@David T why was Wilson opposed to it? Was he worried about Confederate analogies owing to the CSA constitution having a single six-year term? Or was it the increased likelihood of alternating Republican and Democrat presidents due to the two party system?
State of New Jersey
Executive Department
Feb. 13, 1913
MY DEAR PALMER:
Thank you warmly for your letter of Feb. 3. It was characteristically
considerate of you to ask my views with regard to the joint resolution
which has just come over from the House with regard to the Presidential
term.
I have not hitherto said anything about this question, because I had not
observed that the public was very much interested in it. I must have been
mistaken in this, else the Senate would hardly have acted so promptly upon it.
It is a matter which concerns the character and conduct of the great
office upon the duties of which I am about to enter. I feel, therefore,
that in the present circumstances, I should not be acting consistently
with my ideals with regard to the rule of entire frankness and plain
speaking that ought to exist between public servants and the public whom
they serve, if I did not speak out about it without reserve, and without
thought of the personal embarrassment.
The question is simply this: Shall our Presidents be free, so far as the
law is concerned, to seek a second term of four years, or shall they be
limited by constitutional amendment to a single term of four years, or to
a single term extended to six years?
I can approach the question from a perfectly impersonal point of view,
because I shall most cheerfully abide by the judgment of my party and the
public as to whether I shall be a candidate for the Presidency again in
1916. I absolutely pledge myself to resort to nothing but public opinion
to decide that question.
The President ought to be absolutely deprived of every other means of
deciding it. He can be. I shall use to the utmost every proper influence
within my reach to see that he is, before the term to which I have been
elected is out. That side of the matter need disturb no one.
And yet, if he is deprived of every other means of deciding the question,
what becomes of the argument for a constitutional limitation to a single
term? The argument is not that it is clearly known now just how long each
President should remain in office. Four years is too long a term for a
President who is not the true spokesman of the people, who is imposed upon
and does not lead. It is too short a term for a President who is doing or
attempting a great work of reform, and who has not had time to finish it.
To change the term to six years would be to increase the likelihood of its
being too long, without any assurance that it would, in happy cases, be
long enough. A fixed constitutional limitation to a single term of office
is highly arbitrary and unsatisfactory from every point-of-view.
The argument for it rests upon temporary conditions which can easily be
removed by law. Presidents, it is said, are effective for one-half of
their term only because they devote their attention during the last two
years of the term to building up the influences, and above all the
organization, by which they hope and purpose to secure a second nomination
and election.
It is their illicit power, not their legitimate influence with the
country, that the advocates of a constitutional change profess to be
afraid of, and I heartily sympathize with them. It is intolerable that
any President should be permitted to determine who should succeed him--
himself or another--by patronage or coercion, or by any sort of control of
the machinery by which delegates to the nominating convention are chosen.
There ought never to be another presidential nominating convention; and
there need never be another. Several of the states have successfully
solved that difficulty with regard to the choice of their Governors, and
Federal law can solve it in the same way with regard to the choice of
Presidents. The nominations should be made directly by the people at the
polls.
Conventions should determine nothing but party platforms, and should be
made up of the men who would be expected, if elected, to carry those
platforms into effect. It is not necessary to attend to the people's
business by constitutional amendment if you will only actually put the
business into the people's own hands.
I think it may safely be assumed that that will be done within the next
four years, for it can be done by statute; it need not wait for
constitutional change. That being done, the question of the Presidential
term can be considered on its merits.
It must be clear to everybody who has studied our political development at
all that the character of the Presidency is passing through a transitional
stage. We know what the office is now and what use must be made of it;
but we do not know what it is going to work out into; and until we do
know, we shall not know what constitutional change, if any is needed, it
would be best to make.
I must speak with absolute freedom and candor in this matter, or not speak
at all; and it seems to me that the present position of the Presidency in
our actual system, as we use it, is quite abnormal and must lead
eventually to something very different.
He is expected by the nation to be the leader of his party as well as the
chief executive officer of the Government, and the country will take no
excuses from him. He must play the part and play it successfully, or lose
the country's confidence. He must be Prime Minister, as much concerned
with the guidance of legislation as with the just and orderly execution of
law; and he is the spokesman of the nation in everything, even the most
momentous and most delicate dealings of the Government with foreign
nations.
Why in such circumstances should he be responsible to no one for four long
years? All the people's legislative spokesmen in the House of
Representatives and one-third of their representatives in the Senate are
brought to book every two years; why not the President, if he is to be the
leader of the party and the spokesman of policy?
Sooner or later, it would seem, he must be made answerable to opinion in a
somewhat more informal and intimate fashion--answerable, it may be, to the
Houses whom he seeks to lead, either personally or through a Cabinet, as
well as to the people for whom they speak. But that is a matter to be
worked out--as it inevitably will be--in some natural American way which
we cannot yet even predict.
The present fact is that the President is held responsible for what
happens in Washington in every large matter, and so long as he is
commanded to lead he is surely entitled to a certain amount of power--all
the power he can get from the support and convictions and opinions of his
fellow countrymen; and he ought to be suffered to use that power against
his opponents until his work is done. It will be very difficult for him
to abuse it. He holds it upon sufferance, at the pleasure of public
opinion. Everyone else, his opponents included, has access to opinion, as
he has. He must keep the confidence of the country by earning it, for he
can keep it no other way.
Put the present customary limitation of two terms into the Constitution,
if you do not trust the people to take care of themselves, but make it two
terms (not one, because four years is often too long) and give the
President the chance to win the full service by proving himself fit for
it.
If you wish to learn the results of constitutional ineligibility to
reelection, ask any former Governor of New Jersey, for example, of what
the effect is in actual experience. He will tell you how cynically and
with what complacence the politicians banded against him waited for the
inevitable end of his term to take their chances with his successor.
Constitutions place and can place no limitations upon their power. They
may control what Governors they can as long as they please, as long as
they can keep their outside power and influence together. They smile at
the coming and going of Governors as some men in Washington have smiled at
the coming and going of Presidents, as upon things ephemeral, which passed
and were soon enough got rid of if you but sat tight and waited.
As things stand now the people might more likely be cheated than served by
further limitations of the President's eligibility. His fighting power in
their behalf would be immensely weakened. No one will fear a President
except those whom he can make fear the elections.
We singularly belie our own principles by seeking to determine by fixed
constitutional provision what the people shall determine for themselves
and are perfectly competent to determine for themselves. We cast a doubt
upon the whole theory of popular government.
I believe that we should fatally embarrass ourselves if we made the
constitutional change proposed; if we want our Presidents to fight our
battles for us, we should give them the means, the legitimate means, the
means their opponents will always have. Strip them of everything else but
the right to appeal to the people, but leave them that; suffer them to be
leaders; absolutely prevent them from being bosses.
We would otherwise appear to be going in two opposite directions. We are
seeking in every way to extend the power of the people, but in the matter
of the Presidency we fear and distrust the people and seek to bind them
hand and foot by rigid constitutional provision. My own mind is not agile
enough to go both ways.
I am very well aware that my position on this question will be
misconstrued, but that is a matter of perfect indifference to me. The
truth is much more important than my reputation for modesty and lack of
personal ambition. My reputation will take care of itself, but
constitutional questions and questions of policy will not take care of
themselves without frank and fearless discussion.
I am not speaking for my own reelection; I am speaking to redeem my
promise that I would say what I really think on every public question and
take my chances in the court of public opinion.
WOODROW WILSON
***
I would take him at this word--he believed in a president responsible to the people.
www.nytimes.com
