The Transatlantic Background of Thomas Jefferson's Ideas of Executive Power RALPH KETCHAM The years 1689 and 1789, far from being times of "settlement" in AngloAmerica , were in fact moments of uncertain, even unprecedented begin ning, especially in the prospects for the exercise of executive power. In En gland in 1689, with Stuart notions of "divine right" rule undermined and the foundations of parliamentary government in place, the ideas of a lim ited, constitutional monarchy, and of a "prime" minister, to be so admired by Montesquieu, seemed ready for trial in one of Europe's most powerful nations. A century later in the United States, rather than everything being settled by the inauguration of government under the new constitution, Washington had to give form and meaning to a general phrase: "The exec utive power shall be vested in a President." What did it mean, especially in a republic born amid passionate denunciations of monarchy, to be an executive? What conceptions, guidelines, and models were available to the first presidents? Their peculiar problem, of course, was to devise an executive office suited to republican principles when virtually all prece dent and experience associated executive power with hereditary monarchy — and even monarchical practices of executive power were undergoing fundamental reconsideration in the former mother country. The quandaries and uncertainties were felt with peculiar force by the third president, Thomas Jefferson, both because he was especially deter 163 164 / KETCHAM mined to be faithful to the republicanism of the Revolution, and because he was profoundly aware of the crosscurrents of political ideas then swirl ing in the Western World. He revealed some of the intellectual dilemmas he had worked within when in 1821, to his grandson s request for an opin ion of Thomas Paine and Lord Bolingbroke, he replied that "both were honest men; both advocates for human liberty. . . . Bolingbroke was called indeed a Tory, but his writings prove him a stronger advocate for liberty than any of his countrymen, the Whigs of the present day."1 How is it that the radical Paine and the Tory Bolingbroke could seem equally defenders of liberty, each esteemed more than Whig parliamentarians? Are there assumptions and aspirations about republican government and leadership buried in Jefferson's evaluation of Paine and Bolingbroke that, properly understood, might shed light on the origins of the American presidency? Bolingbroke's view, reflecting almost every tradition known to Jefferson and other eighteenth-century Anglo-Americans, was that bad leadership would corrupt the body politic, while responsibility for re newal of its strength and virtue rested with a patriot king, a monarch akin to Shakespeare's idealized Henry V. But who could take this vital role in a republic founded amid revolutionary rhetoric that stigmatized a reigning king as "the Royal Brute of Great Britain"? In the presence of this di lemma, a critical question arose again and again for Jefferson and the other early presidents: what could take the place in a republic of the enor mously important symbol and reality in a monarchy of the leadership of the whole realm by the sovereign?2 This dilemma imposed complex, perhaps insoluble problems on Jeffer son, of course, but it was also the source of a tension that led to his most creative thinking about institutions and political leadership. If we look only at the pastoral, provincial, culturally conservative Jefferson, or only at the radical apostle of democracy, science, and a new society, we may find much to condemn or to admire or to ponder, but we miss the real sig nificance of his thought and career. He was, in fact, deeply aware of a cul tural and moral crisis in western civilization, with which he struggled all his life. He revered ancient traditions of moral unity, community, and po litical obligation, but he was also an Enlightenment republican committed to human freedom, to removal of restraints, and to government by con sent. His public career, and especially his conception and use of executive power, were rich and profound precisely because he clung to both of these patterns, emphasizing at times (especially during the American Revolu tion) the more republican, liberalizing elements, but at other times — and particularly as he...