Founding father Patrick Henry opposed the Constitution with the passion he once used to ignite revolution – this time, fearing the presidency itself could become an absolute tyranny. John Dickerson explains.
Founding father Patrick Henry opposed the Constitution with the passion he once used to ignite revolution – this time, fearing the presidency itself could become an absolute tyranny. John Dickerson explains.
I don’t know anything about Henry’s actual writings, but given the very simplified version that was presented here, the answer to his question about the Presidency being twisted to absolutism has two solutions that I can see. One, an open public engagement to remove problems before they can manifest themselves, and two, a fluid government that can adapt over time to repair the flaws that exist. Both of these are what many of the other founders wanted the future to bring, as they knew they couldn’t possibly form a perfect guideline that would last. They expected the country as a whole to constantly improve itself and not take what they wrote down as literal Gospel. So while Henry was right in one sense, the Constitution was never meant as a final word but as a beginning draft to be edited. And in many ways over history we’ve failed at doing that. Sometimes we did, just not enough times. Using today’s government as an example of Henry’s warning being right skips over all the signs we’ve ignored over centuries to get out the pen again.