inventing the american presidencyby thomas e. cronin

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Page 1: Inventing the American Presidencyby Thomas E. Cronin

Society for Historians of the Early American Republic

Inventing the American Presidency by Thomas E. CroninReview by: Joe A. FisherJournal of the Early Republic, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 421-422Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the EarlyAmerican RepublicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3123401 .

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Page 2: Inventing the American Presidencyby Thomas E. Cronin

BOOK REVIEWS 421

as old as Charles A. Beard regarding priorities in the ratification fight: ideology and principles or self-interest. Some essays, Rakove's for example, do get into significant substantive questions such as why the Founders did what they did about slavery, but most authors stay stuck in the Beardean dualism. Historians also have an instinctive concern about the validity if not the danger of using the past to edify the present. That approach has an inherent risk of betraying the preconceived notions and emotional biases of the writers. Presentism, as this sort of historiography is sometimes called, can be selectively superficial (picking and choosing what supports the message) and can leave one with little that is new in our understanding, in this case, of what happened in those bitter, often close, fights two hundred years ago over our fundamental law.

Western Illinois University Robert P. Sutton

Inventing the American Presidency. Edited by Thomas E. Cronin. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989. Pp. xii, 404. $35.00; paper, $12.95.) In May 1787, the Founding Fathers of the republic met in Philadelphia to correct a system of government that had failed. Inventing the American Presidency is an interesting re-creation of Article II, the executive article, of the Constitution that they produced.

The political scientists who wrote this set of fourteen essays deal with presidential qualifications, the election process, tenure, impeachment, the powers of war, veto, pardon, the much disputed executive and prerogative powers, and the early occupants of the office. The interpretations that they offer are based on Max Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, where possible, and the more recent writings of political scientists and historians where necessary.

Michael Nelson presents the underlying principle of presidential qualifications: "the greater the powers . . ., the higher the qualifications" (25). Shlomo Slonim rejects both of what he deems the dominant schools of thought on the electoral college-the "antimajoritarianism" and "last-minute accident" schools (55)-and supports the idea that it was a blend of "national and federal elements" (56). Thomas E. Cronin, opposing any change in the presidential term, claims that Thomas Jefferson deserves more credit than George Washington as the founder of the two-term tradition.

John R. Labovitz finds that the framers of the Constitution deemed impeachment of the president a political process despite their

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Page 3: Inventing the American Presidencyby Thomas E. Cronin

422 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC

express command in Article II, Section 4 that officers were to be removed only on conviction for treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. Labovitz cites John Randolph, hardly a credible witness, in the Justice Samuel Chase impeachment.

David Gray Adler attacks "presidential wars" (119), stating that

Congress initiates military actions and the president is limited to

repelling invasions. This ignores the scrupulous separation by the constitutional convention of the purse and the sword, and the

recognition that Congress could not make, only declare, war. Adler also insists that the title of commander-in-chief, conferred on the

president by the Constitution, was a military title conferred on a subordinate to a political superior. Has the president a political superior?

The greatest disappointment of the work is in Robert J. Spitzer's essay on the veto power. One waits in vain for a discussion of the current presidential claim of an item veto, and the constitutional clause-Article I, Section 7, Paragraph 3-held to support it. Spitzer does find an item veto in President Washington's veto of a military reduction bill. Congress, on failing to override the veto, struck out the offensive portion and Washington signed the bill.

Inventing the American Presidency is a most readable and interesting work. It deserves wide circulation for the thought-provoking contentions it offers.

Emporia State University Joe A. Fisher

Nashville, 1780-1860: From Frontier to City. By Anita Shafer Goodstein. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1989. Pp. xv, 278. Illustrations, tables. $29.95.)

Goodstein's study of Nashville, from its frontier origins through its maturation as an antebellum urban center and state capital, reads well and is grounded in solid scholarship. Sources include the census, tax records, slave lists, diaries, letters, and newspapers. Combining broad focus and rich detail, the author illuminates urbanization; the

political process; economic development; elite formation; race, class, gender, and ethnic relations; and changing patterns of community life. Specifically, Goodstein develops three themes: the "association of

political leadership with successful entrepreneurship"; the "changing definitions of community, particularly those of the community's leaders"; and the "real divisions" that continuous Whig dominance in electoral politics camouflaged (x, xi, xiii).

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