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Of the Re-election of the President - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, vol. 1 [1835]

Edition used:

Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition of De la démocratie en Amérique, ed. Eduardo Nolla, translated from the French by James T. Schleifer. A Bilingual French-English editions, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010). Vol. 1.

Part of: Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, 4 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Of the Re-election of the President

When the head of the executive power is eligible for re-election, it is the State itself that schemes and corrupts.—Desire to be re-elected that dominates all the thoughts of the President of the United States.—Disadvantage of re-election, special to America.—The natural vice of democracies is the gradual subservience of all powers to the slightest desires of the majority.—The re-election of the President favors this vice.

Were the law-makers of the United States wrong or right to allow the re-election of the President?r

To prevent the head of the executive power from being re-elected seems, at first glance, contrary to reason.s We know what influence the talents or character of one man exercise over the destiny of an entire people, especially in difficult circumstances and in times of crisis. Laws that forbid citizens to re-elect their primary magistrate would deny them the best means of ensuring the prosperity of the State or of saving it. You would, moreover, arrive at this bizarre result, that a man would be excluded from the government at the very moment when he would have finally proved that he was capable of governing well.t

These reasons are certainly powerful; but can’t they be opposed by still stronger ones?u

Intrigue and corruption are the natural vices of elective governments. But when the head of the State can be re-elected, these vices spread indefinitely and compromise the very existence of the country. When an ordinary candidate wants to succeed by intrigue, his maneuvers can only be extended over a circumscribed space. When, on the contrary, the head of the State himself gets into the fray, he borrows for his own use the strength of the government.v

In the first case, it is one man with his limited means; in the second, it is the State itself with its immense resources that schemes and corrupts.

The ordinary citizen who uses reprehensible maneuverings to gain power can harm public prosperity only in an indirect manner; but if the representative of the executive power enters the lists, concern for the government becomes, for him, something of secondary interest; the main interest is his election. Negotiations, like laws, are, for him, nothing more than electoral schemes; positions become recompense for services rendered, not to the nation, but to its leader. Even if the action of the government would not always be contrary to the interest of the country, it would at least no longer serve it. Yet the action of the government is undertaken for its use alone.

It is impossible to consider the ordinary course of affairs in the United States, without noticing that the desire to be re-elected dominates the thoughts of the President; that the entire policy of his administration leads to this point; that his smallest steps are subordinated to this end; that above all, as the moment of crisis approaches, individual interest replaces general interest in his mind.

So the principle of re-election makes the corrupting influence of elective government more widespread and more dangerous. It tends to degrade the political morality of the people and to replace patriotism with cleverness.

In America, it attacks the sources of national existence even more fundamentally.

Every government carries within itself a natural vice that seems attached to the very principle of its life; the genius of the law-maker is to discern this well.w A State can overcome many bad laws, and the evil they cause is often exaggerated. But every law whose effect is to develop this seed of death cannot miss becoming fatal in the long run, even if its bad effects do not immediately make themselves felt.

The principle of ruin in absolute monarchies is the unlimited and unreasonable expansion of royal power. A measure that removes the counterweight that the constitution left to this power would therefore be radically bad, even if its effects seemed unnoticeable for a long time.

In the same way, in countries where democracy governs and where the people constantly draw everything to themselves, laws which make their action more and more immediate and irresistible attack, in a direct way, the existence of the government.

The greatest merit of the American law-makers is to have seen this truth clearly and to have had the courage to put it into practice. [{The greatest glory of this people is to have known how to appreciate it and to submit themselves to it.}]

They understood that beyond the people there needed to be a certain number of powers that, without being completely independent of the people, nonetheless enjoyed in their sphere a fairly large degree of liberty; so, though forced to obey the permanent direction of the majority, they could nevertheless struggle against its caprices and refuse its dangerous demands.

To this effect, they concentrated all the executive power of the nation in one pair of hands; they gave the President extensive prerogatives, and armed him with a veto, to resist the encroachments of the legislature.x

But by introducing the principle of re-election, they have partially destroyed their work. They have granted great power to the President, and have taken from him the will to use it.

Not re-eligible, the President was not independent of the people, for he did not cease being responsible to them; but the favor of the people was not so necessary to him that he had to bend in all cases to their will.

Re-eligible (and this is true above all in our time when political morality is becoming lax and when men of great character are disappearing), the President of the United States is only a docile instrument in the hands of the majority. He loves what it loves, hates what it hates; he flies ahead of its will, anticipates its complaints, bends before its slightest desires. The law-makers wanted him to lead the majority, and he follows it.

Thus, in order not to deprive the State of the talents of one man, they have rendered his talents almost useless; and to arrange for a resource in extraordinary circumstances, they have exposed the country to daily dangers.y

[r. ] In the Souvenirs, Tocqueville reproaches himself for having supported, in the committee to draft the Constitution of 1848, Beaumont’s proposal that urged that a president leaving office not be re-elected. “On this occasion, we both fell into a great error that, I am very afraid, will have very damaging consequences,” wrote Tocqueville in March 1851 (Souvenirs,OC, XII, p. 190). The impossibility of being re-elected was, we know, one of the reasons that pushed Louis Napoleon to the coup d’état.

[s. ] In the margin: “≠Eight years, term indicated by experience.≠” See note y p. 229.

[t. ] In the margin: “≠1. The great end of the laws is to mingle individual interest and State interest.

2.Weakening of the executive power, capital vice to avoid in republics.≠”

[u. ] Variant:

<The great object of the laws [v: of the law-maker] must always be intimately to mingle individual interest and State interest. Certainly laws can never reach such a degree of perfection, but it can be said that the more difficult it is to separate these two interests, the better the laws.

If the President were not eligible for re-election, he would have only one goal, to leave a great recollection in the memory of men and to return to private life surrounded by the respect as well as the love of his fellow citizens. To obtain this goal, he could hardly follow another path than to govern well; for at the bottom of the human heart, there is a secret instinct that constantly calls out that the approval of the present [v: the sincere approval of contemporaries] and the admiration of posterity belong to virtue alone.

In place of this entirely non-material and distant interest, the American laws have given the President a positive and current interest that, if not contrary to, is at least distinct from that of the State.

The President has naturally two goals to pursue: to govern well and to be re-elected. I know you will stop me here by saying: the two interests are the same, for the only way to be re-elected is to govern well. This argument is far from satisfying to me; it goes back to the argument that the majority is not subject to error, that it has neither prejudice to be flattered nor passions to be inflamed, that favor [added: and intrigue] have no hold on it, a proposition that cannot be sustained and that does not merit the effort to refute. It is incontestable that there are two ways for the President to be re-elected. The first, it is true, consists of governing well, but that is within reach of only great souls. Even then, success is always uncertain. Washington had lost the majority when he voluntarily removed himself from public activities. The second, easier and more within the reach of ordinary minds, is to buy partisans at any cost, to make offices the recompense for services rendered to the President, not to the country, to exploit public power in favor of individual interests, and to turn all laws into a combination of personal and party interests.

It is impossible to examine the ordinary course of public affairs in the United States without noticing that the desire to be re-elected dominates the thoughts of the President, that the entire policy of his administration focuses on this point, that his slightest declarations are subordinated to this end, that above all, as the moment of crisis nears, the interest of the State becomes more and more incidental to him and re-election becomes his principal interest.

By allowing re-election of the President, the Americans introduced intrigue and corruption [v: a new element] into government.>

≠That is still not the most frightening result of the system of re-election. Certain physicians believe that when each man comes into the world, he already has the seed of the illness that one day will kill him. This remark may be applied to government.≠

Each government . . .

[v. ] Hervé de Tocqueville: “Isn’t Alexis drawing too excited a picture there, relative to what precedes? He tried hard in several places to show us that the President has only limited means at his disposal. Here he exalts his strength and his immense resources. Perhaps the imagination of the author has sought to prove too much, for fear of not proving enough” (YTC, CIIIb, 3, p. 16).

[w. ] Cf. Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, particularly books II and VIII.

[x. ] Hervé de Tocqueville:

This locution seems contradictory to what has been said and repeated earlier about the slight power of the President. Isn’t it to be feared that Alexis will be accused of reducing or augmenting this power as his theory requires? Perhaps this chapter has the fault of not coming to a conclusion. It is clear that the author blames re-election, and I believe he is right. What would he want in its place? Four years in office are very few.

Édouard de Tocqueville:

It doesn’t seem to me that there is a contradiction here. They armed the President with great power and took from him the will to make use of it. That is why this power, strong in appearance, is weak in reality.

Everything has its advantages and disadvantages. Here Alexis presents those of the principle of election, without claiming, by doing so, that it must be destroyed (YTC, CIIIb, 3, pp. 17-18).

[y. ] “In my opinion the President of the United States should be chosen for a longer term and not be re-eligible” (YTC, CVh, 1, p. 58).