| Von Holst's criticism of the veto message. The President's real meaning. |
One of the most celebrated historians of American politics has indulged in a very severe criticism upon this part of the message, claiming that President Jackson virtually asserted therein the power to initiate legislation, full co-ordination with the Houses of Congress in legislation, and an independence of Congress, and especially of the Judiciary, which, in practice, would render constitutional law an impossibility. An impartial examination of the text of the message in all its parts will hardly warrant any such conclusions. It is quite clear, from such examination, that the President meant that in the formation of administrative measures by the Congressional committees in charge of the same, the views of the Administration ought to be obtained; that the President is not limited by the Constitution to any class of subjects in the use of his veto power upon proposed legislation; and that when the Congress and the President are legislating they are not obliged to re-enact a law simply because the Judiciary have declared it constitutional, nor even prevented from repealing a law, simply because the Judiciary have declared it constitutional, and certainly not prohibited from differing in opinion with the Judiciary in regard to the constitutionality of any law already on the statute book, or any proposed measure. Conservative American lawyers, jurists, and publicists approve all of this as not only the letter but also the spirit of the Constitution.
| Jackson's vindication of executive independence. |
Instead of destroying the Constitution in theory by the doctrine of this veto, it looks more as if the President did something to rescue the "check and balance" system of government, provided in the Constitution, from the threatened domination of a single department over the others in it. The fact is, Congress had succeeded, during the régime of the old Republican party in American politics, in winning a power over the President which the Constitution did not authorize. The members of Congress had selected all of the Presidents, from Jefferson to Jackson, either by nomination or by actual election. The machinery constructed by the Constitution for the election of the President was wanting in its most necessary part. It contained no means of connection between the electoral colleges in the several Commonwealths in voting for the President and Vice-President, at the same time that it required a majority of all the electoral votes to elect. The members of Congress being the only national assembly of persons in the country, and being the chosen political leaders from the different Commonwealths, naturally glided into the habit of constituting themselves, in caucus, the connecting link between the electoral colleges in the several Commonwealths, and thus the Congressional caucus, or caucuses, as the case might be, became the nominating body or bodies to the electoral colleges. If the caucus nominated anybody, it left to the electors the alternative of ratifying the nomination, or of so scattering their votes as to give no person a majority, in which latter case the election of the President passed into the hands of the members of the House of Representatives. If, on the other hand, the caucus did not nominate anybody, the electors were nearly sure to fail to unite a majority of their votes upon the same person, in which case again the House of Representatives obtained possession of the election. With such an increasing control over the tenure of the President, it is not astonishing that the Congress, and even the individual members of Congress, exercised an ever increasing control over his acts and his policy. The encroaching legislature was fast developing the principle of parliamentary government as the principle of the American system, while the Constitution provides the principle of executive independence and presidential administration.
Again, the judicial department had appeared to assume the position that it possessed the supreme interpreting power of the Constitution upon every point. It had not then, as it has now, clearly confined itself to questions immediately involving questions of private rights. It appeared to be claiming jurisdiction in regard to questions primarily of political science, public law, and even public policy.
The President's Bank veto called a halt in these tendencies, and exerted an influence for the restoration of executive independence, and of the "check and balance" system, provided in the Constitution; and it called the people into a closer and more immediate relation to the President than they had before occupied, in that the President now appealed to them to decide the question between him and the Congress, in the election which was then about to take place.
These were the political principles contained in the Bank veto, and whether they, or the more democratic principle of anti-monopoly, or the more socialistic principle of government banking, moved the masses, certainly they were profoundly moved. Had the popular vote been taken, the day before the appearance of the veto, upon the question of the Bank's re-charter, it is altogether probable that an overwhelming majority would have been found in its favor. Against the veto, however, no sufficient majority could be united in Congress, and when the results of the presidential election became known, it was found that Jackson had carried the country with him in the unequal contest, and that the people had made the principles of the Jacksonian democracy the ruling spirit of the Constitution.