and term-limitation—which might in principle render his officernmore independent—might also deprive the nation of arnvaluable leader. They also feared that congressional appointmentrnmight lead to consolidation of national power at thernexpense of the states.rnSelection by the state legislatures would obviate this danger,rnbut it would also reduce the chief executive to a creature of thernstates. Direct popular election was clearly impossible, if onlyrnbecause the size of the country made it impossible for the averagernman to form an idea of a candidate’s capacities. InrnGeorge Mason’s memorable line, “It would be as unnatural tornrefer the choice of a proper character for chief Magistrate tornthe people as it would to refer a trial of colours to a blindrnman.” hi any system, it was feared, local patriotism wouldrnpredominate, and each of the 13 states would select a nativernson.rnThe system ultimately adopted seemed to answer all thernobjections. Electors, chosen for the nonce could have little enduringrninfluence over the political processes of the nation.rnThe integrity of the states was preserved in two ways. In thernfirst place, the mode of choosing electors was left up to thernstates, and in the second, electoral strength was based not onlyrnon population—as was the case in the House of Representativesrn—but even the smallest states were guaranteed the twornextra votes based on their representation in the Senate. As arnresult, the electoral college represents, as Forrest McDonaldrnobserves, neither the people nor the states but the people inrnthe states.rnIf a candidate failed to gain a majority of electors, the choicernwould be handed over to the House of Representatives. Inrnthe days before organized political parties, it was assumed thatrnit would be difficult, if not impossible, to reach the neededrnmajority consensus, and Col. Mason predicted that the choicernwould be left up to the Congress “19 out of 20 times.”rnIn the debates that followed the Philadelphia Convention,rnthe electoral college received broad, if lukewarm, acceptance.rnHamilton noted {Federalist No. 68) that it was the only aspectrnof the Constitution that had “escaped without severerncensure.” Hamilton praised this method of indirect election asrnless likely to lead to the tumult and disorder that would arisernduring a popular contest at the national level. He thoughtrnthat while “talents for low intrigue, the little arts of popularity,rnmay alone suffice to elevate a man to first honors in a singlernstate,” only “characters preeminent for ability and virtue”rnwould win the widespread support of electors in the variousrnstates.rnLord Bryce notes the complacency of the framers toward thernelectoral college, which, nonetheless, “utterly belied their expectations.”rnBryce makes the shrewd observation that despiternher best efforts America “reproduced the English system of executiverngovernment by a party majority” but in a more extremernform, because at least in England the titular headrn”stands in isolated dignity outside party politics.”rnThe framers’ most serious mistake lay in their apparent desirernto elevate the presidency above the political arena. Thernelectors were not to be important public officials, with theirrnown agenda and commitments, but somewhat ordinary menrnchosen out of the community for the occasion. There wasrnno stipulation on how the states might go about making theirrnselection. Among the bewildering variety of methods thatrnwere adopted, three general types were prominent: in manyrncases state legislatures were given the job, and in South Carolinarnthis method lasted down to 1868; on some occasions arnstate was divided into districts, each of which had a vote; butrnthe method that eventually triumphed—over the objections ofrnvirtually every honest politician who reflected on the processrn—was the general ticket system in use today.rnThe pivotal year for the emergence of the general ticketrnmethod as a near-universal norm (as Lucius Wilmerdingrnnotes) was 1836. The same year marked the elevation of masterrnpol Martin Van Buren to the presidency. More than anyone,rnperhaps. Van Buren deserves the credit for creating thernmodern American party system, by which I do not mean thernshifting factional alhances of the first three or four decades ofrnour history, but the disciplined machinery that commandsrnloyalties without convictions and can be relied upon to manufacturerna substantial vote for any candidate, no matter howrnimprobable, so long as he receives the party’s endorsement.rnThe discussion of the election of senatorsrnsometimes took the form of a debate betweenrn(successful) advocates of states’ rights and thernpartisans of centralized authority, andrnSherman argued—quite correctly—thatrndirect election of senators was tantamount tornthe annihilation of state governments.rnVan Buren was the nemesis of John C. Calhoun, who lookedrnwith undisguised horror on the development of the DemocraticrnParty. In 1842, in his magisterial speech on the vetornpower, Calhoun had defended the office of the Presidentrnagainst Henry Clay’s proposal to reduce the override vote fromrntwo thirds to a simple majority. His argument rested on thernpeculiar federal arrangements that made the President thernrepresentative of both the states and the people. He eoneludedrnwith a warning against the demagogic notion of a popularrnmandate for radical change. The limitation on the vetornpower was, he said, a symptom of a “fatal tendency” towardrnsubstituting majority rule for the Constitution. The electionrnof Ceneral Harrison had been used as a pretext for “forcingrnthrough a whole system of measures of the most threateningrnand alarming character… on the ground that they were all decidedrnin the election . . . thus attempting to substitute thernwill of the majority of the people in the choice of a ChiefrnMagistrate, as the legislative authority of the Union, in lieu ofrnthe beautiful and profound system established by the Constitution.”rnIn 1846 Calhoun wrote an open letter on “the mode of appointingrnelectors” in response to a proposal to convert SouthrnCarolina to the general ticket system. It is worthwhile consideringrnCalhoun’s remarks for two reasons: first, because hernhandily demolishes all the best arguments now employedrnagainst the electoral college; and second, because he anticipatedrnthe rise of the vicious political svstem that has given usrn150 years of increasingly corrupt and ineffectual leadershiprnNOVEMBER 1992/11rnrnrn