Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

On March 5, 1933, the day after his first presidential inauguration, Franklin D. Roosevelt requested a special session of Congress to consider emergency banking legislation. Nearly 12 years later, an older, ailing Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress for the last time to report on the recently concluded Yalta Conference. In the four administrations that occurred between those two events, this nation's longest-serving chief executive and his 533 counterparts in the national legislature underwent an often historic and frequently contentious relationship that demonstrated both the possibilities and limitations of the framework established by the US Constitution. Ironically, as enunciated in the Federalist Papers , the newly established president would act as a corrective force, or in Alexander Hamilton's intriguing expression, a “qualified negative,” on any legislative excesses ( Rossiter 2003 : 440–1). This description of the new office's primary function followed Article II of the Constitution, which only briefly enumerated the responsibilities of the new chief executive, in contrast to Article I's elaborate enunciation of congressional powers. From George Washington through William McKinley, presidents of the United States apparently heeded Hamilton's counsel, proposing few, if any, legislative agendas. Even Abraham Lincoln let Congress initiate landmark nonmilitary ... log in or subscribe to read full text