Presidency

“ That they have heads on their shoulders, and that the Teachers have, and they can calculate, and devise, and manage, and arrange for their neighbours, and those who are under their care; and I suppose that it is their duty to do so, and take that care from the Presidency of the Church. The conduct of many would indicate that they think that the Presidency can easily attend to each of their individual affairs, and those too of a trifling character. ”

“ One President, at the conclusion of his term, steps back to private life; his successor, chosen by the people, begins his tenure of the office. And the Presidency of the United States continues to function without a moment's break. ”

“ The Presidency, in their instructions yesterday, brought our minds very clearly to the points which it is proper for us to reflect upon and to exert ourselves to carry out: unity in our action, education, business relations, and in everything pertaining to this world or any other with which we ever will have anything to do. ”

“ The whole idea of the Presidency is having somebody in the Oval Office who can try to get above the bickering and buttonholing in the cloakrooms and corridors and say, "Look, enough of this. Let's just get something done for a change that will help the people." ”

“ Let us improve, in this particular, as in all other duties, and the blessings of the Almighty will be continued with us in greater abundance as we progress. Let us do all we can to sustain the Presidency in the operations they wish carried out. ”

“ In another sense it can be interpreted to mean that the responsibilities of the Presidency are so great that no one man could perform in his head all the staff work necessary to see through the opinion-reactions which might develop abroad to U.S. executive decisions made here at home. ”

“ THE RED FLAG AND THE WHITE HOUSE
The first qualification the next President should run for the Presidency on is his vision or program for the nation with regard to backing up men in American life—democracy and the Red Flag. ”

“ Worker in a saddler's shop, school-teacher, lawyer, merchant, judge of the Supreme Court, United States senator, soldier, leader, step by step the son of the poor Irish immigrant rose to the highest office to which his countrymen could elect him—the presidency of the United States. ”

“ Seriously, I do not think I am fit for the Presidency.” ”

“ Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. ”

“ Such characters may cry, "Aliens, aliens; the Mormons are all hostile to the government," and they may cry it until they are in hell.
As I have already stated, the President of the United States should be a perfect pattern for all the people to walk after; so also should the Vice-President, the members of the Cabinet, and of Congress, the Governors of States and Territories, and in fine, all the officers in the Government, be patterns for the people to imitate. But what do you find among the leaders of the people? ”

“ It consisted in the fact that the first President of this Republic furnished in himself, by his character, the principles he followed, the motives that inspired him and the wisdom of his policies, the most perfect model of a republican chief magistrate in the history of the world—a President to whose teachings and example all his successors—indeed, all those wielding public power in this Republic—could with the utmost confidence look for safest guidance. Surely, no other nation has ever been so signally blessed. ”

“ I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our Government but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad.
In all my public and private acts as your President, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy in the end. ”

“ The question of the last Presidential election arose before the Country—one of those great questions that are not appreciated, I regret from my heart, by the American Nation, when we elect a President, a man who has more power for his time than any enthroned Monarch in Europe. We organize a Government and place him in front as the head and the Chief of the Government. ”

“ The Legislature of the State has recognized him; the supreme court of the State has recognized him; one branch of Congress has recognized him. The duty is plain, and that is for this, the other branch of Congress, to do it, and that settles the question. Then, when it does it, your duty is plain and simple, and as the President has told you, he will perform his without fear, favor, or affection. Recognize the government that revolution has been against and intended to overthrow, and leave the President to his duty, and he will do it. ”

“ Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:
The interest with which the people of the Republic anticipate the assembling of Congress and the fulfillment on that occasion of the duty imposed upon a new President is one of the best evidences of their capacity to realize the hopes of the founders of a political system at once complex and symmetrical. While the different branches of the Government are to a certain extent independent of each other, the duties of all alike have direct reference to the source of power. ”

“ After so much experience it can not be said that absolute unchecked power is safe in the hands of any one set of representatives, or that the capacity of the people for self-government, which is admitted in its broadest extent, is a conclusive argument to prove the prudence, wisdom, and integrity of their representatives.
The people, by the Constitution, have commanded the President, as much as they have commanded the legislative branch of the Government, to execute their will. ”

“ Although I do not believe that the power and patronage of the President can with any, even the least, justice be compared with that of the King of England, yet from the very nature of things, from the rapid increase of our population, from the number of new States, from our growing revenue and expenditures, from the additional number of officers necessary to conduct the affairs of the Government, and from many other causes which I might enumerate, I am convinced that the Federal Executive is becoming stronger and stronger. ”

“ Our government may be said to be the organized will of all the people. The people govern in this country, and the men and the means by which they govern all combined may be said to be the government. But do not ever forget this fact: the President is not a master, but a servant. The President, Senators, congressmen, and judges, in the Nation; the Governors, State Senators, and State Representatives in the States are only agents or servants of the people to carry out the people's will. ”

“ The whole energy of origination under our system rests with Congress. It stands at the front of all government among us;149 it is the single affirmative voice in national policy. First or last, it determines what is to be done. The President, indeed, appoints officers and negotiates treaties, but he does so subject to the ‘yes’ of the Senate. Congress organizes the executive departments, organizes the army, organizes the navy. It audits, approves, and pays expenses. It conceives and directs all comprehensive policy. All else is negation. ”

“ The President is President. His office and his name of office are known, and both are fixed and described by law. Being commander of the army and navy, holding the power of nominating to office and removing from office, and being by these powers the fountain of all patronage and all favor, what does he not become if he be allowed to superadd to all this the character of single representative of the American people? Sir, he becomes what America has not been accustomed to see, what this Constitution has never created, and what I cannot contemplate but with profound alarm. ”

“ We have done our duty as a people, and elected our Administration—let us, in the name of all that is sublime and fundamental in republican principles, support and not perplex them in the hard and complex problem which they are appointed to solve. ”

“ Reform is necessary, even more, in the higher grades of the public service. President, Vice-President, Judges, Senators, Representatives, Cabinet officers—these, and all others in authority—are the people’s servants. ”

“ Public office is a public trust. We reaffirm the declaration of the Democratic National Convention of 1876 for the reform of the civil service, and we call for the honest enforcement of all laws regulating the same. The nomination of a President, as in the recent Republican convention, by delegations composed largely of his appointees, holding office at his pleasure, is a scandalous satire upon free popular institutions, and a startling illustration of the methods by which a President may gratify his ambition. ”

“ The president, it is true, presides over the whole; his eye surveys the whole extent of the system in all its movements. But has he power to enter into the courts, for example, and tell them what is to be done? Or may he come here, and tell us the same? Or when we have made a law, can he withhold the power necessary to its practical effect? He moves, it is true, in a high, a glorious sphere. It is his to watch over the whole with a paternal eye ”

“ The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him, The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them. Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you, Sculpture and monuments and any thing inscribed anywhere are tallied in you. ”

“ President, it is with subdued feelings of the profoundest humility and mortification, that I am compelled to say, that, constituted as congress now is, no relief will be afforded by it, unless its members shall be enlightened and instructed by the people themselves. A large portion of the body, whatever may be their private judgment upon the course of the president, believe it to be their duty, at all events safest for themselves, to sustain him, without regard to the consequences of his measures upon the public interests. ”

“ It is evident, then, that in the work of inaugurating a genuine reform of the civil service the President is the natural leader, and that much of it he can accomplish, for the time being at least, without the aid, and even against the opposition, of Congress. ”

“ To hold the exalted office of President of the United States, to occupy the place of Washington, of Jefferson, of Lincoln, to be looked to for leadership in public questions, to be the first citizen in this great land is not a trifling but a gigantic ambition, worthy of all honest striving but involving, in the ordinary sense, no supreme issue. ”

“ Others have been married and still lived, but it has remained for you, Mr. President, young as you are, to pose as a newly wedded president and to take your new mother-in-law into the cabinet with you. ”

“ When somewhere a so-called republic is set up, and a President elected for a term strictly defined by its Constitution, the President refuses to go out of office at the close of that term and starts a revolution. ”