The Founders Feared a Trump-like President—Which Is Why They Established the Electoral College
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The Founders Feared a Trump-like President—Which Is Why They Established the Electoral College
The founders and framers thought they could prevent somebody like Donald Trump from ever becoming president. They were wrong, and we’re still paying the price.
It’s often said that the Electoral College was brought into being to perpetuate or protect the institution of slavery, and, indeed, during the first half-century of America it gave the slave states several presidents who otherwise wouldn’t have been elected.
Most of the pro-slave-state bias of the Electoral College, however, was a function of the Three-Fifths Compromise (which, until the 1870s, gave slave states more members in the House of Representatives than called for by the size of their voting public) and the decision to give each state two US senators.
But, according to the framers of the Constitution themselves, the real reason for the Electoral College was to prevent a foreign power from placing their stooge in the White House.
Today we’re horrified by the idea that Donald Trump may truly be putting the interests of foreign governments ahead of our own, and that money and other efforts from multiple foreign entities may have helped him get elected.
It’s shocking. Many of us never took the idea seriously when the movie The Manchurian Candidate came out in 1962. “What an intriguing idea for a movie,” we thought, “but that could never happen here.”
However, this scenario was a huge deal for the founding generation. One of the first questions about any candidate for president was “Is he beholden in any way to any other government?”
At the time of the Declaration of Independence, it’s estimated that nearly two-thirds of all citizens of the American colonies favored remaining a British colony ( Jimmy Carter’s novel The Hornet’s Nest is a great resource). There were spies and British loyalists everywhere, and Spain had staked out its claim to the region around Florida while the French were colonizing what is now Canada.
Foreign powers had us boxed in.
In 1775, virtually all of the colonists had familial, friendship, or business acquaintances with people whose loyalty was suspect or who were openly opposed to American independence. It was rumored that Ben Franklin, while in Paris, was working as a spy for British intelligence, and his close associate, Edward Bancroft, actually was.6 Federalists, in particular, were wary of his “internationalist” sentiments.
Thomas Jefferson lived in France while the Constitution was drafted, and his political enemies were, even then, whispering that he had, at best, mixed loyalties (and it got much louder around the election of 1800). In response, he felt the need to protest to Elbridge Gerry, in a letter on January 26, 1799, “The first object of my heart is my own country. In that is embarked my family, my fortune, and my own existence.”7
When John Adams famously defended British soldiers who, during an anti-British riot on March 5, 1770, shot and killed Crispus Attucks and four others, he was widely condemned for being too pro-British. The issue recurred in 1798 when he pushed the Alien and Sedition Acts through Congress over Vice President Thomas Jefferson’s loud objections. British spy Gilbert Barkley wrote to his handlers in London that Quakers and many other Americans considered Adams an enemy to his country.
When Adams blew up the XYZ Affair and nearly went to war with France, his political opponents circulated the rumor that he was doing it only to solidify his “manly” and “patriotic” credentials. Historian and author John Ferling, in his book A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic, writes that Adams’s anti-British rhetoric worked at changing the perception of him: “By mid-1798 he was acclaimed for his ‘manly fortitude,’ ‘manly spirited’ actions, and ‘manly independence.’”8
After the Revolutionary War, the nation was abuzz about Benedict Arnold—one of the war’s most decorated soldiers and once considered a shoo-in for high elected office—selling out to the British in exchange for money and a title.
So it fell to a fatherless man born in the West Indies to explain to Americans that the main purpose of the Electoral
College was to make sure that no agent of a foreign government would ever become president.
Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist, no. 68, that America was so spread out, it would be difficult for most citizens/ voters to get to know a presidential candidate well enough to spot a spy or traitor. But the electors—having no other governmental duty, obligation, or responsibility—would catch one.9
After all, the way the Constitution set up the Electoral College, the electors were expected to cast their votes for president reflecting the preferences of their states, but they didn’t have to. They’d all assemble in the nation’s capital and get to know the candidates, and make their own independent determinations on the character and qualities of the men running for president. They’d easily spot a foreign agent or a person with questionable sympathies.
“The most deadly adversaries” of America, Hamilton wrote, would probably “make their approaches [to seizing control of the United States] from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”
But influencing public opinion or owning a senator was nothing compared with having their man in the White House. As Hamilton wrote, “How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy [presidency] of the Union?”
But, Hamilton wrote, the framers of the Constitution “have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention.”
The system they set up to protect the presidency from an agent of a foreign government was straightforward, Hamilton claimed. The choice of president would not “depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes.” Instead, the Electoral College would be made up of “persons [selected] for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment.”
The electors would be apolitical, Hamilton wrote: “And they have excluded from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the electors.” This, Hamilton was certain, would eliminate “any sinister bias.”
Rather than average but uninformed voters, and excluding members of Congress who might be subject to bribery or foreign influences, the electors would select a man for president who was brave of heart and pure of soul.
“The process of election [by the Electoral College] affords a moral certainty,” Hamilton wrote, “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”
Indeed, although a knave or rogue or traitor might fool enough people to ascend to the office of mayor of a major city or governor of a state, the Electoral College would likely ferret out such a traitor.
“Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence” of the men in the Electoral College, who would select him as president “of the whole Union.”
Hamilton asserted, “It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters preeminent for ability and virtue.”
Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.
Because of the Three-Fifths Compromise, which gave more electors to the slave states than their voting populations would indicate, the Electoral College handed the White House to four Virginia slaveholders among our first five presidents. Since that Compromise was eliminated, it has continued to wreak mischief by putting George W. Bush and Donald Trump into office.
Hamilton never envisioned a day when a man so entangled in financial affairs with foreign governments as Donald Trump is could even be seriously considered. And, by Hamilton’s standards, the electors totally failed in their job in the 2016 election.
The Electoral College was a compromise designed to keep the president above political considerations; it was sold to the public as a way to prevent an agent (witting or unwitting) of a foreign power from becoming president.
It’s failed on both counts.
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