2009-01-17

Tocqueville and Schlesinger

I was looking at the history of people's ideas about the USA's imperial presidency and, as often happens when looking at early US history, people quoted Thomas Jefferson.
For example, when writing of Richard Nixon's presidency:
"The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come," Jefferson wrote Madison six weeks before Washington's first inauguration. "The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period." On the eve of the second centennial of independence, Jefferson's prophecy appears almost on the verge of fulfillment. — Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, “The Runaway Presidency”, The Atlantic Monthly, November 1973.
Schlesinger seems to be an admirer of Alexis de Tocqueville, because I think the source of the Jefferson quote about the tyranny of executive power was not Jefferson himself, but taken from Tocqueville's influential De la d̩mocratie en Am̩rique (On democracy in America) Рpublished in two volumes in 1835 and 1840. I think Schlesinger had used, without attribution, a common translation of Tocqueville by Henry Reeve as revised by Frances Bowen. The quote from Jefferson used by Schlesinger seems to be taken from the Bowen revision:
Jefferson also said: “The executive power in our Government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the Legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.” I am glad to cite the opinion of Jefferson upon this subject rather than that of another, because I consider him to be the most powerful advocate democracy has ever had.
The original letter from Jefferson to Madison reads:
The executive in our governments is not the sole, it is scarcely the principal object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislatures is the most formidable dread at present, and will be for long years. That of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period. — Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison (15 March 1789)
Tocqueville translated Jefferson's letter into French, and I think Reeve took the French translation and turned it back into English. That is, I think Reeve did not use the original sources of Tocqueville's quotes (as Reeve produced the translation in London, perhaps he did not have access to copies of original sources), and Tocqueville himself wrote to his friend Reeve in London saying that he thought Reeve had put too much of Reeve into the translation. Bowen's revisions were minor, they were not a rewrite.

Schlesinger's book The Imperial Presidency (1973) expanded the content of “The Runaway Presidency”. History repeats itself, and there have been similar worries about the presidency of GW Bush – The Imperial Presidency was reprinted in 2004 with a new introduction by Schlesinger. After Bill Clinton's scary journey, chased by an obsessive prosecutor, the presidency seemed less imperial, but 9/11 happened, and in the new introduction Schlesinger quoted a classic French author:
“It is chiefly in its foreign relations,” Alexis de Tocqueville noted earlier on, “that the executive power of a nation finds occasion to exert its skill and its strength. If the existence of the American Union were perpetually threatened, if its chief interests were in daily connection with those of other powerful nations, the executive would assume an increased importance.”
When he quoted Tocqueville explicitly about foreign relations, Schlesinger added American to the Union (to save confusion with Union versus Confederate?) and he omitted the final part of the last sentence in Bowen “[an increased importance] in proportion to the measures expected of it, and to those which it would execute.”
Though Schlesinger may have been right about the imperial presidency, his scholarship was less than stellar where some history was concerned – but then we are only human.

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