THE ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNMENT – in its largest sense – comprehends all the operations of the body politic, whether legislative, executive, or judicial.
In its most usual – and perhaps its most precise signification – it is limited to executive details, and falls peculiarly within the province of the executive department.
Presidential administration of the Federal government includes:
(1) the actual conduct of foreign negotiations,
(2) the preparatory plans of finance, application and disbursement of the public moneys in conformity to the general appropriations of the Congress,
(3) the arrangement of the army and navy,
(4) the directions of the operations of war, and
(5) other matters of a like nature.
The persons to whose immediate management these different matters are committed ought to be considered as the assistants or deputies of the President.
On this account, they derive their offices from presidential appointment and should be subject to the President’s superintendence.
This view of the subject at once suggests the intimate connection between the duration of the President in office and the stability of the system of administration.
Presidential administration of the Federal government includes: (1) the actual conduct of foreign negotiations, (2) the preparatory plans of finance, application and disbursement of the public moneys in conformity to the general appropriations of the Congress, (3) the arrangement of the army and navy, (4) the directions of the operations of war, and (5) other matters of a like nature.
New Administrations Tend to Undo the Acts of Preceding Administrations
To reverse and undo what has been done by a predecessor is very often considered by a successor as the best proof to be given of his own capacity and desert.
In addition to this propensity, where the alteration has been the result of public choice through elections, the person substituted is warranted in supposing that the dismissal of the predecessor proceeded from a dislike to the predecessor’s measures; and that the less he resembles him, the more he will recommend himself to the favor of his constituents.
These considerations – and the influence of personal confidences and attachments – would be likely to induce every new President to promote a change of persons to fill the subordinate stations.
When combined, these causes could not fail to occasion a potentially disgraceful and ruinous mutability in the administration of the Federal government.
Limiting or Excluding a President from Re-Election Is Unwise
The four-year duration of a presidential term is necessary to give to the President the inclination and the resolution to act his part well, and to the community time and leisure to observe the tendency of his measures, and thence to form an experimental estimate of their merits.
The option of reelection is necessary to enable the People – when they see reason to approve of the President’s conduct – to continue the President in station, both to prolong the utility of his talents and virtues, and to secure to the Federal government the advantage of permanency in a wise system of administration.
The Negative Effects of Exclusion Outweigh the Positive Ones
Nothing appears more plausible at first sight – nor more ill-founded upon close inspection – than a scheme of continuing the President in office for a certain time and then excluding him from it – whether for a limited period or forever after.
Whether temporary or perpetual, exclusion from office would have nearly the same effects, and those effects would be for the most part pernicious rather than salutary.
The option of reelection is necessary to enable the People – when they see reason to approve of the President’s conduct – to continue the President in station, both to prolong the utility of his talents and virtues, and to secure to the Federal government the advantage of permanency in a wise system of administration.
One ill effect of limiting a President’s eligibility for re-election would be a diminution of the inducements to good behavior.
Few persons would feel much zeal in the discharge of a duty when conscious that the advantages of the station connected with the duty must be relinquished at a determinate period, when compared to zeal they would feel if permitted to entertain a hope of obtaining, by merit, a continuance of them.
This position is indisputable, since the desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct.
Together with having a person’s interests coincide with duty, it is the best security for fidelity to duty.
Even the love of fame – the ruling passion of the noblest minds – would prompt a man to plan and undertake extensive and arduous enterprises for the public benefit – even those requiring considerable time to mature and perfect them – if he could flatter himself with the prospect of being allowed to finish what he had begun.
On the contrary, he would be deterred from the undertaking when he foresaw that he must quit the scene before he could accomplish the work, and must commit that work – together with his own reputation – to hands which might be unequal or unfriendly to the task.
The most to be expected from a person in such a situation is the negative merit of not doing harm, instead of the positive merit of doing good.
One ill effect of limiting a President’s eligibility for re-election would be a diminution of the inducements to good behavior. Few persons would feel much zeal in the discharge of a duty when conscious that the advantages of the station connected with the duty must be relinquished at a determinate period, when compared to zeal they would feel if permitted to entertain a hope of meriting a continuance of them.
A Limit on Presidential Terms Can Induce Unscrupulous Policies and Acts
Another ill effect of exclusion would be the temptation to sordid views, speculation, and in some instances, usurpation.
An avaricious person – looking forward to a time when he must at all events yield up the emoluments enjoyed as President – might feel a propensity (not easily to be resisted by such a person) to make the best use of the opportunity he enjoys while it lasts, and have recourse to the most corrupt expedients to make his harvest as abundant as it would be transitory.
Avarice Can Guard Avarice
The same person, with a different prospect before him, might content himself with the regular perquisites of his situation, and might even be unwilling to risk the consequences of an abuse of his opportunities.
His avarice might be a guard upon his avarice. If the same person also is vain or ambitious – but could expect to prolong his honors by good conduct – he might sacrifice his appetite for gain.
But with the prospect before him of an approaching and inevitable annihilation, his avarice would be likely to get the victory over his caution, vanity, or ambition.
An ambitious man, when seated on the summit of his country’s honors – and looking forward to the time when he must descend from the exalted eminence forever – and knowing also that no exertion of merit on his part could save him from the unwelcome reverse – such a man would be much more violently tempted to embrace a favorable conjuncture for attempting the prolongation of his power (at every personal hazard) than if he had the probability of answering the same end by doing his duty.
Would it promote the peace of the community or the stability of the government to have half a dozen or so former Presidents wandering among the People like discontented ghosts, and sighing for a place they were destined nevermore to possess?
Limiting Presidential Terms Can Deprive the People of an Experienced and Popular Magistrate
A third ill effect of the exclusion would deprive the People of the advantage of the experience gained by the President in the exercise of his office.
“Experience is the parent of wisdom” is a truthful adage recognized by the wisest as well as the simplest of mankind.
What quality is more desirable or essential than experience in the government of nations?
Where is experience more desirable or essential than in the first magistrate of a nation?
It is unwise to diminish the desirable and essential quality of experience by declaring that the moment it is acquired, its possessor shall be compelled to abandon the station in which it was acquired, and to which it is adapted.
This is the precise import of all those regulations which would exclude individuals from serving their country – by the choice of their fellow citizens – after they have by a course of service fitted themselves for doing it with a greater degree of utility.
Limiting Presidential Terms Might Unnecessarily Exclude Great Leaders
A fourth ill effect of limiting Presidential terms would be the banishment of persons from stations and offices in which their presence might be of the greatest moment to the public interest or safety, especially in certain emergencies.
There is no nation which has not, at one period or another, experienced an absolute necessity of the services of particular individuals in particular situations; perhaps it would not be too strong to say, to the preservation of its political existence.
How unwise, therefore, must be every such self-denying ordinance prohibiting a nation from making use of its own citizens in the manner best suited to its exigencies and circumstances!
Requiring a change of the President due to a time or term limitation leaves open the possibility that a the change might happen to coincide with a war breaking out, or any similar crisis.
Even without supposing the existing President was essential, the substitution of someone else – even of equal merit – would at all times be detrimental to the community, inasmuch as it would substitute inexperience for experience, and would tend to unhinge and set afloat the already-settled train of administration.
A fourth ill effect of limiting Presidential terms would be the banishment of persons from stations and offices in which their presence might be of the greatest moment to the public interest or safety, especially in certain emergencies.
Presidential Term Limits Undermine Stability
A fifth ill effect of the exclusion would be its operation as a constitutional interdiction of stability in the administration of the Federal government.
Necessitating a change of President necessitates mutability of his measures, for in the usual course of things it is not generally expected that men will vary yet measures remain uniform.
We need not be apprehensive about too much stability, so long as there is the option of changing administrations through Presidential elections.
Nor should we desire to prohibit the People from continuing their confidence where they think it may be safely placed, and where, by constancy on their part, they may obviate the fatal inconveniences of fluctuating councils and a variable policy.
The disadvantages flowing from the principle of exclusion, apply most forcibly to the scheme of a perpetual exclusion; but when we consider that even a partial exclusion would always render the readmission of the person a remote and precarious object, the observations which have been made will apply nearly as fully to one case as to the other.
The Advantages of Presidential Term Limits Are Overstated
There are two asserted advantages principally advanced to support Presidential term limits: greater independence in the magistrate, and greater security to the People.
As for greater independence of the President, it would only apply if the exclusion were perpetual.
But even in the case of an absolute bar after service of one or two terms, is there no object beyond his present station, to which he may sacrifice his independence?
Will he have no connections or friends for whom he may sacrifice it?
Would it promote the peace of the community or the stability of the government to have half a dozen or so former Presidents wandering among the People like discontented ghosts, and sighing for a place they were destined nevermore to possess?
Would not a President be less willing to make personal enemies through firm conduct, when acting under the impression that a time is fast approaching when he not only may, but must, be exposed to their resentments, upon an equal or perhaps inferior footing?
It is not an easy point to determine whether his independence would be most promoted or impaired by such an arrangement.
As to the greater security that Presidential term limits supposedly afford the People, there are still greater reasons to entertain doubts concerning it.
Assuming a perpetual exclusion existed, a man of irregular ambition would be infinitely reluctant to yield to the necessity of forever taking leave of a post in which his passion for power and preeminence had acquired the force of habit.
And if such a President had been fortunate or adroit enough to conciliate the goodwill of the People, he might induce the People to consider any presidential term limit to be an odious and unjustifiable restraint upon themselves, and contend it was calculated to debar them of the right of giving a fresh proof of their attachment to him.
An artful induction of disgust for term limits among the People, seconding the thwarted ambition of such a favorite, might occasion greater danger to liberty than could ever reasonably be dreaded from the possibility of a perpetuation in office, by the voluntary votes of the community, exercising a constitutional privilege.
As to the greater security that Presidential term limits supposedly afford the People, there are still greater reasons to entertain doubts concerning it.
There is an excess of refinement in the idea of disabling the People from continuing in office persons who have entitled themselves to the People’s approval and confidence.
The advantages of limits are at best speculative and equivocal, and are overbalanced by disadvantages far more certain and decisive.
Hamilton
[Ed. note: Amendment XXII, ratified in 1951, provides: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President, when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.”]