But a Prime Minister in the United States can never take the place there which is taken here by our Premier. Over our Premier there is no one politically superior. The highest political responsibility of the nation rests on him. In the States this must always rest on the President, and any minister, whatever may be his name or assumed position, can only be responsible through the President. And it is here especially that the working of the United States system of government seems to me deficient--appears as though it wanted something to make it perfect and round at all points. Our ministers retire from their offices as do the Presidents; and indeed the ministerial term of office with us, though of course not fixed, is in truth much shorter than the presidential term of four years. But our ministers do not in fact ever go out. At one time they take one position, with pay, patronage, and power; and at another time another position, without these good things; but in either position they are acting as public men, and are in truth responsible for what they say and do. But the President, on whom it is presumed that the whole of the responsibility of the United States government rests, goes out at a certain day, and of him no more is heard. There is no future before him to urge him on to constancy; no hope of other things beyond, of greater honors and a wider fame, to keep him wakeful in his country's cause. He has already enrolled his name on the list of his country's rulers, and received what reward his country can give him. Conscience, duty, patriotism may make him true to his place. True to his place, in a certain degree, they will make him. But ambition and hope of things still to come are the moving motives of the minds of most men. Few men can allow their energies to expand to their fullest extent in the cold atmosphere of duty alone. The President of the States must feel that he has reached the top of the ladder, and that he soon will have done with life. As he goes out he is a dead man. And what can be expected from one who is counting the last lingering hours of his existence? "It will not be in my time," Mr. Buchanan is reported to have said, when a friend spoke to him with warning voice of the coming rebellion. "It will not be in my time." In the old days, before democracy had prevailed in upsetting that system of presidential election which the Constitution had intended to fix as permanent, the Presidents were generally re-elected for a second term. Of the first seven Presidents five were sent back to the White House for a second period of four years. But this has never been done since the days of General Jackson; nor will it be done, unless a stronger conservative reaction takes place than the country even as yet seems to promise. As things have lately ordered themselves, it may almost be said that no man in the Union would be so improbable a candidate for the Presidency as the outgoing President. And it has been only natural that it should be so.
Looking at the men themselves who have lately been chosen, the fault has not consisted in their non-re-election, but in their original selection. There has been no desire for great men; no search after a man of such a nature that, when tried, the people should be anxious to keep him. "It will not be in my time," says the expiring President. And so, without dismay, he sees the empire of his country slide away from him.
A President, with the possibility of re-election before him, would be as a minister who goes out knowing that he may possibly come in again before the session is over, and, perhaps, believing that the chances of his doing so are in his favor. Under the existing political phase of things in the United States, no President has any such prospect; but the ministers of the President have that chance.
It is no uncommon thing at present for a minister under one President to reappear as a minister under another; but a statesman has no assurance that he will do so because he has shown ministerial capacity. We know intimately the names of all our possible ministers--too intimately as some of us think--and would be taken much by surprise if a gentleman without an official reputation were placed at the head of a high office. If something of this feeling prevailed as to the President's cabinet, if there were some assurance that competent statesmen would be appointed as Secretaries of State, a certain amount of national responsibility would by degrees attach itself to them, and the President's shoulders would, to that amount, be lightened. As it is, the President pretends to bear a burden which, if really borne, would indicate the possession of Herculean shoulders. But, in fact, the burden at present is borne by no one. The government of the United States is not in truth responsible either to the people or to Congress.
But these ministers, if it be desired that they shall have weight in the country, should sit in Congress either as Senators or as Representatives. That they cannot so sit without an amendment of the Constitution, I have explained in the previous chapter; and any such amendment cannot be very readily made. Without such seats they cannot really share the responsibility of the President, or be in any degree amenable to public opinion for the advice which they give in their public functions. It will be said that the Constitution has expressly intended that they should not be responsible, and such, no doubt, has been the case. But the Constitution, good as it is, cannot be taken as perfect. The government has become greater than seems to have been contemplated when that code was drawn up.