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Article II Section 1
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The presidential oath is a remarkably simple one, wholly appropriate to a republican society. In taking the oath of office for the first time on April 30, 1789, George Washington added the words ''So help me, God'' to his oath, a tradition that has been continued by nearly every subsequent president.
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Americans have grumbled about the imperfections of the electoral college system from the day when it was first debated in the Constitutional Convention up to the present, but for the most part, it has managed to produce victors in the presidential contests whose legitimacy as duly elected chief executives has no been challenged. There have been exceptions: the election of John Quincy Adams, decided by the House of Representatives in 1824; the election of a ''minority'' Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, which led to the secession of the Southern states; the disputed 1876 presidential election between Samual Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes, in the final days of Reconstruction; and the contested election of George W. Bush in 2000, ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. Each of these cases has provoked criticism of the electoral college system, but up to this point neither Congress nor the American people have moved to the obvious alternative: direct popular election of the president.
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Opinions about the length of the president's term varied widely, with proposals ranging from a minimum of two years to a term pf ''during good behavior'' -- or effectively, for life. The delegates also disagreed about whether the president should be eligible for reelection. The decision on a four-year term seemed to satisfy most delegates and, by avoiding mentioning anything about the president's eligibility for reelection, the framers left the question of how any terms a president should serve up to the voters. George Washington's decision to serve only two terms in office set a precedent that lasted until the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won election to the presidency four times, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. In 1951 Congress passed, and the states ratified, the Twenty-second Amendment, limiting presidents to two terms.
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Although Congress is given responsibility for setting the president salary, it may not increase or decrease his salary during his term of service, a provision designed to render the president independent of the Congress's will.
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The decision to require that a president be a ''natural born Citizen'' of the United Stats was made in the Convention with little discussion and probably with little thought. Indeed, eight of the delegates to the Convention had themselves been born outside British North America (all were born in the British Isles and would in any case have been eligible to serve as president because they were citizens of the United States at ht time of the adoption of the Constitution). In an age in which America's economy, culture, and politics are increasingly shaped by recent immigrants, this particular constitutional provision seems a good candidate for amendment.
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Although initially designed The newly created political party system functioned in away that caused slates of presidential electors to be pledged in advance to vote for particular candidates, with the result being that American voters,whose number were expanding as the number of citizens eligible to vote expanded, were now casting their vote, not on the basis of the identity of the individual electors, but on the basis of the identity of the of the individual electors, bit on the merits of the candidates themselves. The invention of political -- a development occurring wholly outside America's constitutional system -- fundamentally changed the way the Constitution operated, transforming it from a ''republican'' but elitist political system into a truly democratic one.
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The opening words of Article II, Section 1, are both remarkably simple and maddeningly vague: ''The executive Power shall be vested on a President of the United States of America''.'' While other sections of Article II provide some specificity on the nature and extent of presidential power, for the most part the language of Article II relating to executive power is far less specific than that of Article I defining congressional power.
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The next part of Article II, Section 1 reflects the torment the Convention delegates experienced as they wrestled with the question of how to give the president sufficient power without giving him excessive power, as well as how to free him from excessive dependence on the legislature while at the same time assuring that he did not become, in their terms, an ''elective monarch.'' While one would think that the best way to do this would be to have the president elected by and answerable to the people of the nation at large, the vast majority of delegates feared that the American people were simply too provincial -- too ignorant of the merits of possible presidential candidates across a land as vast as that of the thirteen states of which America was then comprised -- to make a wise choice. For that reason, for most of the Convention the delegates inclined toward election of the president by Congress, the House of Representatives. But this method ran the risk of violating the principles of separation of powers by making the president unduly dependent upon the Congress for his election.For n=much of the summer of 1787, the delegates argued unproductively about the various alternatives for electing the president, and finally, in the tortured language of Article II, section 1, they called for the creation of an electoral college: a groiup of independent electors, selected in each of the states ''in such a Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,'' who would then cast their ballots for a president and vice president.`
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This provision defines the president's most important duty: to succeed the president in case of his death, disability, or removal from office. The framers left the line of succession in the event of the vice president's death, disability, resignation, or removal up to Congress. The Twenty-fifth Amendment, adopted in 1967, provided a means by which a president could select, with the confirmation of a majority of members of Congress, another vice president.
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