President Donald Trump signs the first veto of his presidency in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, March 15, 2019. Source: AP Images

All the Presidents’ Vetoes

A Brief History of Saying No to Legislation

04.05.19

To veto or not to veto? That was the question President George Washington wrestled with on this day in 1792.

In honor of that decision, and the precedent it set for subsequent leaders, this week BackStory looks at presidential vetoes through two periods in American history. First, Joanne unpacks Washington’s complicated feelings about his first – and only – veto. Then, Brian speaks with historian Jeffrey Engel about how President Trump’s recent use of the veto pen fits into the big picture of presidents saying ‘thanks, but no thanks.’

executive power; presidential veto

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The First Veto

Historian Lindsay Chervinsky talks to Joanne about George Washington’s decision to use the president’s veto power for the first time in American history and how his use of the veto set a lasting precedent.

Music:

Grapefruit by Podington Bear

George Washington; executive power; legislative veto; precedent

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Speaker 1: Major funding for Backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

Speaker 2: From Virginia Humanities, this is Backstory.

Brian Balogh: Welcome to Backstory, the show that explains the history behind today’s headlines. I’m Brian Balogh.

Joanne Freeman: And I’m Joanne Freeman. If you’re new to the podcast, we’re all historians, and along with Ed Ayers and Nathan Connolly, each week we explore a different aspect of American History.

Brian Balogh: I’ll bet you didn’t know that exactly 227 years ago on April 5, 1792, George Washington issued the first veto in American history. Washington might’ve been the first president to use a veto, but he certainly wasn’t the last. Later, we’ll learn which president used the power more than any other, and we’ll discuss President Trump, who issued his first veto a few weeks ago. So today on the show we explore presidential vetoes throughout American history.

Joanne Freeman: Today we think of the President’s ability to veto legislation as part of a kind of perpetual power play, a tug of war between the executive and legislative branches. But during his presidency, which of course was the first presidency, George Washington wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to veto legislation. That is, until a controversial bill came across his desk.

Lindsay C.: Not only was the bill messy, it was very unclear and struck people as sort of secretive. It seemed to favor the Northern states a little bit more, and so that was obviously very problematic.

Joanne Freeman: That’s historian Lindsay Chervinsky describing the first vetoed piece of legislation in American history. The bill proposed a formula to calculate how many House Representatives were to be assigned to each state, but before Washington passed judgment on the bill, he consulted with his Cabinet.

Lindsay C.: Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, and Secretary of War, Henry Knox favored the bill. And Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, and Attorney General, Edmund Randolph opposed the bill. So Washington very interestingly asked them all for written opinions about what he should do in the first week of April before issuing the veto. And I say interestingly because he had convened a Cabinet meeting by this point. The first Cabinet meeting took place on November 26, 1791. So there was precedent for meeting in person, and instead, he decided to request written opinions even though they were all in town. Which I think says a lot about how he wanted to contemplate their decisions slowly and make a decision in his own time, but also if he was going to issue a veto, that was going to be a huge precedent that he was setting. Maybe, I mean we don’t know because he didn’t write this down, he often didn’t write down his thought process, but maybe he wanted to make sure he had written evidence of support for a veto if he decided to go that route.

Joanne Freeman: Which would be a very savvy political thing to do if you’re George Washington.

Lindsay C.: Yes, yes, and he never published any of those types of opinions or reports, but I do think it was definitely the back of his mind. He was way more politically savvy than people give him credit for.

Joanne Freeman: Jefferson really seized hold of this. What’s your sense of why he grabbed hold of this as being so important?

Lindsay C.: Well I think there were a couple of reasons. I think that he felt that the Constitution actually was much more explicit than people were giving it credit for, and so he felt that the Constitution was very explicit and that you needed to have this strict reading of the Constitution. So I think it’s part of a broader, sort of ideological view of the way the Constitution needs to be read. I think part of it is he also felt like it really advantaged states like Massachusetts and Vermont, and some states that-

Joanne Freeman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). That was gonna be my question, is he’s a Southerner, so some part of him was responding like a Southerner.

Lindsay C.: Absolutely. Then I think he also realized that Washington was uncomfortable with the bill, but he was very worried about appearing to favor the Southern states, especially Virginia. He didn’t want to appear to be giving any sort of favoritism. So Washington needed all of the ammunition he could possibly get to come up with a really solid reason to use the veto. Lastly, I think that Jefferson recognized the importance of Washington’s precedent, and the veto was a really important part of the executive branch, and that at some point it needed to be used before Washington left office. By this point in 1792, Jefferson is already thinking about when he’s going to retire, and he doesn’t end up doing so for awhile. But he might have been thinking in his mind, “If I’m gonna leave office soon, I want to make sure he uses it before I leave.” Of course I’m speculating on that because he didn’t write that down, but if we look at the timeline of when he starts talking about retirement, it’s in 1792. So that might have also been at the back of his mind.

Joanne Freeman: You know, as you were just suggesting there, one of the really interesting things about this entire period, but particularly this first term, is that almost everything Washington does sets a precedent, because there is no such thing as a president until there is one in the Constitution based on this new Constitution that’s gone into effect. So he’s constantly setting precedents, and so in that sense, and as you just suggested about Jefferson, there’s a constitutional interpretive component here, where people understand that it isn’t just about this one bill, but it’s about something much broader, about the Constitution. And it’s also about something much broader, meaning that some kind of precedent has to be set, and to me, that’s really intriguing, this idea that if he doesn’t do it, other presidents who follow him might be unwilling to do it. I assume because if the great Washington did not use the veto, who else has a right to use a veto? So there’s a reason for it that actually isn’t really related to the bill itself.

Lindsay C.: Exactly, exactly. I always stress to students and to other people when I’m talking about this period that the Constitution itself is actually pretty brief, and so few of the details are actually fleshed out, especially in Article II, which deals with the presidency. And all of those fuzzy details about what day-to-day governing would look like, Washington really had to figure out, and he knew how much pressure was on every single decision, and at one point mentioned to a friend that he felt before going to office like he was a prisoner going to the site of execution, because there was just so much pressure. And if he failed, the government would fail. I really believe that, and I think that he really believed it. So it’s not just a matter of trying to make the best decision, it’s making the best decision that’s going to guide every single person that comes after you.

Joanne Freeman: And in that same context, a veto, a presidential veto, is a dramatic act. It’s a blunt assertion of executive power.

Lindsay C.: Yes, absolutely. You know, even the concept of, “How do you go about doing that,” was unknown. So once he decides that, “Okay. I think I favor this, but I’m really worried about how it’s going to look,” he asks Jefferson and Randolph to go meet with Madison. What is interesting, because at this point he isn’t as close with Madison as he had been in 1789 and 1790.

Joanne Freeman: For our listeners, Madison is in The House.

Lindsay C.: Yes. James Madison is in The House. He’s sort of the unspoken leader of what is becoming this nascent opposition movement, and he and Washington had really sort of broken their relationship on a lot of different issues where they really felt differently about much of Hamilton’s legislation. So Madison and Washington really weren’t as close, and yet he asked Jefferson and Randolph to go meet with Madison, and if Madison agreed with their interpretation, he said, “I’m willing to do the veto. Can you please work with Madison to draw up basically an article of veto?” Because it had never been done before, so he didn’t even know what he was supposed to say. He didn’t even know how he was supposed to veto this bill, and so they had to come up with the statement to deliver to Congress from scratch.

Joanne Freeman: So what does Washington do? How does he make that final decision? What do you know about the end result of this first veto?

Lindsay C.: Jefferson and Randolph go to Madison. Madison obviously agrees with them. I’m not sure that there was really any doubt in any of their minds that that was going to happen, and they draw up this veto document. Washington sends it to Congress. In the veto document he explains why he has a problem with this bill, what the issues are, and based on those recommendations, Congress passes new legislation on April 14. So less than 10 days later, they pass new legislation, which is crazy if you think about the speed of how Congress usually works. They passed the new bill, and by and large it seems like there wasn’t much public blowback about it because there had been so much conflict initially about how the first census should be done. So there was so many people that were already willing to support the bill, and then once he came out and said, “I really think this is how it should be done,” they immediately adopted those recommendations and just moved forward.

Joanne Freeman: But you know, it’s striking, because a presidential veto in a sense is a dramatic act, right? It’s an assertion of power, a really clear assertion of power. And it sounds like in the case of this first one, that wasn’t an enormous part of what was going on in the discussion.

Lindsay C.: That’s right, and I think part of that is how the veto was initially conceived of, and a lot of that goes back to how they initially conceived of the different branches. So I think there was a lot of concern that the legislature was going to be way too powerful. That was certainly Madison’s biggest concern, and so the veto was not so much given to assert presidential authority so much as to protect the independence of the executive branch and to protect the president from the legislature. So the idea was not so much that it was going to claim land or jurisdiction or power, but to keep the legislature off of the president’s front grass so to speak.

Lindsay C.: I think that they were still thinking of the veto in that context, and so in this sense, it didn’t seem like this huge assertion of presidential authority, it just seemed like Washington was saying, “Hey. I don’t think you did this right. Try again.” Congress was very split on this bill. It barely passed. So when Washington vetoed it, he wasn’t saying, “You guys can’t do this.” He was just saying, “I think this is a better way that’s more constitutional and more fair,” and because so many people already thought that, it was pretty easy to use Washington’s authority to get enough other people to hop over the fence and agree with them, and so they were able to pass the new bill really easily.

Joanne Freeman: So it wasn’t the equivalent of a fist on the table, right? Washington wasn’t banging his fist on the table and saying, “No. You shall not do that.” But really, as you’re suggestion, he was acting as a check and saying, “I don’t know if this is fair. Do it again.”

Lindsay C.: Yeah. It was more like red pen margin edits than an F, a failing of an exam. It’s more like, “Here’s some suggestions to make it better. Please redo and turn in again.”

Joanne Freeman: Beyond the moment when the decision is made, do you think there’s a broader significance for this veto? I mean is it setting broader precedents that play out in other ways down the road?

Lindsay C.: I think so. I think there are a couple. I mean the fact that a veto was used at all, I think Jefferson’s concern about had Washington not used it, I think that was very, very smart. And I think that there are certain ceremonial aspects of the government that have evolved and changed a lot in the last 200 so years, and it’s possible that the veto could have become one of those little things that we now thing is quaint if Washington hadn’t used it. So I think putting it on the table as an option was really, really important.

Joanne Freeman: So in a sense when you look at this moment and when you look at this particular period in government generally, I think part of what we’re saying here is it’s really easy to underestimate the significance of some of what’s going on in this period because things look less institutionalized, because they look more, in a sense, informal and in formation. Here’s an example of something that ends up being an important precedent, but it’s very easy to overlook it because it just seems like in this sort of weird, fluid period, something that happened.

Lindsay C.: Actually it’s one of the things that I find the most fascinating about the early republic, is that when we’re looking at politics and we’re looking at the government, because it was so small and so much had yet to be decided, individuals had such tremendous impact, in a way that I don’t think has ever really been rivaled.

Joanne Freeman: Lindsay Chervinsky is a historian at The White House Historical Association.

To Veto Or Not To Veto

In mid-March, President Donald Trump issued his first veto over the issue of a border wall with Mexico. Jeffrey Engel, Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, helps Brian situate the move within the broader history of presidential vetoes, from FDR to Ronald Reagan.

Border Wall; Donald Trump; FDR; Ronald Reagan; legislative veto

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Brian Balogh: Washington’s first presidential veto created a powerful weapon in the Commander in Chief’s armory, and it’s one that has been in the news lately, because President Trump just issued his first presidential veto.

Joanne Freeman: Yes indeed, Brian, and it’s all part of the push and pull surrounding funding for the border wall.

Brian Balogh: I wanted to know where President Trump’s veto fits into the big picture of presidential vetoes throughout the 20th century and beyond, so I got in touch with Jeffrey Engel. He’s Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. I started by asking Jeff what presidents have to consider as the wrestle with the question to veto or not to veto.

Jeffrey Engel: There’s actually I think two fundamental tracks that you have to think of, and then other questions spin off from there. The first is the question of, “Do I not like this legislation because I believe it violates the Constitution, or because I don’t like the politics?” And we’ve seen lots of cases, to be honest more in the 19th century but some in the 20th, in which the president says, “I don’t believe that Congress is reading the Constitution correctly, and I have the authority to make them think about it again or really decide if they want to do this.” That’s sort of level A, and that’s rare.

Jeffrey Engel: Level B, question B is, “Am I doing this for political reasons as to say I disagree with the policy?” Then it gets really tricky, because the president at that point has to go through essentially a logic chain where he asks him or herself, “If I say no to this, will it get overwritten? Is my congressional support strong enough to back me? Of course, if it’s strong enough to back me, why do they send me this legislation in the first place?” I think frankly the president ultimately has to decide why Congress is sending him or her something that could be veto able, because one of the things that’s really fascinating is that we focus on the big cases, the exciting constitutional dramas where the president and the Congress are pitted against each other over big ideals.

Jeffrey Engel: The truth is the majority of vetoes in the 20th century are essentially Congress passing something they really don’t want to, and they know the president will veto. That way they can go to their constituents and say, “Hey, what … We did our part.” If that’s the case and the president would know that, he can pocket veto it or he can just decide that he wants to reject it out of hand and everybody walks away happy.

Brian Balogh: So tell us what some of the most important, the most notable, or most notorious presidential vetoes have been over the last century.

Jeffrey Engel: Some of the most famous cases, for example, are Ronald Reagan’s decision to veto sanctions against the Apartheid led government of South Africa in the mid-1980s, and that was a really interesting and difficult decision and controversy. Because obviously Apartheid was not only unpopular in the United States, it had become in many ways a cause celebre among people in the United States, and the opposition within the United States and the world community. But America in particular was growing on a weekly basis as more and more people realized either A, Apartheid was terrible, or B, I should say Apartheid is terrible because that’s good politics for me, even if I’m not concerned with it.

Jeffrey Engel: Ultimately there builds momentum in Congress for mass sanctions in South Africa beyond even the sanctions that the United States had already imposed. And Ronald Reagan, who frankly was interested in keeping good relations with South Africa for geopolitical reasons, and also I would say had never made African American civil rights one of his … which of course was a group that was concerned with the South Africa issue, he never made African American civil rights one of his primary issues. So he argued that the sanctions that Congress was imposing on South Africa were far too sweeping, far too broad.

Ronald Reagan: And now we’ve reached a critical junction. Many in Congress and some in Europe are clamoring for sweeping sanctions against South Africa. The Prime Minister of Great Britain has denounced punitive sanctions as immoral and utterly repugnant. Well, let me tell you why we believe Mrs. Thatcher is right. The primary victims of an economic boycott of South Africa would be the very people we seek to help. Most of the workers who would lose jobs because of sanctions would be black workers.

Jeffrey Engel: This despite the fact that leaders throughout South Africa, Desmond Tutu, for example, most famously, begged him to impose these sanctions. Recognizing that, yes, we will suffer, but the whole country needs to suffer if we’re going to make the government change. Ultimately Reagan therefore vetoes a sanctions bill in order to say, “I want different kinds of sanctions.” And the fascinating thing about that is that nobody realized that’s what the argument was about in the regular media. That is to say, people in Washington knew that this was a debate in this essence over what type of sanctions we want to have. Throughout the country it was understood as a debate over whether or not Ronald Reagan is a racist, which is to say perhaps he doesn’t care about South Africa and Apartheid. It was a wonderful, from a historian perspective, wonderful example of how the large public broad discussion was completely divorced from the actual policy at hand even though it was one of the biggest policy discussions of the day.

Brian Balogh: And what was the ultimate outcome? Did he get a more tailored sanctions bill?

Jeffrey Engel: No. As a matter of fact, his veto was overwritten, and so consequently Congress got its way on that one. In many ways that allowed everybody to turn around happy again. So Ronald Reagan was able to say on a political level, and more importantly on an international diplomatic level, “Listen. I did my best for what I thought was good policy.”

Brian Balogh: Right, “I went to the mats. What can I do if Congress is gonna override me?”

Jeffrey Engel: This is all I got. You know, and the argument that, “My hands are tied,” doesn’t always sound and resonate well overseas when a president offers that, because the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world. But this is a case where the president can actually point to the Constitution and which line of the Constitution says, “Here is where it says my hands are tied.” So that’s a much more powerful argument for him overseas, and Congress got the sanctions it desired.

Brian Balogh: If you look back, and you don’t have to look back that far, vetoes used to be a lot more common. I think FDR is the world champ. I mean yes, he served four terms, or almost four complete terms, but he’s got hundreds and hundreds of vetoes to his credit.

Jeffrey Engel: Six hundreds, yeah.

Brian Balogh: 600, so what’s the deal there, and if I don’t have my history wrong, he had a Democratic Congress for a lot of the time.

Jeffrey Engel: Exactly. Exactly. I mean [inaudible 00:21:01] We naturally think that the president is going to have more vetoes when the other party controls Congress and therefore they’re butting heads, but as you point out, FDR had a Democratic Congress throughout his entire time in office. What that did in an interesting way was essentially turn the veto into not a way for the president to stop legislation that he didn’t like most of the time, but rather to stop legislation, as I mentioned earlier, that everyone didn’t like. There were numerous instances where the Congress passed, we would consider it to be basically petty resolutions. “This one individual needs compensation,” or that they need to change the name on a post office, something along those lines. Discussion was held with the Congress that, “You know? This will make Congressman Bob happy if we pass this, but we don’t really want it. So the president can veto it, and we’re all happy in the end.”

Brian Balogh: Well, if you step back a little bit, does the use of vetoes or frequent use of vetoes, does it tell us anything about Roosevelt’s attitude towards executive power itself, or as you put it, these are kind of trivial things and it’s just kind of internal face saving measures?

Jeffrey Engel: Roosevelt is fascinating in the regard that you just mentioned, his view of executive power, because he believed, I think, in expansive federal power. In fact, in his initial inauguration during the height of The Depression, he explains very clearly to the public that he is going to ask Congress for legislation to meet the current crisis, The Depression, “But if Congress does not give me what I want, I will ask it then for executive powers. And I will assume executive powers.” Basically if the rest of the world is recognizing in 1933 that some crises are best resolved by having strong men in charge, I’m willing to do that if necessary.

Jeffrey Engel: Throughout his time in office there were many moments where Franklin Roosevelt essentially made the executive decision to move the country in a direction, even as he’s trying to persuade Congress, but before he had actually persuaded it. Sometimes obviously that was pushed back by Congress, most famously of course I think in his plan to pack the court to get more of his allies on the court by expanding the size of The Supreme Court. Then ultimately, I think more importantly, his decision from 1937, ’38 on, to integrate the United States more into the global problems that resulted in World War II and to rearm the country in preparation for that. He did a tremendous amount of executive reach to move the country in that direction despite, if not Congressional opposition, then at least Congressional ambivalence.

Brian Balogh: We know that recent presidents, recent being the last 30 or 40 years, used the veto pen a lot less than presidents in the first half of the 20th century. What’s going on there?

Jeffrey Engel: I think the fundamental reason is because the president is engaged in the discussion process, the formation of legislation, the sausage making if you will, from the beginning. Therefore we see fewer and fewer bills get passed by Congress that the president hasn’t already signaled that he’s going to approve, because he’s been … His team have been [inaudible 00:24:25] negotiators. And connected to that, directly connected to that, is the rise of large omnibus bills. That is to say 75 pieces of legislation within one act that the president’s people, with Congress, have negotiated all 75, and you’re not going to vote on it until you get all 75 approved. So the president may disagree with one, agree with 74, he’s not gonna get it across his desk until the omnibus bill is passed. The days when Congress would essentially pass important legislation to make sure that Mrs. Baker from Smithfield continued to receive her husband’s pension, that doesn’t go through Congress anymore, and so as long as the issues are huge, the chances that the president is going to get a piece of legislation that he dislikes to his desk are increasingly small.

Brian Balogh: Jeff, does the public have an attitude about the use of veto generally, or is it always very much connected to the specific legislation that the president is vetoing?

Jeffrey Engel: You know, I think the public is really quite satisfied with a president using his or her veto pen, because that’s an easily understood constitutional right the president has. That’s I think one of the things that made the recent and ongoing brew ha ha over President Trump’s initial veto, the only one of his administration thus far, such a fascinating political Rorschach test. President Trump wanted a border wall, the Congress would not pass legislation that would give him the border wall he wanted, so he declared that he was going to use funds already appropriate by Congress for purposes not appropriate by Congress through his executive authority.

Brian Balogh: Under his emergency powers.

Jeffrey Engel: Yes.

Brian Balogh: As authorized by congressional legislation, according to Trump.

Jeffrey Engel: According to Trump. Well that’s it, according to Trump. And whether or not you agree with the president or not, the fundamental point is that no president has ever done that before. No president had ever assumed the authority, and there Congress came back and voted against the president’s use of that executive authority. However, not by 2/3 in The Senate. Therefore, President Trump’s use of emergency powers, unprecedented use of emergency powers, stands even though the public looks at Congress and says, “Didn’t Congress just vote against that twice?” And more importantly, didn’t members of the president’s own political party come out strongly against his use of executive authority in this way and then wind up voting in favor of his use of executive authority in this way? Those are the kind of cases when the public watches the tennis ball, if you will, being batted back and forth multiple times and people seeming to play on both sides of the tennis court, if you will, that the public does not like. Because that’s not necessarily a clear use of executive authority, that’s, again to use the phrase, a swampy use of executive authority.

Brian Balogh: So do you think this decision even though Trump won this particular legislative battle, at least for now, do you think this will hurt Trump politically?

Jeffrey Engel: No. I think it’s gonna help Trump politically. In fact, this is a great example, I think, of a president using his veto power for personal political gain in many ways, because President Trump clearly wants to run his 2020 campaign with immigration, and let’s be clear, being extremely strongly against immigration, especially from the Southern parts of the Western hemisphere. He wants that to be the signature issue. If he actually gets what he wants, which is a huge wall across the Southern border, even if Mexico pays for it or not, if he actually gets that, he doesn’t have that to campaign on. So I think the more that he is able to do things that tie up this issue, and more importantly even better for him, if the courts intervene and rule that his action was unconstitutional-

Brian Balogh: That’s where I was headed. It’s almost like a second veto.

Jeffrey Engel: Yes, but it’s a second veto that the president would welcome, I think, politically in this case. So if Trump can not only make the argument that the liberals are making you unsafe on the border, but those darned liberal judges are making you unsafe by exerting their own authority to try to curtail my exertion of authority, as long as that issue is one that he can rail on, I think he’s a happy camper.

Brian Balogh: That was Jeffrey Engel. He directs the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. He’s co-author of the book Impeachment in American History.

Brian Balogh: Joanne, as the Washington whisperer, tell me what our first president would’ve thought about the idea of one of his successors, Franklin D. Roosevelt, vetoing 635 pieces of legislation. 6-3-5, count them.

Joanne Freeman: Wow. Washington was unsure about producing one veto, so 635. I mean, but if you think about the first presidency, I mean Washington as the first president, he was pretty nervous about really doing anything that was a major assertion of power. There hadn’t been a president before, so something that we now take for granted, although maybe not 635 times for granted, but still. You assume that that’s a power of the presidency, and Washington did not necessarily assume that that was something that he would be doing during his presidency. One of the things that I always find really moving is actually Washington’s copy of the Constitution, because when you see it … I think Mount Vernon owns it, and when you look through it, what he does really carefully, and it’s related to this idea of the veto, he goes through and in the margin wherever the president is responsible for something, he wrote, “President.” So he was really, really carefully delineating, “What are the things I’m supposed to do?”

Brian Balogh: Are you sure he wasn’t just rubbing it in? As in, “I’m the president. That would be me, the president.”

Joanne Freeman: No, that would require an exclamation point I think. President. But you know, he really was thinking about power, right? The presidency, that’s the main point of controversy with the presidency is that it’s one person with a potentially enormous amount of power. So how did people respond, Brian, to the 635? I mean were there people screeching about executive power?

Brian Balogh: Well, they certainly charged Roosevelt with that, but I’m not sure that the number of vetoes would be at the top of the list compared to, let’s say, changing the number of justices on the Supreme Court, increasing it to fit your legislative agenda.

Joanne Freeman: That’s a good one.

Brian Balogh: My own sense is that Washington might have been far more appalled that there were 635 pieces of legislation, and that really underscores the kind of legislation that FDR vetoed. Which very much comes out of the middle and later parts of the 19th century, and that’s, as you know, Joanne, all of those what were called personal bills, legislation that actually had to do with one individual. Giving them a pension and that kind of thing. So my own guess is that Washington might’ve been much more appalled by that than the number of vetoes. Roosevelt viewed the presidency very different, and of course he lived in a very different time.

Brian Balogh: Here’s where the international context may tell us a lot. I mean let’s think about some of the leaders of other countries at the time that Roosevelt was president. Let’s see. We’ve got Hitler. We’ve got Mussolini. We’ve got Stalin. I mean Roosevelt very much viewed himself as surrounded by strong men who could do what they wanted, do it quickly, and not do it with a lot of back and forth and conversation. It was only shortly after Franklin Roosevelt’s death and after World War II that Congress was labeled a horse and buggy institution in the atomic age. So there was a strong feeling throughout the 20th century, really starting with Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. It wasn’t just Franklin Roosevelt that, you know, this Congress thing, this deliberation thing, this debate thing, this openness thing, that might not work so well in the 20th century.

Joanne Freeman: Hmm. Interesting. Interesting, because at the beginning of the government, what they were worried about more than anything else of course was power, was a channel of power seemingly issuing from one person. I mean it’s why they debated at least for awhile at The Constitutional Convention, having some kind of panel of executives and not one particular person. Because they were so worried about the precise thing that you’re saying in a sense is necessary in the 20th century.

Brian Balogh: Let’s turn to the 21st century. I’d love to hear your thoughts about President Trump’s first use of a veto. What would George Washington have thought about … Well, I don’t know what he would’ve thought about the wall, but what would he have thought about the extension of emergency powers to in essence reverse congressional appropriations?

Joanne Freeman: Wow. There’s a question I never imagined being asked.

Brian Balogh: Well, neither did George, so this is perfect.

Joanne Freeman: Yeah. That’s true. Well, you know, on the one hand I think Washington and any number of other individuals would be stunned at that kind of assertion of power. Interestingly, probably another aspect of the veto that Washington would’ve picked up on is the fact that it got so much public attention. Washington was extremely sensitive to how the public was viewing his actions and his assertions of power, or lack of assertions of power. So in a sense, he might’ve felt some empathy towards someone making an assertion as much as he might not like it, and seeing the public so engaged in responding to it.

Brian Balogh: I have a bonus question for you.

Joanne Freeman: Oh no, okay.

Brian Balogh: Did Washington sign the first veto with a Sharpie?

Joanne Freeman: I can definitively say no.

Brian Balogh: Thank you, Joanne.

Joanne Freeman: Well, so I’m gonna turn this now back on you, Brian. You made me compare Washington and Trump, so how might FDR see similarities or differences between the situation he was engaged with and what we’re seeing now with President Trump?

Brian Balogh: Well I think one similarity, Joanne, is like FDR, Trump not only sees strong men around the world, frankly he’s quite attracted to them. Pundits have talked about his bromance with some of them. Now, of course he has many options to choose from. It’s not so long ago that we were talking about democracy breaking out in the Middle East and democracy breaking out around the world. The difference between Trump and Franklin D. Roosevelt is that I think Trump is trying to be more like these strong men, and Roosevelt was trying to figure out a way to save constitutional governance in a world where strong men could operate pretty swiftly, pretty quickly, without public consent. He was trying genuinely to thread a needle.

Joanne Freeman: That’s it for us today, but you can keep the conversation going online. Let us know what you thought of the episode or ask us your questions about history. You’ll find us at backstoryradio.org. Or, send an email to backstory@virginia.edu. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter at BackstoryRadio. Whatever you do, don’t be a stranger.

Brian Balogh: Backstory’s produced at Virginia Humanities. Major support is provided by an anonymous donor, The National Endowment for the Humanities, the Provost’s Office at The University of Virginia, the John Hopkins University, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. Additional support is provided by the Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, the humanities, and the environment.

Speaker 8: Brian Balogh is Professor of History at The University of Virginia. Ed Ayers is Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus at The University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of History at the John Hopkins University. Backstory was created by Andrew Wyndham for Virginia Humanities.