Introduction

On June 1, 1787, James Wilson moved that the Constitutional Convention invest executive power in a single individual. As Madison records, a “considerable pause” ensued as one of history’s most distinguished deliberative bodies succumbed to “shyness.” But of course the silence at the Convention was broken soon enough by speech, and the American presidency has since that time occasioned as much critical deliberation as mute anxiety and awe. Today, some consider the presidency to have grown from a mere “foetus of monarchy” into an “imperial presidency,” while others worry that an institution intended to loom large and exude energy risks being fettered like Gulliver with legislative cables. Some see in the American executive the apostasy of republicanism, while others see its salvation. Given the debates that would follow on the heels of Wilson’s proposal and continue down to the present, one understands why even the Convention’s most daring delegates shied from speaking about such a singular office.