agree at once, at least in general terms, that the executive should have the rather modest power "to carry into effect the national laws" and to appoint officers. In the view of most of the delegates then, although the executive was not to be quite the cipher they had in mind, he was to be a public servant of very humble constitutional standing. He might be George Washington; but he was not to imagine that he was George III.