Article II: Executive
Section 1
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.(*1)
The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse,(sic) by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing,(sic) the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse,(sic) from them by Ballot the Vice President.
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing,(sic) the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States. (*2)
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.(*3)
In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: — “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”(*4)
(*1)After struggling with numerous proposals on the election of the President, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention settled on establishing a college of electors and apportioning the number according to the total of Representatives and Senators from each state. This method permitted the smaller states to have a somewhat greater proportionate share in the choosing of the President, though not as large an advantage as they had in the Senate. The Framers not only rejected the direct popular election of the President, but also left it to the state legislatures to determine how the states’ electors were to be appointed.
(*2) In creating the basic architecture of the American government, the Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule.”
Some elements of the Electoral College, such as the indirect vote through intermediaries, were hotly debated at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. It was eventually justified in part as a stopgap to potentially reverse the vote if the people elected a criminal, traitor, or similar kind of heinous person. The Founders wanted to empower democratic elements in the American system, but they feared a kind of pure, unrestrained democracy that had brought down great republics of the past.
The product of the Founders’ compromise has been well balanced and enduring, and we would be wise to leave it intact.
(*3) The term natural born citizen applies, quite simply, to anyone who is a U.S. citizen at birth, or by birth, and does not have to go through the naturalization process. The child of parents who are U.S. citizens, regardless of whether he or she is born abroad, fits into the category. Under current legal interpretation, a “so-called” anchor baby would qualify to be President if all other requirements for the office had been met.
(*4) The presidential oath is the only one spelled out in the Constitution, and is the shortest. Interestingly, not included in the Constitution are the words used at the end by many presidents: “So help me God.”
It appears that swearing on a Bible has not been universal.
In 1825, John Quincy Adams took the oath on a law volume containing a copy of the Constitution; Theodore Roosevelt used no Bible in taking his first oath of office in 1901; and some sources report that after President Kennedy was assassinated, a Catholic Missal was used to swear in Lyndon Johnson because no Bible could be found for the quickly arranged ceremony on the plane before it took off from Dallas to return to Washington, D.C.
The deliberations of America’s founders suggest that the centerpiece of the presidential oath is the pledge to “preserve, protect and defend the constitution”.
Some scholars say that the oath gives presidents a tool to protect the prerogatives of their office from the encroachment of Congress. But others argue the presidential oath was designed to serve as a check on chief executives’ power.
I believe that the oath is inherently “limiting, not empowering”. The preservation, protection and defense of the Constitution are the four walls within which elected powers are, (or at least should be), confined.
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(c) 2018