The Rise and Growth of American Politics: A Sketch of Constitutional Developments by Henry Jones Ford

Extract

“It is the rule of our politics that no vexed question is settled except by executive policy,” noted Henry Jones Ford (1851–1925) in his 1898 work describing the state of national politics. “Whatever may be the feeling of Congress towards the President, it cannot avoid an issue which he insists upon making,” Ford wrote as he continued with his discussion of the central role played by the president as the leader of his party (283–84). Even presidents whose congressional party members turned their backs on the leadership of their presidents were needed to provide their parties in Congress with an agenda, as was the case with Presidents John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, and Grover Cleveland. “Although repudiated by the parties which elected them, [they] furnished the issues upon which party action turned,” noted Ford (284). Even though he may have arrived at his views through shaky research means and was often inaccurate in his predictions about the direction of American politics, in the late nineteenth century Ford noted the special energy provided by the presidency to our political system. He anticipated the soonto-come activist presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.