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| Wednesday, April 17, 2024 |
Miles from the Mainstream |
D.
R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor |
Hamilton Would, LPR Believes,
Be Appalled
September 5, 2015 -- Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 75, explained why ratification of treaties required the consent of two-thirds of the United States Senate. After stating that this was to protect the country from an avaricious or ambitious president, Hamilton wrote: "The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world to the sole disposal of a magistrate, created and circumstanced, as would be a president of the United States. " |
LPR has a good hunch that Hamilton would not be persuaded that backing from a mere third of Congress, plus one, would much satisfy his concern about the sole action of a magistrate on such matters. LPR has a question for Democrats, concerning the curious approval procedure for the deal, put into effect by the Republican Congress. If a Republican president entered into agreements with foreign powers backed by no more than a third plus one of Congress, would you refrain from declaring that such procedure represents a giant leap towards presidential dictatorship, and resist submitting articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives? |
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