Andrew Trees

Each day seems to bring a new reason for Republican leaders to contemplate how they might derail Donald Trump at the GOP convention, along with hand-wringing over whether it would be appropriate to violate the will of the people — or at least the will of most Republican primary voters. But there is one group that would wholeheartedly support party officials: the Founding Fathers.

The Founders were far more worried about a demagogue seizing power than they were about following the voice of the people. Most important, they clearly intended the election of the president to be well-insulated from a direct expression of the popular will. That is why we have the Electoral College, which was designed to temper the sometimes clamorous voice of the people.

Although this has led several times to candidates winning the popular vote but losing the election, most recently in the case of Al Gore in 2000, the Founders would not necessarily have had a problem with such a result. They were far more worried about too much democracy than they were about too little democracy.

The reason for this was simple: The Founders did not entirely trust the people, who were too likely to be ruled by their passions, rather than guided by their reason. As James Madison wrote, “It is a misfortune, inseparable from human affairs, that public measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good; and that this spirit is more apt to be diminished than promoted by those occasions which require an unusual exercise of it.”

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No one would argue that “spirit of moderation” has presided over the Republican nomination contest. Much as Madison and the other Founders feared, passion instead of reason is the driving force this election cycle, as the recent violence at political rallies has amply confirmed.

The figure whom the Founders most feared was the demagogue, whose inflammatory rhetoric stirred the very passions that the Founders hoped to control — a fairly apt description of Trump’s campaign to date. That is one of the main reasons the Constitution contains so many roadblocks to the direct expression of the people’s will. Much of Madison’s Federalist No. 10 is an outline for how the new republic would control demagogues. Enlarging the size of the nation would help “to refine and enlarge the public views” and make it more difficult for “men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs” to use “intrigue (to) betray the interests of the people,” he wrote.

In other words, many of the checks and balances built into the Constitution were put there precisely so that people such as Trump would not be able to win an election. Actually, the Founders feared men such as Patrick Henry, with his impassioned and persuasive oratory, although I believe they'd have found Henry a virtual Pericles compared with The Donald.

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The role of political parties in all of this complicates matters somewhat but would not have changed their overall view. The Founders almost universally hated political parties and were deeply distressed when the new republic quickly gave rise to protoparties (true political parties in the way that we think about them did not exist until well into the 19th century). As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.” For the Founders, the problem with a political party was that it went directly against the kind of dispassionate reason they hoped would guide all political debates by requiring men to hew to the party line, regardless of their conscience.

What would the Founders have thought of party leaders who undermined their own nominating process to keep a man such as Trump from winning? They'd likely have congratulated them for doing exactly what wise statesmen are supposed to do — dampening the passions and allowing reason to rule.

The Founders found many ways to bridle the voice of the people to avoid what they saw as the “excesses of democracy,” particularly when it came to the office of the presidency. They'd undoubtedly find fault with this election season, but not with Republicans for subverting their own nominating process.

Andrew Trees is an adjunct professor of history at Carthage College and author ofThe Founding Fathers & the Politics of Character.

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