Statement on the Campaign

At the most recent debate, supposedly “serious” and allegedly “experienced” candidates confronted each other over whether a female can be President.  So please pardon this nobody for discussing the office, its origins, its purpose, and how it is to be used.

     Another candidate at the debate last week outspent everybody else in the race combined.  So, was it his message or his money that got him on the stage? 

     My basic approach is to stand on a firm foundation.  From there, the next address will lay out the national agenda.  The “serious” and “experienced" candidates can have their rah-rah-rah, sis-boom-bah.  This is different.  Remember Sgt. Friday?  “Just the facts, ma'am.” 

     Any citizen who wants to be a part of this effort need only read, get an absentee ballot for their State's primary, and write-in: Marvin Dwayne Jones.

The Presidency in the Third Century

My fellow citizens:   

   

WE THE PEOPLE who have raised the right hand to uphold the Constitution must take action.  America is under attack—at home and abroad.  There is no statute of limitations on the oath to support and defend the supreme law of the land “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”  Thus, it is necessary to embrace what may demand one’s life; and that must resonate with anyone who seeks the Presidency.

     Those most responsible for the creation of the office had a clear vision.

     “…(T)he Executive Magistrate should be the guardian of the people,” said Gouvernor Morris, “even of the lower classes against legislative tyranny, against the great and the wealthy who in the course of things will necessarily compose the legislative body.”

     How was that to be done?

     “...(T)o be the guardian of the people,” Morris said, “let him be appointed by the people.”  

     James Wilson was no Whig.  He agreed.

      “He who is to execute the laws will be as much the choice, as much the servant and, therefore, as

much the friend of the people as he who is to make them.”

     What was the Executive to do?

     “Be impartial…(and) promote the interests of the whole,” said Wilson.  (Presidents Above Party by Ralph Ketcham, 117 & 118)

     When an electoral system was approved, James Madison said, the Executive is “to be elected by the people.”  (The Electoral College by Lucius Wilmerding, Jr., 3 & 19)   

     On September 17, 1787, as Benjamin Franklin and James McHenry left on the final day of the Federal Convention, they were approached by Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia.

      

     “Well, Doctor, what have got—a republic or a monarchy?”

     “A republic,” Franklin replied, “if you can keep it.”    

  

     A monarchy is one thing, a republic another, as Alexander Hamilton made plain.

     “…(T)he king of Great Britain is a perpetual and HEREDITARY prince.  The one would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and inviolable.”  (The Federalist Papers, No. 69)   

     In the Framers’ day, hereditary rule was so ingrained that anything else was almost unimaginable.  Thus, even before the Constitution was approved, critics referred to the new office as “the fetus of

monarchy.”  And now, belatedly, there is someone determined to prove them right.

     During the transition, Richard Painter, former ethics lawyer for Bush the Younger, and Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, warned the gentleman from New York about the emoluments clause.  Walter Shaub, the Director of the Office of Government Ethics, offered to assist him with divestiture.  But that was given no consideration and was not accepted.  And so, from the moment “So help me God” passed his lips, he has been in violation of the emoluments clause.  (Article I, Section 9, Clause 8)  The man who was supposed to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” chose to terminate “the supreme law of the land” with extreme prejudice.  (Article II, Section 3 & Article VI, Clause 2)  And the oath was dismissed with a wave of his hand.  After all, how can one “preserve, protect and defend” the very thing he upends?  (Article II, Section 1, Clause 8)  ALL OF THOSE ARE IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES.  Together, they go beyond, say, civil or inherent contempt, to raise the curtain for an encore, a showstopper of an impeachable offense--contempt of the Constitution.  Thus, there have been four charges from the beginning--without even considering the Russian Connection and the related Ukraine Situation.  And he has been working on more ever since.

     The gentleman from New York claims he has “the complete power to pardon.”  Yet immediately after the grant, the Constitution states a limitation—“except in cases of impeachment”; and in The Federalist Papers, Hamilton shows how the power is to be used in extreme and mundane situations, consistent with the standards of the Preamble—to “insure domestic tranquility” and “establish justice.”  (Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 & The Federalist Papers, No. 74)  He has also said, “I have an Article II, where I can do whatever I want.”  But if the gentleman from New York had studied the country’s birth certificate instead of his predecessor’s, he would have seen himself as the progeny of George III.  Furthermore, he fails to understand that the Framers saw an emergency as a bridge over troubled water connecting means and ends; for, as John Locke said, “…(P)rerogative is nothing but the power of doing public good without a rule.”  (Second Treatise of Government, Chapter XIV, 166)  Thus, an emergency does not exist simply because the House of Representatives exercised its power  over money bills and denied him a pet project.  Finally, there is the claim of “absolute immunity”—to which a United States District Court took exception.

     “Simply stated, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that

Presidents are not kings.  This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty, or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.  Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the White House work for the People of the United States, and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States….

 

     “Thus, DOJ’s present assertion that the absolute testimonial immunity that senior-level presidential aides possess is, ultimately, owned by the President, and can be invoked by the President to overcome the aides’ own will to testify, is a proposition that cannot be squared with core constitutional values, and for this reason alone, it cannot be sustained.”  (House of Representatives v. McGahn, 116 & 117)  

     A monarchy is one thing, a republic another.  The former is subject to the genetic lottery.  The latter depends upon free elections, and the prohibition on granting titles of nobility reveals America’s true identity  (Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 & Section 10, Clause 10)   

     “The original intention”—of Gouvernor Morris, James Wilson, and James Madison—is clear, as are the dangers when it is thwarted due to a hangover.  The result is a really bad morning after, the President being chosen with fewer popular votes.  “The right of equal suffrage among the States is another exceptional part of the Confederation….,” Hamilton reminds us, “Its operation contradicts

that fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail….  It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded…to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third.”  (The Federalist Papers, No. 22; emphasis added)  It creates a political discontinuity—a misalignment of means and ends, a condition where a minority rules the majority.  But the consequences of the loser’s lottery—Bush the Younger and the gentleman from New York—will continue until the Electoral College is used to perform its proper functions--popular choice and national security.  Therefore the 2020 election must be decided by the National Popular Vote.    

     History is full of mysteries.  But despite the one who sows confusion, there is none about the position at the center of the American political system.  During the battle for ratification, Hamilton described the role of the new office. 

     “Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.  It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy…

     “There can be no need, however, to multiply arguments or examples on this head.  A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government.  A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.”  (The Federalist Papers, No. 70)   

     The acceptance of power and responsibility defines a leader.  Others need not apply, as Hamilton explains.  

     “The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.  It is a just observation, that the people commonly INTEND the PUBLIC GOOD.  This often applies to their very errors.  But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always REASON RIGHT about the MEANS of promoting it.  They know from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it.  When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of  the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.  Instances might be cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure.”  (The Federalist Papers, No. 71)

     The challenge was formidable.  Washington reigned in an age when monarchs ruled.  He was an exception, and the prospect of elections for the House of Commons was not a sunbeam in the minds of writers of the time, as an historian informs us.  

    

     “The real crisis for Pope, Swift, and their circle was the ‘corruption’ they saw everywhere in the rule of Walpole.  But for these critics corruption meant much more than the giving or taking of bribes or the taint of other forms of dishonest exchange or exercises of power by public officials.  The term corruption carried the full Classical connotation of displacement of the public good by private interest.  In this context, the phrase private citizen becomes a contradiction: to be a citizen in the Aristotelian sense means precisely and completely to transcend the private, selfish viewpoint…

     “This conception of citizenship, derived by English neoclassical writers from the Renaissance

humanists, harkened to the sternest Spartan ideals of disinterestedness.”  (RK, 31)   

     In The Craftsman, Lord Bolingbrooke said “the head of the state is responsible for the moral health of the body politic.”  In The Idea of a Patriot King, he called such a leader “the most powerful of all reformers,…a sort of standing miracle.”  Under his influence, “a new people will seem to arise with a new king.”  The reason?  “A little merit in a prince is seen and felt by numbers: it is multiplied….  A little failing…is multiplied in the same manner.”  But, said Bolingbrooke, “the character of a great and good king (must) be founded in that of a great and good man.”  (RK, 61 &64)

     Leadership comes down to intangibles, and trust is the indispensable attribute.  Pierce Butler, a delegate from South Carolina, gave testimony in a letter to a relative in England.

     “I am free to acknowledge that his powers are full great, and greater than I was disposed to make

them.  Nor, entre nous, do I believe they would have been so great had not many of the members cast their eyes towards General Washington as President; and shaped their ideas of the powers to be given to a President, by their opinions of his virtue.”

     Here was Lord Bollingbrooke’s idea of a patriot king.  As an historian attests, “The President was to be a strong, dignified, nonpolitical chief of state and government.  In two words, he was to be George Washington.”  (The American Presidency by Clinton Rossiter, 77)

     To do the job, one must know the job.  The Preamble and the oath make the point:  All the powers of the Presidency are to be used for the benefit of the Republic; and the means are directed to these ends—to “promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”  Then one will indeed “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”

 

     In the third century, those who aspire to the Presidency must take a page out of Washington’s book, for he transmuted Lord Bollingbrooke’s work and became the idea of a patriotic President.  Pettiness will not do.  The challenges—at home and abroad—demand nothing less than our best.  But they can be overcome, if the heat of battle burns off dross and leaves gold.

(c)2020 Marvin D. Jones.  All rights reserved.


https://www.marvindjones.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-schlesinger-moment.html

https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2019cv2379-46 

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Statement on the Campaign

This is a serious effort.  There will be no rah-rah-rah, sis-boom-bah.

The debates were avoided because the format does not allow a presentation beyond the narrow band.  Instead of posturing, my focus is on policies to "promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."  That is what the oath requires.

My next address will be on the Presidency.  Then I will lay out the national agenda.  Finally, there will be the vision.

Declaration of Candidacy

My fellow citizens:

“A popular government, without popular information,” James Madison reminds us, “or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps, both.  Knowledge will forever govern ignorance:  And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

     In preparation for the Federal Convention, Madison gathered together the constitutions of the ancient republics.  They taught an important lesson.  Foreign influence was the consistent cause of their demise, and it is why we have an emoluments clause—a constitutional conflict of interest provision.

     Fear of foreign influence was such a deep concern for the Framers that it affected the method of       choosing the President of the United States.  The emoluments clause was not enough.

     The misunderstood, misrepresented, and misused Electoral College has two functions.  They are popular choice and national security.

     At the time, there was no way to reduce, as Madison noted, “the different qualifications in the different States to one uniform rule.”  (The Federalist Papers, No. 52)  A scholar elaborated:  “The electoral voting system was adopted instead of a direct voting system only because it seemed the most practicable way to give equal weights to equal masses of persons in a country where the suffrage laws varied from state to state.”  (The Electoral College by Lucius Wilmerding, Jr., xi)  But as Madison said at the Convention, the Executive “is now to be elected by the people” and as Alexander Hamilton later noted, “The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people…”  (LW, 3 & 19 and Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, No. 69 respectively)  Thus, the original intention is clear, although the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution continues due to confusion.

     Popular choice was to be protected—for reasons of national security.

     “Nothing was more to be desired,” according to Hamilton, “than that every practicable obstacle      should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption.  These most deadly adversaries of republican      government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one          quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our          councils.  How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the Chief          Magistracy of the Union?”  (The Federalist Papers, No. 68)

     “With all the infirmities incident to a popular election, corrected by the particular mode of          conducting it, as directed under the present system, I think we may fairly calculate,” said James          Madison in the House, “that  the instances will be very rare in which an unworthy man will receive    that mark of the public confidence which is required to designate the President of the United States.”  (Emphasis added.)

     “One advantage of Electors is,” Madison later explained, “although generally the mere mouths of  their constituents, they may be intentionally left sometimes to their own judgment, guided by further information that may be acquired by them: and finally, what is of material importance, they will be able, when ascertaining, which may not be till a late hour, that the first choice of their constituents is utterly hopeless, to substitute in the electoral vote the name known to be their second choice.”  (LW, 180-181)

    

     The contemporary focus on popular choice must not obscure the necessity of national security and the need to reinforce the emoluments clause.  Thus, the much maligned Electoral College is an idea whose time has come.  With the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-sixth Amendments, there is “one uniform rule”; and with public education, the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution will be complete.  Then the Electoral College can perform the two functions for which it was designed—popular choice and national security—through the National Popular Vote.  Then  an institution that is the final check on fraud can suppress “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils…by raising a creature of their own to the Chief Magistracy of the Union.” (Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, No. 68)

     President Washington reinforced the importance of the emoluments clause in his Farewell Address.

     “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the 

jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful woes for republican government.”

     National security, properly understood, is the issue.

     “It is vain,” as James Madison reminds us, “to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust those clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good.  Enlightened statesmen    will not always be at the helm.”  (The Federalist Papers, No. 10)

     While stationed overseas, a teacher asked me to speak to her high school about my proposal to 

improve our political system.  It had been made shortly before going on active duty and was inspired by Hamilton’s observation that “a power over a man’s support is a power over his will.”  (The Federalist Papers, No. 73)   Therefore three things were needed to remove the shackles—public financing of campaigns, free air time, and a strong conflict of interest provision that required officials to place their holdings in Treasury securities.  That was nearly a half century ago, and it would have reinforced the emoluments clause.  But now an adjustment is necessary—restoration of the fairness doctrine.

     I am a nobody.  But I have had enough.  I am done biding my time and biting my tongue, for I did not take the oath to witness the liquidation of the American Constitution.  Therefore I am announcing my candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

     This will be a campaign unlike any other.  It costs nothing to lay out my views on the office and the issues, so send no money.  Instead, get an absentee ballot and write-in Marvin Dwayne Jones.

     To do the job, one must know the job.  And the standard is clear:  All the powers of the Presidency are to be used for the benefit of the Republic.  The Preamble lays out markers by which we measure our progress toward a shared destiny.  Ultimately, this is the end—to “promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

     The hour of maximum danger is upon us.  And we cannot fail to respond.  We must rise to the occasion.

     National security is about survival, and so “an improper ascendant in our councils” must be cast aside.  Then, once again, we must have a policy our allies can support and our adversaries will respect.

     America is a child of the Enlightenment, not the Dark Ages.  Knowledge is the foundation of the American Republic.  By remembering who and what we are, this nation can complete the mission Alexander Hamilton described on the first page of The Federalist Papers.

     “It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.  If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.”  (The Federalist Papers, No. 1)

(c)2020 Marvin D. Jones.  All rights reserved. 


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