The Americans

by Hugo Münsterberg

The indirect election prescribed by the Constitution has therefore become to all intents and purposes a direct one, and the whole machinery of electors is really superfluous. It may, indeed, be said to have become contradictory in itself.

Since the original intention to make an electoral college of the best citizens has been frustrated by the popular spirit of self-determination, the electoral apparatus can have to-day no other significance than to give expression to the voice of the majority. But now just this it is in the power of the electoral system completely to suppress. Let us suppose that only two candidates are in question. If the election were simply a direct one, of course that candidate would win who received the most votes; but with electors this is not the case, because the number of electors who are pledged to vote for these two candidates need not at all correspond to the number of ballots cast on the two sides. If in the State of New York, for instance, three-fifths of the population are for the first candidate and two-fifths for the second, the three-fifths majority determines the whole list of 36 electors for the first candidate, and not an elector would be chosen for the other. Now it can very well happen that a candidate in those states in which he secures all the electors will have small majorities, that is, his opponent will have large minorities, while his opponent in the states which vote for him will have large majorities; and in this way the majority of electors will be pledged for that candidate who has received actually the smaller number of votes. It is a fact that both Hayes in 1877 and Harrison in 1889 were constitutionally elected for the Presidency by a minority of votes.

While in form the voters choose only the electors from their state, nevertheless these ballots thus actually count for a certain candidate. At the last election 292 electors voted for McKinley, and 155 for Bryan, while for the McKinley electors 832,280 more votes were cast than for the Bryan electors. We have already seen how it is that the best man will no longer, as in Washington’s time, be unequivocally elected by the people, and why, although a unanimous choice of President has not taken place since Washington’s time, nevertheless no more than two candidates are ever practically in question. It was for this that we have discussed the parties first. The parties are the factor which makes it impossible for a President to be elected without a contest, and which, as early as 1797, when the successor of Washington had to be nominated, divided the people in two sections, the supporters of Jefferson and of Adams. At the same time, however, the parties prevent the division from going further, and bring it about that this population of millions of people compactly organizes itself for Presidential elections in only two groups, so that although never less than two, still never more than two candidates really step into the arena.

For both great parties alike, with their central and local committees, with their professional politicians, with their leaders and their followers, whether engaging in politics out of interest or in hope of gain, as an ideal or as sport—for all alike comes the great day when the President is to be elected. For years previous the party leaders will have combined and dissolved and speculated and intrigued, and for years the friends of the possible candidates have spoken loudly in the newspapers, since here, of course, not only the election but also the nomination of the candidate depends on the people. Although the election is in November, the national conventions for nominating the party candidates come generally in July. Each state sends its delegation, numbering twice as many as the members of Congress from that state, and each delegation is once more duly elected by a convention of representatives chosen by the actual voters out of their party lists. In these national conventions the great battles of the country are fought, that is, within the party, and here the general trend of national politics is determined. It is the great trial moment for the party and the party heroes. At the last election McKinley and Bryan were the opposing candidates, and it is interesting to trace in their elections by the respective conventions two great types of party decision.

McKinley had grown slowly in public favour; he was the accomplished politician, the interesting leader of Congress, the sympathetic man who had no enemies. When the Republican convention met at Chicago, in 1888, he was a member of the delegation from Ohio and was pledged to do his utmost for the nomination of John Sherman. The ballots were cast five different times and every time no one candidate was found to have a majority. On the sixth trial one vote was cast for McKinley, and the announcement of this vote created an uproar. A sudden shifting of the opinions took place amid great acclamation, and the delegations all went over to him. He jumped up on a stool and called loudly through the hall that he should be offended by any man who voted for him since he himself had been pledged to vote for Sherman. Finally a compromise was found in Benjamin Harrison. At the convention in Minneapolis four years later McKinley was chairman, and once more the temptation came to him. The opponents of Harrison wished to oppose his re-election by uniting on the Ohio statesman, and again it was McKinley himself who turned the vote this time in favour of Harrison. His own time came finally in 1896. In the national convention at St. Louis 661 votes were cast in the first ballot for McKinley, while 84 were cast for Thomas Reed, 61 for Quay, 58 for Morton, and 35 for Allison. And when, in 1900, the national convention met in Philadelphia, 926 votes were straightway cast for McKinley, and none opposing. His was the steady, sure, and deserved rise from step to step through tireless exertions for his party and his country.

Bryan was a young and unknown lawyer, who had sat for a couple of years in the House of Representatives like any other delegate, and had warmly upheld bimetallism. At the Democratic national convention at Chicago in 1896 almost nobody knew him. But it was a curious crisis in the Democratic party. It had been victorious four years previous in its campaign for Cleveland against Harrison, but the party as such had enjoyed no particular satisfaction. The self-willed and determined Cleveland, who had systematically opposed Congress tooth and nail, had fallen out with his party and nowhere on the horizon had appeared a new leader. And after a true statesman like Cleveland had come to grief, the petty politicians, who had neither ideas nor a programme, came to their own. Every one was looking for a strong personality when Bryan stepped forth to ingratiate himself and his silver programme in the affections of his party. His arguments were not new, but his catch-words were well studied, and here at last stood a fascinating personality with a forceful temperament which was all aglow, and with a voice that sounded like the tones of an organ. And when he cried out, “You must not nail humanity to a cross of gold,” it was as if an omen had appeared. He became at once the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, and six months later six and one-half million votes were cast for him against the seven million for McKinley. Nor did the silver intoxication succumb to its first defeat. When the Democrats met again in 1900, all the endeavours of those who had adhered to a gold currency were seen to be futile. Once again the silver-tongued Nebraskan was carried about in triumph, and not until its second defeat did the Democratic party wake up. Bryanism is now a dead issue, and before the next Presidential election the programme of the Democratic party will be entirely reconstructed.

Thus the presidents of the nation grow organically out of the party structure, and the parties find in turn their highest duty and their reward in electing their President. The people organized in a party and the chief executive which that party elects belong necessarily together. They are the base and the summit. Nothing but death can overthrow the decision of the people; death did overthrow, indeed, the last decision after a few months, in September, 1901, when the cowardly assassination accomplished by a Polish anarchist brought the administration of McKinley to an end. As the Constitution provides, the man whom the people had elected to the relatively insignificant office of Vice-President became master in the White House.

The Vice-Presidency is from the point of view of political logic the least satisfactory place in American politics. Very early in the history of the United States the filling of this office occasioned many difficulties, and at that time the provisions of the Constitution referring to it were completely worked over. The Constitution had originally said that the man who had the second largest number of votes for the Presidency should become Vice-President. This was conceived in the spirit of the time when the two-party system did not exist and when it was expected that the electors should not be restricted by the voting public in their choice of the best man. As soon, however, as the opposition between the two parties came into being, the necessary result of such provision was that the presidential candidate of the defeated party should become Vice-President, and therefore that President and Vice-President should always represent diametrically opposed tendencies. A change in the Constitution did away with this political impossibility. Each elector was instructed to deposit separate ballots for President and Vice-President, and that candidate became Vice-President who received the largest number of votes for that office, both offices being thus invariably filled by candidates of the same party.

In spite of this the position has developed rather unsatisfactorily for an obvious reason. The Constitution condemns the Vice-President, so long as the President holds office, to an ornamental inactivity. It is his duty to preside at sessions of the Senate, a task which he for the most part performs silently, and which has not nearly the political significance enjoyed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. On the other hand, men still in the prime of life are almost always elected to the Presidency; the possibility is therefore almost always lost sight of that the President can die before the expiration of his four years’ term of office. The result has been that less distinguished men, who have, nevertheless, served their parties, are usually chosen for this insignificant and passive rôle. The office is designed to be an honour and a consolation to them, and sometimes for one reason or another their candidacy is supposed otherwise to strengthen the outlook of the party. It is not accident that while in the several states the Lieutenant-Governor is very often the next man to be elected Governor, it has never so far happened that a Vice-President has been elected to the Presidency.

Now in the unexpected event of the President’s death a man stands at the helm whom no one really wants to see there; and it has five times happened that the chief executive of the nation has died in office, and four times, indeed, only a few months after being installed, so that the Vice-President has had to guide the destinies of the country for almost four years. When Tyler succeeded to the place of Harrison in 1841, there arose at once unfavourable disputes with the Whig party, which had elected him. When, after the murder of Lincoln in 1865, Johnson took the reins, it was his own Republican party which regretted having elected this impetuous man to the Vice-Presidency; and when, in 1881, after the assassination of Garfield, his successor, Arthur, undertook the office, and filled it indeed by no means badly, considerable consternation was felt throughout the country when people saw that so ordinary a professional politician was to succeed Garfield, on whom the country had pinned its faith.