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Often appears with: two-thirds majority for veto override · senate oversight of treaties · senate oversight of foreign relations · presidential re-election term · president elective and reelectable · political legitimacy and consent · monarchy and royal succession · forms of government · executive independence · assemblies, councils, and senates
Usually: detachment (2) · argument (1) · description (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 describes the presidency as dependent on the people’s majority yet strong enough to act, emphasizing Senate oversight in appointments and foreign relations, plus the president’s suspensive veto.
the right of annulling g certain acts of the President; but it cannot compel him to take any steps, nor does it participate in the exercise of the executive power. The action of the legislature on the executive power may be direct; and we have just shown that the Americans carefully obviated this influence; but it may, on the other hand, be indirect. Public assemblies which have the power of depriving an officer of …
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…