John Adams Quotes
We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands; we have a check upon two branches of the legislature.
Adams, John. The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States. Edited by Charles Francis Adams, vol. 3, Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851, p. 431.
At the time the power and prestige of Congress relative to the Presidency , was much greater than it is today. It was McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, who began a 20th century trend which led to a reversal of the relationship between the Executive Branch and the Legislative.
1st Earl of Beaconsfield
This letter was written shortly after the Constitution had been signed by the convention delegates. This difference between Adams and Jefferson would be at the heart of the first great partisan struggle in American history. Adams, as the second President, tried to increase and use the power of the Presidency. Jefferson opposed him, especially when Adams tried to run for a second term. The Adams-led Federalists were pitted against Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans in the first, and perhaps still the most bitter partisan struggle in American political history. The Jeffersonians accused Adams and the Federalists of trying to unravel the American Revolution and revert to a monarchy. The people not only sided with the Democratic Republicans, ousting Adams, but also turned out most of the Federalists. It was the end of the Federalist Party, and a new conservative party—without monarchial tendencies—the Whigs became the new opposition party.
Anthony Ashley Cooper
Vidal, a staunch liberal held this view along with many ultra conservatives end extreme liberals. The constitution requires the Congress to declare war, but they have not done so for any of the wars since WWII. The President assumed the war power. And the only coherent budgets began.
1st Earl of Beaconsfield
This is especially true in the Senate, where there not only is the filibuster available to the minority but there are “holds” where a single senator can anonymously stop certain processes such as conformations of appointments and a number of other arcane techniques allowed by Senate rules.
Ironically three decades later Wilson got tangled up with Congress over the League of Nations. He had forgotten what he had written about how Congress having supremacy over the Presidency.
This is the major factor in many nations trying to shift to a democracy from a totalitarian form of government. The winners assume that they can now do anything without regard for the minority rights of opinions.
Despite his warning---and that of others—all that they could get agreement upon had each of these three weaknesses. After winning the American Revolution, the new country found the Articles of Confederation and the Continental Congress completely inadequate and finally in 1787 there was a Constitutional Convention held in secret in Philadelphia to overcome the weaknesses of the existing structure of which the warnings of Rush were three of the problems that had to be fixed.
This is an excellent historical quotation explaining the Japanese political situation that allowed Japanese militarism to dominate the nation and bring it to WWII.
If the executive can select the legislators, there is really no separation of powers and the checks are only one way—the executive can check the legislature but not the other way around.
John Adams Jr. was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain, and he served as the first vice president of the United States. Adams was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with many important figures in early American history, including his wife and adviser Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
