A RUNAWAY PRESIDENT?

REMEMBER THE OTHER FOUNDERS, TOO


The Federalist Papers Tell Only Half the Story

Real Rebels – Like Jefferson, Henry, Paine – Get Short Shrift


Adam Cohen had a fine and important piece in the Times this week. It took the form of a signed editorial (which is its own subject – an odd hybrid of the signed op-ed piece and the institutional, unsigned editorial).

In it, Cohen argues that “the founders,” in writing the Constitution, carved out a substantial role for Congress in declaring war, in raising armies and navies, and in waging war. In the current context, he was supplying historical ammunition to those who want to rein in the current chief executive and hasten the U.S. exit from the tragedy in Iraq. As good as his editorial was, it could have been stronger.

Trouble was, it was based on a misconception, which led him to a weak conclusion.

Here’s why: when invoking “the founders,” it is important to remember that there were a whole lot more founders than the Big Three (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay) who wrote the collection of arguments we know as The Federalist Papers. As you can discover in Chapter 2 of my book, the authors of the Federalist Papers were a small segment of the much larger group of “founders.” Granted, they were articulate and forceful. But the arguments collected in the Federalist Papers were just one school of thought, and they were among the founders who were most comfortable with executive power.

Almost always, the other founders are overlooked.

The Federalist Papers were written during the crucial debate over whether to ratify the Constitution. They were written when Hamilton began to worry that ratification might fail because of the popularity of the arguments being put forward by the critics of the draft constitution. Those critics, known as anti-federalists, were even more skeptical of executive power than the federalists. They saw executive power as inherently aggressive and grasping. They believed that any individual, unless checked, would seek to gather power and aggrandize himself.

As it happened, Jefferson was out of the country during this critical period (serving as America’s minister to France), so he did not reply directly to Hamilton, et. al. But plenty of other anti-federalists did reply. Their arguments appeared in dozens of newspapers, and they too have been collected. They appear in a book that is not nearly as well read (or widely assigned in schools) as The Federalist Papers but deserves to be better known. It is called (no surprise), The Anti-Federalist Papers. Amazon has several versions for sale, and you can find several good sources on-line by searching for “anti-federalist.”
See, for example, the argument put forth by the pseudonymous “Brutus” about the dangers of a standing army, in which the argument is made that it should take a 2/3 vote of Congress to even raise an army unless we are actually attacked by a foreign power. Such a provision in the Constitution would make it far more difficult for a president to launch into foreign misadventures like invading Iraq.

In general, when contemporary authors want to invoke the authority of “the founders,” they should do more than grab their trusty old copy of the (one-sided) Federalist Papers.

HELP!

Help me write my book.


I have just posted (with formatting help from Dan Bricklin) three more draft chapters of Covering America. You can find them by navigating over to the right side of the home page, finding the heading “DRAFT CHAPTERS,” then clicking on the words “Covering America.” There are now 9 chapters, covering the years 1704-1945.

As always, I appreciate any help from readers. Please keep the questions and suggestions coming. In particular, I am looking for help with the following specific issues:

CHAPTER 7: Should I add more material about the tabloids of the era and about the spread of photojournalism?


CHAPTER 8: Should I add more material here about the rise of sports reporting and columns?
Do I need to expand the radio section to include more about Father Coughlin, the “radio priest”? Would that be a way to examine anti-semitism in the media?
Is it worth mentioning that Lippmann made occasional radio broadcasts and (later) television appearances?


CHAPTER 9: It’s already the longest chapter in the book, but I am considering some more material.
I would like to add a section on Vincent Tubbs, a under-appreciated wartime correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American.
I also want to include more women. I am thinking about Martha Gellhorn and Marguerite Higgins.

Please e-mail me with any responses to those questions, or with any other suggestions or corrections.

Free Press?

A Comment on Comments

OPEN PRESS vs. FREE PRESS?

I have been thinking a lot lately about the issue of comments on this blog.
--Should the comments be open to all comers?
--Should those who comment have to identify themselves?
--Should I moderate (which inevitably means censor) comments?
--Should I edit comments before posting them?
--Should I create and publicly announce “ground rules” and apply to all comments?

Because I am a historian, I naturally approach this issue in historical terms. In some ways, the debate is reminiscent of the conflict in the 18th Century between two competing philosophies of journalism. On the one side was the original idea known as an “open press.” On the other side was the newcomer, the idea known as a “free press.”

These sound similar, but there is a key distinction.

The idea of an “open press” can be traced, in America, at least as far back as Ben Franklin. In his famous “Apology for Printers,” Franklin argued that a printer who publishes a newspaper should open its pages to all varieties of opinion. In this way, the community is best served because as long as “truth and error have fair play,” the truth will out. The printer serves as a sort of “common carrier,” like the post office or a stage coach, which is open to all comers on the same terms.

Later in the 18th Century, editors began to take sides in the great issue of the day, independence from England. As they became more and more committed to the rebel or Tory camp, they began to argue that each editor should be free to present a consistent point of view in his pages. Readers could buy several different papers and weigh one against another, but they should not expect to find pro-Tory articles in a rebel paper.

[For examples and discussion, see chapter 1 and chapter 2 of my book, by clicking on the drafts in the column to the right.]

To a great extent, the issue here depends on the frame of reference. Should a reader expect to find a range of views among different papers? Within a single paper? (Or even within each story in each paper?)

Looking at these schools of thought in the setting of the Internet, I am not sure either one is completely adequate. In the case of blogging, it could be argued that essentially everyone is free to post their own thoughts; therefore, everybody is a “printer” and readers should expect to find a range of views by surfing across many sites. On the other hand, what strikes me about the Internet is the possibilities it holds for creating something like a conversation. It is far more dynamic than the hand-powered printing presses of the 18th Century, and we should enjoy the benefits.

With all this in mind, I have decided to allow comments to continue, but I will exercise my prerogative as the moderator to block any comments that I judge to be hurtful, stupid, or mean. Also, no anonymous comments.

Let the conversation resume.