EDITOR’S NOTE.—Although this volume is devoted almost entirely to
addresses made after Mr. Roosevelt became President, it is believed
that this essay on the office of the President, which has not
elsewhere appeared in book form, has a fitting place as introductory
to the materials which follow herewith. The article was written
by Mr. Roosevelt in 1900, while he was Governor of New York, and
previous to the Republican National Convention, which nominated
him for Vice-President. The views expressed in the article are,
therefore, those of an outside observer, and are not to be regarded
as those of an incumbent of the office. It will be clear to all
readers that the writer of the article could not at the time of its
publication have foreseen the place he was destined to occupy.
This article was written expressly for “The Youth’s Companion,” and
is reprinted by courtesy of that publication. Copyright, 1902, by
Perry Mason Company.
The President of the United States occupies a position of peculiar
importance. In the whole world there is probably no other ruler,
certainly no other ruler under free institutions, whose power
compares with his. Of course a despotic king has even more, but no
constitutional monarch has as much.
In the republics of France and Switzerland the President is not a very
important officer, at least, compared with the President of the United
States. In England the sovereign has much less control in shaping
the policy of the nation, the Prime Minister occupying a position
more nearly analogous to that of our President. The Prime Minister,
however, can at any time be thrown out of office by an adverse vote,
while the President can only be removed before his term is out for
some extraordinary crime or misdemeanor against the nation.
Of course, in the case of each there is the enormous personal factor
of the incumbent himself to be considered, entirely apart from the
power of the office itself. The power wielded by Andrew Jackson was
out of all proportion to that wielded by Buchanan, although in theory
each was alike. So a strong President may exert infinitely more
influence than a weak Prime Minister, or _vice versâ_. But this is
merely another way of stating that in any office the personal equation
is always of vital consequence.
It is customary to speak of the framers of our Constitution as
having separated the judicial, the legislative and the executive
functions of the government. The separation, however, is not in
all respects sharply defined. The President has certainly most
important legislative functions, and the upper branch of the national
legislature shares with the President one of the most important of his
executive functions; that is, the President can either sign or veto
the bills passed by Congress, while, on the other hand, the Senate
confirms or rejects his nominations. Of course the President can
not initiate legislation, although he can recommend it. But unless
two-thirds of Congress in both branches are hostile to him, he can
stop any measure from becoming a law. This power is varyingly used
by different Presidents, but it always exists, and must always be
reckoned with by Congress.
While Congress is in session, if the President neither signs nor
vetoes the bill which is passed, the bill becomes a law without his
signature. The effect is precisely the same as if he had signed it.
Presidents who disapproved of details in a bill, but felt that on the
whole it was advisable it should become a law, have at times used this
method to emphasize the fact that they were not satisfied with the
measure which they were yet unwilling to veto. A notable instance was
afforded in President Cleveland’s second term, when he thus treated
the Wilson-Gorman tariff bill.
The immense federal service, including all the postal employees, all
the customs employees, all the Indian agents, marshals, district
attorneys, navy-yard employees, and so forth, is under the President.
It would of course be a physical impossibility for him to appoint all
the individuals in the service. His direct power lies over the heads
of the departments, bureaus and more important offices. But he does
not appoint these by himself. His is only the nominating power. It
rests with the Senate to confirm or reject the nominations.
The Senators are the constitutional advisers of the President, for
it must be remembered that his Cabinet is not in the least like
the Cabinet of which the Prime Minister is head in the English
Parliament. Under our government the Secretaries who form the Cabinet
are in the strictest sense the President’s own ministerial appointees;
the men, chosen out of all the nation, to whom he thinks he can best
depute the most important and laborious of his executive duties. Of
course they all advise him on matters of general policy when he so
desires it, and in practice each Cabinet officer has a very free
hand in managing his own department, and must have it if he is to do
good work. But all this advice and consultation is at the will of
the President. With the Senate, on the other hand, the advice and
consultation are obligatory under the Constitution.
The President and Congress are mutually necessary to one another in
matters of legislation, and the President and the Senate are mutually
necessary in matters of appointment. Every now and then men who
understand our Constitution but imperfectly raise an outcry against
the President for consulting the Senators in matters of appointment,
and even talk about the Senators “usurping” his functions. These men
labor under a misapprehension. The Senate has no right to dictate to
the President who shall be appointed, but they have an entire right to
say who shall not be appointed, for under the Constitution this has
been made their duty.
In practice, under our party system, it has come to be recognized
that each Senator has a special right to be consulted about the
appointments in his own State, if he is of the President’s political
party. Often the opponents of the Senator in his State do not agree
with him in the matter of appointments, and sometimes the President,
in the exercise of his judgment, finds it right and desirable to
disregard the Senator. But the President and the Senators must work
together, if they desire to secure the best results.
But although many men must share with the President the responsibility
for different individual actions, and although Congress must of course
also very largely condition his usefulness, yet the fact remains that
in his hands is infinitely more power than in the hands of any other
man in our country during the time that he holds the office; that
there is upon him always a heavy burden of responsibility; and that in
certain crises this burden may become so great as to bear down any but
the strongest and bravest man.
It is easy enough to give a bad administration; but to give a good
administration demands the most anxious thought, the most wearing
endeavor, no less than very unusual powers of mind. The chances for
error are limitless, and in minor matters, where from the nature
of the case it is absolutely inevitable that the President should
rely upon the judgment of others, it is certain that under the best
Presidents some errors will be committed. The severest critics of a
President’s policy are apt to be, not those who know most about what
is to be done and of the limitations under which it must be done, but
those who know least.
In the aggregate, quite as much wrong is committed by improper
denunciation of public servants who do well as by failure to attack
those who do ill. There is every reason why the President, whoever he
may be and to whatever party he may belong, should be held to a sharp
accountability alike for what he does and for what he leaves undone.
But we injure ourselves and the nation if we fail to treat with proper
respect the man, whether he is politically opposed to us or not, who
in the highest office in our land is striving to do his duty according
to the strength that is in him.
We have had Presidents who have acted very weakly or unwisely in
particular crises. We have had Presidents the sum of whose work has
not been to the advantage of the Republic. But we have never had one
concerning whose personal integrity there was so much as a shadow of
a suspicion, or who has not been animated by an earnest desire to
do the best possible work that he could for the people at large. Of
course infirmity of purpose or wrong-headedness may mar this integrity
and sincerity of intention; but the integrity and the good intentions
have always existed. We have never had in the Presidential chair any
man who did not sincerely desire to benefit the people and whose own
personal ambitions were not entirely honorable, although as much can
not be said for certain aspirants for the place, such as Aaron Burr.
Corruption, in the gross sense in which the word is used in ordinary
conversation, has been absolutely unknown among our Presidents, and it
has been exceedingly rare in our President’s Cabinets. Inefficiency,
whether due to lack of will-power, sheer deficiency in wisdom, or
improper yielding either to the pressure of politicians or to the
other kinds of pressure which must often be found even in a free
democracy, has been far less uncommon. Of deliberate moral obliquity
there has been but very little indeed.
In the easiest, quietest, most peaceful times the President is sure
to have great tasks before him. The simple question of revenue and
expenditure is as important to the nation as it is to the average
household, and the President is the man to whom the nation looks and
whom it holds accountable in the matter both of expenditure and of
revenue. It is an entirely mistaken belief that the expenditure of
money is simply due to a taste for recklessness and extravagance on
the part of the people’s representatives.
The representatives in the long run are sure to try to do what the
people effectively want. The trouble is that although each group
has, and all the groups taken together still more strongly have,
an interest in keeping the expenditures down, each group has also
a direct interest in keeping some particular expenditure up. This
expenditure is usually entirely proper and desirable, save only that
the aggregate of all such expenditures may be so great as to make it
impossible for the nation to go into them.
It is a good deal the same thing in the nation as it is in a State.
The demand may be for a consumptive hospital, or for pensions to
veterans, or for a public building, or for an armory, or for cleaning
out a harbor, or for starting irrigation. In each case the demand
may be in itself entirely proper, and those interested in it, from
whatever motives, may be both sincere and strenuous in their advocacy.
But the President has to do on a large scale what every Governor of a
State has to do on a small scale, that is, balance the demands on the
Treasury with the capacities of the Treasury.
Whichever way he decides, some people are sure to think that he has
tipped the scale the wrong way, and from their point of view they may
conscientiously think it; whereas from his point of view he may know
with equal conscientiousness that he has done his best to strike an
average which would on the one hand not be niggardly toward worthy
objects, and on the other would not lay too heavy a burden of taxation
upon the people.
Inasmuch as these particular questions have to be met every year
in connection with every session of Congress and with the work of
every department, it may readily be seen that even the President’s
every-day responsibilities are of no light order. So it is with his
appointments. Entirely apart from the fact that there is a great
pressure for place, it is also the fact that in all the higher and
more important appointments there are usually conflicting interests
which must somehow be reconciled to the best of the President’s
capacity.
Here again it must be remembered that the matter is not always by any
means one of merely what we call politics. Where there is a really
serious conflict in reference to an appointment, while it may be
merely a factional fight, it is more apt to be because two groups
of the President’s supporters differ radically and honestly on some
question of policy; so that whatever the President’s decision may be,
he can not help arousing dissatisfaction.
One thing to be remembered is that appointments and policies which are
normally routine and unimportant may suddenly become of absolutely
vital consequence. For instance, the War Department was utterly
neglected for over thirty years after the Civil War. This neglect
was due less to the successive Presidents than to Congress, and
in Congress it was due to the fact that the people themselves did
not take an interest in the army. Neither the regular officer nor
the regular soldier takes any part in politics as a rule, so that
the demagogue and the bread-and-butter politician have no fear of
his vote; and to both of them, and also to the cheap sensational
newspaper, the army offers a favorite subject for attack. So it
often happens that some amiable people really get a little afraid of
the army, and have some idea that it may be used some time or other
against our liberties.
The army never has been and, I am sure, it never will be or can be a
menace to anybody save America’s foes, or aught but a source of pride
to every good and far-sighted American. But it is only in time of
actual danger that such facts are brought home vividly to the minds
of our people, and so the army is apt to receive far less than its
proper share of attention. But when an emergency like that caused by
the Spanish War arises, then the Secretary of War becomes the most
important officer in the Cabinet, and the army steps into the place of
foremost interest in all the country.
It is only once in a generation that such a crisis as the Spanish
War or the Mexican War or the War of 1812 has to be confronted, but
in almost every administration lesser crises do arise. They may be
in connection with foreign affairs, as was the case with the Chilean
trouble under President Harrison’s administration, the Venezuelan
matter in President Cleveland’s second term, or the Boxer uprising in
China last year. Much more often they relate to domestic affairs, as
in the case of a disastrous panic, which produces terrible social and
industrial convulsions. Whatever the problem may be, the President has
got to meet it and to work out some kind of a solution. In midwinter
or midsummer, with Congress sitting or absent, the President has
always to be ready to devote every waking hour to some anxious,
worrying, harassing matter, most difficult to decide, and yet which it
is imperative immediately to decide.
An immense addition to the President’s burden is caused by the
entirely well-meaning people who ask him to do what he can not
possibly do. For the first few weeks after the inauguration a new
President may receive on an average fifteen hundred letters a day.
His mail is so enormous that often he can not read one letter in a
hundred, and rarely can he read one letter in ten. Even his private
secretary can read only a small fraction of the mail. Often there are
letters which the President would really be glad to see, but which are
swamped in the great mass of demands for office, demands for pensions,
notes of warning or advice, demands for charity, and requests of every
conceivable character, not to speak of the letters from “cranks,”
which are always numerous in the President’s mail.
One President, who was very anxious to help people whenever he could,
made the statement that the requests for pecuniary aid received in a
single fortnight would, if complied with, have eaten up considerably
more than his entire year’s salary. The requests themselves are
frequently such as the President would like to comply with if there
was any way of making a discrimination; but there is none.
One rather sad feature of the life of a President is the difficulty
of making friends, because almost inevitably after a while the friend
thinks there is some office he would like, applies for it, and when
the President is obliged to refuse, feels that he has been injured.
Those who were closest to Abraham Lincoln have said that this was
one of the things which concerned him most in connection with his
administration. It is hardly necessary to allude to the well-known
fact that no President can gratify a hundredth part of the requests
and demands made upon him for office, often by men who have rendered
him real services and who are fit to fill the position they seek, but
not so fit as somebody else. Of course the man does not realize that
his successful rival was appointed because he really was more fit, and
he goes away sour and embittered because of what he feels to be the
President’s ingratitude.
Perhaps the two most striking things in the Presidency are the immense
power of the President, in the first place; and in the second place,
the fact that as soon as he has ceased being President he goes right
back into the body of the people and becomes just like any other
American citizen. While he is in office he is one of the half-dozen
persons throughout the whole world who have most power to affect the
destinies of the world.
He can set fleets and armies in motion; he can do more than any save
one or two absolute sovereigns to affect the domestic welfare and
happiness of scores of millions of people. Then when he goes out of
office he takes up his regular round of duties like any other citizen,
or if he is of advanced age retires from active life to rest, like any
other man who has worked hard to earn his rest.
One President, John Quincy Adams, after leaving the Presidency,
again entered public life as a Congressman, and achieved conspicuous
successes in the Lower House. This, however, is a unique case. Many
Presidents have followed the examples of Jefferson and Jackson, and
retired, as these two men retired to Monticello and The Hermitage.
Others have gone into more or less active work, as practicing
lawyers or as lecturers on law, or in business, or in some form of
philanthropy.
During the President’s actual incumbency of his office the tendency
is perhaps to exaggerate not only his virtues but his faults. When he
goes out he is simply one of the ordinary citizens, and perhaps for a
time the importance of the rôle he has played is not recognized. True
perspective is rarely gained until years have gone by.
Altogether, there are few harder tasks than that of filling well
and ably the office of President of the United States. The labor
is immense, the ceaseless worry and harassing anxiety are beyond
description. But if the man at the close of his term is able to feel
that he has done his duty well; that he has solved after the best
fashion of which they were capable the great problems with which he
was confronted, and has kept clean and in good running order the
governmental machinery of the mighty Republic, he has the satisfaction
of feeling that he has performed one of the great world-tasks, and
that the mere performance is in itself the greatest of all possible
rewards.