Respect the Office of the President: Origins and Implications of a Royalist Idea

• In Event: Imperial Power, Executives, Origins, and Functions

Abstract

Virtually every development in the powers and structure of the American presidency as an institution and every position, utterance, and behavior of individual presidents tends to generate controversy, yet it is common for both opponents and supporters of any given president to call on others to “respect the office of the presidency” whenever controversies arise. The use of this phrase by allies and antagonists alike suggests that the presidency—and, by extension, the president—is entitled to a degree of reverence that is not owed to other branches of government or to ordinary citizens. Opponents typically invoke the phrase in order to sharpen and underscore the distinction between the office of the presidency and the person of the president. Critics often use the notion of “respect for the office” defensively to affirm their own support for the presidency as an office sanctified by the Constitution and offensively to attack its current occupant for defiling that very same office. Conversely, supporters generally utilize the expression to fuse the person and the office together in an effort to tamp down criticism or delegitimize it altogether. The intended effect of this conflation is to discredit any criticism of the person as disrespectful to the office itself. Our project traces the roots of these ideas about respect for the office of the presidency back to vital distinctions in medieval political thought (such as those between the office and the person of the king, the body political and the body natural, and the king and Crown) through debates during the American Founding over the proper powers and titles attached to the presidency. We use these historical precursors to develop a general framework that explains how and why these ideas can be used in different political contexts by political actors with diverging attitudes toward any given president. Citing examples from different periods of US history, including recent controversies, we use this framework to explore implications for our political discourse and institutions.

Authors

• Kevin Evans, Florida International University

• Clement Fatovic, Florida International University