Since the Constitution has been ratified, there has been substantial debate over the role of the presidency, and more specifically about the amount of prerogative the executive should have. Both Hamilton and Wilson have offered their own different visions of the presidency, and these views have been debated by political scientists and presidents ever since. Various presidents have felt it more appropriate to prescribe to one vision or the other, as the times needed. This essay will explore both visions of the presidency.

Hamilton envisioned the presidency as an office of nobility, virtue, and wisdom. He saw the executive in much the same way that Plato saw the statesman -- as someone with ethical ambition who would direct the nation to greatness.  Hamilton realized that the republic would need an outlet for the ambitions of noble men. Like Machiavelli, Hamilton recognized that republics need the leadership of those few who want to be celebrated and famous because of their political virtue and wisdom. He thought that the executive would be such a noble statesman, and he did not want to bind this statesman with laws that tend to be inflexible. Instead, Hamilton wanted the executive to be able to transcend the prevalent ideas of morality giving him an opportunity to win esteem by leading the nation to greatness.

Therefore, Hamilton envisioned an executive with substantial autonomy and prerogative. This is why Hamilton wanted an electoral college to elect a president who would not be responsible to any constituency in society. In the electoral college, the president would be elected from other notables -- notables who understood the subtle nuances of foreign diplomacy and could best judge who amongst them would be the most virtuous leader. Therefore, the executive would not be tied down to public opinion: ";The process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.";(1) The executive would be free to act in the best interest of the public, without having to constantly win the public";s approval.

Hamilton felt that there would always be a need for an executive who could act decisively and quickly especially in regard to foreign politics and crises management. Like Locke, Hamilton recognized that often legislature could be too slow in decision making for the international arena. In the international sphere, unknown circumstances always arise and only the executive can deal with them quickly and efficiently: "As a rule, one man of discernment is better fitted to analyze and estimate the peculiar qualities adapted to particular offices that a body of men of equal or superior discernment."  He argued that the Constitution does provide for executive prerogative, and it does give the president authority. As Bessette and Tulis wrote, "The Constitution ... empowers [the president] and assigns broad responsibility to the executive branch of government "(2) This is consistent with Hamilton's;s view of the executive as one who has autonomy and is empowered by the Constitution to act in the best interest of the nation.

Unlike Hamilton, Wilson wanted the executive to derive his power from the public. The presidency, he argued, is determined by popularity after all, and therefore the president should be a slave to public opinion. As noted by Ceaser in ";Presidential Selection,"; the way we elect the president has changed since Hamilton's;s days: ";... the presidential campaign as we know it today is a totally extra-Constitutional development, having ";escaped"; from the regulation intended by the founders.";  Wilson argued that if the president wants to act on prerogative, it is his duty to mobilize public opinion for social welfare. He felt that the executive is the spokesman for the real sentiment of the people, and as such he should both inform the nation, and represent them in his statements of policy. In Wilson's;s vision of the presidency, the president is called on to be a unifier of different factions of the country: ";He is the only voice in national affairs.";(3) Wilson felt that keeping the executive a slave to public opinion would prevent the executive from becoming tyrannical. Since the days of Hamilton, the presidency has become more of a ";popular leadership"; as Wilson had intended.

A president who acted more Hamiltonian than Wilsonian was, ironically, Hamilton's;s sworn opponent Thomas Jefferson. When Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory, he used executive prerogative, as there was no constitutional provision to hold or buy foreign territory. He recognized this: ";The Executive in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so much advances the good of their country, have done an act beyond the Constitution.";  Jefferson realized during his presidency that often previously unexpected circumstances will inevitably arise, and during these times, an executive must act in the best interest of the country, even if there is no legislature dictating his course of action. Even later, Jefferson wrote: ";A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest."; (4)

But to say that Jefferson adhered to a strictly Hamiltonian view of the presidency is misleading. Jefferson did want legislation as much as possible to direct presidential policy. In this way, Jefferson had more of a Madisonian view of the presidency. Madison wanted the executive to derive his power from the legislature. He had a more narrow view of the executive, where the executive has the power to execute law, but not to initiate it. His executive would improve laws and provide a effecting correction for those laws, but he would not replace legislature. Jefferson wanted the executive position to be such. However, during his presidency, he did take prerogative where there was no legislation.

Lincoln is an example of a Hamiltonian president who acted with much prerogative, and who arguably even over stepped the boundaries of the Constitution in order to maintain the Union. When he emancipated all slaves, he infringed upon property rights that the Constitution outlines. He argued though that his power was derived from the Constitution, in that he was acting to preserve the Constitution: ";Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb.";  He felt that in this national emergency, he was justified to use his national emergency powers.

Lincoln further used his executive prerogative to suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus, which enabled him to arrest 17,000 civilians who sympathized with the South, and imprison them without trial. In Article I, Section 9, the Constitution does provide that the Writ of Habeas Corpus can be suspended in cases of rebellion or invasion. However, because Article I discusses Congress and not the presidency, it can be implied that only Congress is allowed to suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus. Lincoln, however, justified himself by saying that Congress was not convened at the time, and again claimed that it was a national emergency and that he merely using his emergency powers. He felt that in the crisis of the Civil War, it was more his duty to uphold the spirit of the Constitution, than the actual letter.

Theodore Roosevelt had a more Wilsonian vision of the presidency. He was an immensely popular president, and this is consistent with the Wilsonian vision.  He explicitly states that ";every executive officer ... [is] a steward of the people.";(5) Roosevelt felt that to be consistent with the ideals of democracy, the president ought to serve the plain people, and he felt that his presidency should adhere to the limitations of the Constitution and Congress. Roosevelt did admit that he broadly interpreted his executive authority, but that he never did anything that law forbade him to do; therefore, unlike Madison, he did not feel that he had to take initiative from the legislature.

Unlike Roosevelt, Taft was a Madisonian president -- he had neither a Hamiltonian nor a Wilsonian vision of the presidency. He felt, like Madison, that the president cannot exercise power unless he is specified to do so by the Constitution. He maintained that in the past, when presidents have exercised extra-Constitutional power, they fortunately have made good decisions and have upheld the spirit of the Constitution. But he warns that it is possible for a president, in enforcing executive prerogative to make ungrounded, tyrannical, unwise policy, and in order to ensure that does not happen, he felt that the president should only adhere to the powers the Constitution specifies. Taft maintains that the Constitution already gives the President many choices and great power, and these are the only powers that the President ought to exercise.

Franklin D. Roosevelt had a more Hamiltonian vision of the presidency. During W.W.II, FDR felt that a provision of the Emergency Price Control Act was impeding the war effort, and he threatened Congress that if they did not repeal the act,  he would effectively ignore it. He claimed that the Constitution enabled him to do so because the president may take ";measures necessary to avert disaster which would interfere with the winning of the war.";   FDR then insisted that after the war was over, he would not take such bold prerogative. Like Lincoln, FDR maintains that he is upholding the spirit of the Constitution, if not the letter, during a national emergency.

Nixon too had a more Hamiltonian vision of the presidency. He felt that the President is entirely above the law: ";When the President does it, that means it's;s not illegal.";  He felt, like Lincoln, that in crisis conditions (like war) the president has ";certain extraordinary powers which would make acts that would otherwise be unlawful, lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the nation and the Constitution.";(6) Frost argues, however, that the situation Nixon faced could not be considered a national emergency in the same way that the Civil War could. As Bessette and Tulis also noted, Nixon's;s use of prerogative has led to a public who is suspicious and critical of the president. They asserted that in the post-Vietnam and Watergate era, ";perceived abuses of the presidential power led some scholars to reject the predominant political approaches to the study of the presidency because of their apparent lack of standards to limit presidential conduct and their implicit encouragement of executive branch aggrandizement.";(7) Thus, in the modern times, the president is called on to mobilize public opinion, whether he uses prerogative or not.

Mansfield outlined this tension between the two visions of the presidency in his essay ";The Ambivalence of Executive Power."; In the essay, he states that ";the Constitution itself reflects a struggle between two conceptions of executive power which may be identified with the two discussed here: a weak executive resulting from the notion that the people are represented in the legislature [a Wilsonian-like president], and a strong executive from the notion that they are embodied in the executive [a Hamiltonian-like president].";  Mansfield thought that in today's;s world, the perfect executive would be one who embodies both the Hamiltonian vision and the Wilsonian vision. In other words, the executive would "duck out of sight when necessary, and leap into view when necessary."(8) He would embody both weakness and strength when necessary.

In conclusion, the US Presidency has been animated by both the Hamiltonian and Wilsonian vision of the presidency, and sometimes by the Madisonian vision of the presidency. In these previous examples, Lincoln, Nixon, Jefferson, and F.D. Roosevelt all adhered to a more Hamiltonian vision, as they all used executive prerogative in situations of national emergency. Theodore Roosevelt is an example of a president who adhered to a more Wilsonian vision, as he sought to mobilize public opinion for the general welfare. And finally, Taft is an example of neither vision, instead he adheres to a more Madisonian vision of the presidency, where he derived all his power from legislation. But, it is important to note, that modern presidents often use both executive prerogative and charismatic leadership to implement policy, and they combine both the Hamiltonian and the Wilsonian vision of the presidency.