HKB
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Often appears with: suspensive veto · senate oversight of foreign relations · political legitimacy and consent · forms of government · executive independence
Usually: argument (1) · detachment (1)
“There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.” Alexis de Tocqueville, American Institutions and Their Influence · insight
Tocqueville argues that in the U.S. republican system the executive must be answerable to the people’s will, with checks like the Senate’s oversight and the president’s suspensive veto guarding independence.
own sphere. It was indispensable to the maintenance of the republican form of government that the representatives of the executive power should be subject to the will of the nation. The president is an elective magistrate. His honor, his property, his liberty, and his life, are the securities which the people has for the temperate use of his power. But in the exercise of his authority he cannot be said to be perfect…