258
PARTISAN REVIEW
the long-honored assumption in classical republicanism that the legislative
branch must be supreme to check monarchial tendencies. Yet Hamilton
does not specifY what role the president is to perform other than to assure
that the laws are well executed and administered.
For a theory of presidential leadership, one must turn to John Adams's
three volume
Defellse
of America's new state constitutions. Unlike
Jefferson, who believed that once government diminishes its domain, so–
cial harmony develops, Adams saw social conflict as inevitable, a reflection
of sinful human nature. In Adams's analysis, even Machiavelli emerges as a
utopian in his assumption that appeals to civic virtue will overcome fac–
tional rivalry. Adams looked to the executive to mediate class conflict.
Like the
Federalist
authors, he insisted that without controls classes will
"vex and oppress" one another. Rather than defer to the superior classes,
the founders, suspicious of a corrupt and idle aristocracy, believed the
powerless must be protected from exploitation. In the Senate, Adams
would isolate elites, with their "avarice and ardent ambition" as well as
superior abilities, so that simpler representatives in the House would not
be "eaten alive," as aristocracies would "swallow up" their opponents.
The first duty of political leadership was to mitigate class predation. Even
Hamilton, more than Jefferson, distrusted the "spirit of enterprise" as in–
sufficiently prudent to serve the public good unless disciplined and di–
rected by government. Capitalism may generate money but commerce
corrupts morals. TR denounced the "malefactors of wealth," FOR chas–
tized America's "resplendent economic autocracy," and Lincoln placed
"the man before the dollars." None of these presidents believed that the
market alone would "supply" or democracy itself deliver what American
needed most - leadership.
Today, the two ideas being advanced in democratic theory neglect
leadership in order to exhort citizen participation or experiment with lit–
erary representation. Collective involvement by "strong" citizens and re–
descriptive narration by Paris-struck scholars seem to exhaust the possi–
bilities of politics. Is democratic leadership a contradiction? It should be
remembered that Whitman extolled Lincoln for giving us a nobility born
of democracy, and he sensed that with the assassination the sky darkened
over the Republic ("0 powerful western fallen star!"). "It is natural to
believe in great men," wrote Emerson, who called them not heroes but
"representatives," exceptional writers and political figures, even the supe–
rior "genius," whose achievements are recognized not because they sur–
pass but rather because they reflect and incarnate human inspiration. "A
great man," advised Santayana, "need not be virtuous, nor his opinions
right, but he must have a firm mind, a distinctive, luminous character; if
he is to dominate things, something must be dominant in him. We feel
