In addition to the obvious question of why we would want to have a national holiday that honors Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, Lincoln’s own words are a reminder of the president’s appropriate place in our form of government and why, if forced to choose between the two, we’d be better off with a “Congress Day.”
In a speech he gave in 1848, at the age of 39, Lincoln quoted Whig presidential candidate Zachary Taylor (who would win election later that year) as having said, “The power given by the veto is a high conservative power; but, in my opinion, should never be exercised, except in cases of clear violation of the Constitution, or manifest haste and want of consideration by Congress.” In his speech, Lincoln responded to Democratic attacks on Taylor’s “position on the veto power,” and in the course of his argument, Lincoln made clear his own thoughts on which branch of our government is most representative — and hence most republican:
“My friend…has aptly asked, ‘Are you willing to trust the people?’ Some of you answered, substantially, ‘We are willing to trust the people; but the President is as much the representative of the people as Congress.’ In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he is the representative of the people. He is elected by them, as well as Congress is; but can he, in the nature of things, know the wants of the people as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation? If so, where is the propriety of having a Congress?”
Lincoln continued,
“That the constitution gives the President a negative on legislation, all know; but that this negative should be so combined with platforms and other appliances as to enable him, and in fact almost compel him, to take the whole of legislation into his own hands, is what we object to…and is what constitutes the broad distinction between you [Democrats] and us [Whigs]. To thus transfer legislation is clearly to take it from those who understand with minuteness the interests of the people, and give it to one who does not and cannot so well understand it. I understand your idea that if a presidential candidate avow his opinion upon a given question, or rather upon all questions, and the people, with full knowledge of this, elect him, they thereby distinctly approve all those opinions. This, though plausible, is a most pernicious deception. By means of it, measures are adopted or rejected contrary to the wishes of the whole of one party, and often nearly half of the other. The process is this: Three, four, or half a dozen questions are prominent at a given time; the party selects its candidate, and he takes his position on each of these questions. On all but one his positions have already been indorsed at former elections, and his party fully committed to them; but that one is new, and a large portion of them are against it. But what are they to do? The whole was strung together; and they must take all, or reject all. They cannot take what they like, and leave the rest. What they are already committed to, being the majority, they shut their eyes, and gulp the whole.”
Moments later, Lincoln added,
“One word more, and I shall have done with this branch of the subject. You Democrats, and your candidate, in the main are in favor of laying down in advance a platform — a set of party positions — as a unit, and then of forcing the people, by every sort of appliance, to ratify them, however unpalatable some of them may be. We, and our candidate, are in favor of making presidential elections and the legislation of the country distinct matters; so that the people can elect whom they please, and afterward legislate just as they please, without any hindrance, save only so much as may guard against infractions of the Constitution, undue haste, and want of consideration. The difference between us is clear as noon-day. That we are right we cannot doubt. We hold the true Republican position. In leaving the people’s business in their hands, we cannot be wrong. We are willing, and even anxious, to go to the people….”
Given Lincoln’s expressed view of the restraint that the president should demonstrate in exercising (or threatening to exercise) the veto, imagine what he would have thought of a president who thinks he can openly refuse to enforce laws that the representatives of the people in Congress have duly passed and which prior presidents (or sometimes even himself!) have signed into law — on immigration, marijuana, Obamacare, and the like.
