Behold 'the obsequious instruments of his pleasure' [View all]

By Sid Schwab / Herald Columnist

Today’s lesson is from the Federalist Papers. Open your textbooks to The Federalist No. 76 (National Archive: tinyurl.com/4fed76). Quilled by the recently resurrected Alexander Hamilton, it includes the following:

“It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature. … He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than … being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure. …”

That, in a florid nutshell, is the rationale for requiring the Senate to investigate, then approve or deny a president’s choices for positions of power. Mr. Hamilton must have had exactly the narcissistic, vengeful, self-promoting Trump in mind. (Wrongly, he presumed a human capability of shame.) Not alone among his colleagues, idiocratic Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., believes Trump should be allowed anyone he chooses, without pesky, Constitution-mandated interference (HuffPost: tinyurl.com/badcoach4u).

Aware of human imperfections, the Founders almost had it right. But they seem to have assumed that, in aggregate, senators would not suffer the infirmities we see in Trump. That, tasked with evaluating obviously unqualified and dangerous nominees, senators would place duty to protect and defend the Constitution above all else. In their defense, Our Fathers were surrounded by and were themselves men of good intention, having risked much to create a new nation. If they foresaw a sociopathic individual like Trump as president, they could not have imagined a Senate majority of them.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/schwab-behold-the-obsequious-instruments-of-his-pleasure/