To the principle which condemns the appointment of executive
officers by popular suffrage, ought the chief of the executive, in a
republican government, to be an exception? Is it a good rule, which,
in the American Constitution, provides for the election of the
President once in every four years by the entire people? The
question is not free from difficulty. There is unquestionably some
advantage, in a country like America, where no apprehension needs be
entertained of a coup d'etat, in making the chief minister
constitutionally independent of the legislative body, and rendering
the two great branches of the government, while equally popular both
in their origin and in their responsibility, an effective check on one
another. The plan is in accordance with that sedulous avoidance of the
concentration of great masses of power in the same hands, which is a
marked characteristic of the American Federal Constitution. But the
advantage, in this instance, is purchased at a price above all
reasonable estimates of its value. It seems far better that the
chief magistrate in a republic should be appointed avowedly, as the
chief minister in a constitutional monarchy is virtually, by the
representative body. In the first place, he is certain, when thus
appointed, to be a more eminent man. The party which has the
majority in Parliament would then, as a rule, appoint its own
leader; who is always one of the foremost, and often the very foremost
person in political life: while the President of the United States,
since the last survivor of the founders of the republic disappeared
from the scene, is almost always either an obscure man, or one who has
gained any reputation he may possess in some other field than
politics.
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