Jefe político

“ The executive, therefore, ought to be so constituted as to be the great protector of the mass of the people. It is the duty of the executive to appoint the officers, and to command the forces, of the republic—to appoint, first, ministerial officers for the administration of public affairs ”

“ All those who understand our Constitutional system will admit that the President, himself and alone, can do many things toward that end by a simple exercise of the powers of his office. He can, for himself and for the heads of Departments, establish the rule that not party service, but honesty, competency and fidelity shall be regarded as the only qualifications for nomination or appointment to be considered. He can keep every officer in place who has performed his duties with integrity and efficiency. ”

“ MY DEAR GOVERNOR:—It was ordered by the franchises of destiny that you become the chief executive of a state in which the telling of tales brightened the hunter's camp-fire and cheered the lonely pioneer's cabin before our people learned the uses of ink; and the supreme fitness of this lies in the fact that you are yourself the best of story-tellers and entitled, for your excellence in this particular, as well as for weightier reasons, to sit at the head of the table in that commonwealth to which we are both bound by many and dear ties. ”

“ We have, I think, fallen on the happiest of all modes of constituting the executive, that of easing and aiding our President, by permitting him to choose Secretaries of State, of finance, of war, and of the navy, with whom he may advise, either separately or all together, and remedy their divisions by adopting or controlling their opinions at his discretion; this saves the nation from the evils of a divided will, and secures to it a steady march in the systematic course which the president may have adopted for that of his administration. ”

“ But if war as a branch of the Nation's affairs ought to be entrusted to a man competent in that branch, what about the tradition that any politician of eminence in the party is fit to be the Cabinet Minister at the head of any branch of the public service? ”

“ In that way a vast army of public servants, amounting to more than one hundred thousand in number, who were appointed and removed at the pleasure of the Executive, became first the instrument of keeping the dominant party in power, and afterward became not so much the instruments and servants of party as the political followers of ambitious men to whom they owed their office, and on whose pleasure they depended for maintaining them. ”

“ It cannot be pretended that public service does not attract thousands of men; it can, however, be complained that the offices fall very largely to the inferior.
We have just witnessed the spectacle of a great republic, which confides the broadest powers to its chief executive, strangely limited in its choice of candidates for the presidency to a handful of men. No new commanding figure had sprung forward from the ranks of either party in the most trying period the country has known in fifty years. ”

“ It may be said, therefore, without exaggeration, that in a hundred cases to one, by taking an old regular army officer, who has never been anything else, and putting him into the highest and most difficult political position, you may spoil an excellent general in making a poor President. ”

“ For the General's home is a Mecca of politics, to which pilgrims of party turn their steps by ones and twos and tens. Some come to do the stark old General honor; some are one-time comrades, or friends who rose up around him on fields of party war. For the most, however, and because humanity is selfish before it is either just or generous, the visitors are office-seeking folk, who ask the magic of the General's signature to their appeals. ”

“ Moving in its own clearly defined orbit, without usurpation or lessening of prerogative, the great executive office, at the close as at the beginning of the century, is the recognized constitutional symbol of authority and of power. The delegated functions and prerogatives that pertained in our infancy and weakness have proved ample in the days of our strength and greatness as a nation. ”

“ Presidents are now made, not by the free suffrages of the people, but by party management; and there are always more than one in the successful party, who are looking to their own turn in the presidential office. ”

“ It would be beyond my present scope to discuss the composition and powers of the permanent Civil Service, whose chiefs have been, at least since the days of Bagehot, recognized as the real rulers of this country. For absolute knowledge of their business, for self-denying devotion to duty, for ability, patience, courtesy, and readiness to help the fleeting Political Official, the permanent chiefs of the Civil Service are worthy of the highest praise. That they are conservative [36] to the core is only to say that they are human. ”

“ Here is the government house, and we stop to picture the wily politicians, who—with noble exceptions—obtain the offices of local grandeur, and the little horde of clerks, many of them rendered prematurely decrepit by their vices, that fawn but cannot be made to Work at the nod of authority, In vain we look for a book—store, though somewhere that name doubtless appears on a sign; but we do and the office of the comandante general, an officer who represents the central power, has charge of the military, and often is mining and counter—mining in a sharp struggle with the governor. ”

“ On being appointed to permanent office the extremist theorists, like the bees in the famous epigram, "cease to hum" their revolutionary airs, and settle down into the profound conviction that things are well as they are. All the more remarkable is the entire equanimity with which the Permanent Official accepts the unpalatable decision of a chief who is strong enough to override him, and the absolute loyalty with which he will carry out a policy which he cordially disapproves. ”

“ His appointment as chief of the nation having been the result of an election contest, the President represents not the whole people, but only the political party which happened to be in the majority at the time of his election. ”

“ While the tranquil and steady tenor of our single executive, during a course of twenty-two years of the most tempestuous times the history of the world has ever presented, gives a rational hope that this important problem is at length solved. Aided by the counsels of a cabinet of heads of departments, originally four, but now five, with whom the President consults, either singly or altogether, he has the benefit of their wisdom and information, brings their views to one centre, and produces an unity of action and direction in all the branches of the government. ”

“ Suppose him to aim at the president's chair, or vice-president's, at the next election—or at the office of war, foreign or domestic affairs, will he not naturally be tempted to make use of his whole patronage, his whole influence, in advising to appointments, both with president and senators, to get such persons nominated, as wall exert themselves in elections of president, vice-president, senators, and house of representatives, to increase his interests, and promote his views? ”

“ That is the great commanding theatre of this nation, and the threshold to whatever department of office a man is qualified to enter. With your reputation, talents, and correct views, used with the necessary prudence, you will at once be placed at the head of the republican body in the House of Representatives; and after obtaining the standing which a little time will ensure you, you may look, at your own will, into the military, the judiciary, diplomatic, or other civil departments, with a certainty of being in either whatever you please. ”

“ Attention is directed here to what a Democratic Administration has done because a Democratic Executive still holds the reins—and of the three Departments of Government, the Executive happens to wield overwhelmingly the decisive power, especially in the choice of foreign policy. ”

“ A little tug comes at his heart-strings but it quickly vanishes as he listens to the eloquent words of the chief speaker, oftentimes the President, unfolding to his receptive imagination the duties and honors that await him in his new life as an officer. ”

“ This handsomely rounds off the whole executive system of executive authority. First, the President has the whole responsibility; and then, being thus responsible for all, he has, and ought to have, the whole power. We have heard of political units, and our American executive, as here represented, is indeed a unit. We have a charmingly simple government! Instead of many officers, in different departments, each having appropriate duties, and each responsible for his own duties, we are so fortunate as to have to deal with but one officer. The President carries on the government ”

“ In support of the opinion, that the president ought to be ineligible after one period of office, it was urged, that the return of public officers into the mass of the common people, where they would feel the tone, which they had given to the administration of the laws, was the best security the public could have for their good behaviour. It would operate as a check upon the restlessness of ambition, and at the same time promote the independence of the executive. ”

“ From the man who shoes your horse to the lawyer who pleads your case, the officers who manage your railway, the doctor into whose hands you give your life, or the minister who seeks to save your souls, what now do you reject because you have tried him and by his works have known him? What makes the Presidential office an exception to all things else in the common sense to be applied to selecting its incumbent? ”

“ The first executive duty of the incumbent of office, therefore, is to keep his faculty under control, so as to be able unhampered to carry out the policy of magnitude and secularization with a view to which the governing board has invested him with his powers. ”

“ It is, no doubt, indispensable to good government that the chiefs of the administration, whether permanent or temporary, should extend a commanding, though general, view over the ensemble of all the interests confided, in any degree, to the responsibility of the central power. ”

“ The President and Secretary of State, and in case of disagreement, the Vice-President shall appoint all civil officers, but shall not have power to remove any officer. All removals shall be the result of a fair trial, whether civil or military. ”

“ The main objection on the other side of the House is that the Chief of Police, who may be appointed by the President, will be partial in his appointments, selecting only partisans, or those who favor his political principles, just as it is supposed the President himself will appoint a man who is of his politics. ”

“ He had lived a soldier's life until elected President, and had never heard the voice of detraction, or his name mentioned except for praise, until he was forced into the political arena.
A lady friend of mine told me that she had a room at the hotel adjoining the General's reception room, and thus involuntarily heard much wrangling about the formation of his cabinet. Delegations of politicians from different States would go so far as to demand that certain men should be members of his cabinet as the price of loyalty to the party and support of his administration. ”

“ The president, elected by the people, is invested with the executive power, taking care that the law is fulfilled, entering, with the previous advice of the senate, into negociations and treaties with foreign powers, directing the military force, and nominating the functionaries of the federation. ”

“ The president of the republic enjoys such executive power as is expressly assigned to him by the constitution, and he has his own office—the president's bureau—presided over by a permanent official, to conduct such matters as fall within his competence and to facilitate communication with the rest of the executive. ”

“ In a country of moderate extent, and with an executive department less powerfully constituted than in ours, this termination would be in appeal to force, to decide the contest between the two hostile parties; and in a monarchy, by the commander of the successful party becoming master of both, and of the whole community, as has been stated. But there is more uncertainty in a country of such extent as ours, and where the executive department is so powerfully constituted. The only thing that is certain is, that it cannot last. ”

“ We watch our President acting for us, telling us news about what we are like, sorting men out around him the way ninety million people would sort them out if they were there to do it.
The President's appointments may be said to be in a way the breath of the nation.
A nation has to breathe, and the plain fact seems to be that certain kinds of people have to be breathed out of a nation and other kinds of people have to be breathed in. The way a President appoints men to office is his way of letting a nation breathe. ”

“ Whatever legislative scheme the Administration may set up, by whatever means of partisan tyranny in caucus or in Congress the opposition of independent men is to be put down, those household troops can be counted on. They faithfully aid the Administration in governing the country, in governing you. For that they receive their patronage, and by that patronage the Administration aids and sustains them in their States. They distribute it among their retainers who are equally faithful. Thus they organize their home forces through whom they rule the party at home. ”