Episode 30: Season II, Episode I: George Washington and Executive Power
A full transcript of this episode is available here.
Our first topic this season is our first president, George Washington, father of the country, general surveyor statesman, slave owner, whiskey distiller, debtor, and a man whose dental history, every poor kid with braces hears about.
Washington was the first man to hold the office, of course, and some still argue that he was the best. Everyone agrees that he set the standard by which all other presidents would be judged. Today, we will explore the presidency of George Washington and his biggest challenge: the creation of the presidency itself.
Article II of the Constitution, which lays out the powers of the President, is remarkably short. Article II was one of the last things that the founders actually wrote down during the Constitutional Convention, and it does not give many details about the role of the president in American life. Instead, the founders left George Washington, our nation’s first president, in charge of figuring out what kind of day-to-day role the executive would play in leading the nation.
So how did our first president, George Washington, legitimize the new nation, respond to crises like the Whiskey Rebellion, and create key presidential norms?
To answer these questions, we turned to two scholars. First, we talked to Dr, Julian Davis Mortenson, the James G. Phillip Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. As a scholar of constitutional law and presidential power, he had a lot to teach us about how George Washington shaped the presidency.
Next, we turned to a familiar voice, the Center for Presidential History’s own Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky. Lindsay revealed how the decisions Washington made in office set the precedent for generations of presidents to come. In the process, George Washington created the scaffolding for a very powerful executive branch and a very powerful president.
Explore all this and more in our first episode of Season II: George Washington and Executive Power!
A full transcript of this episode is available here.
Guests:
Dr. Julian Davis Mortenson is the James G. Phillip Professor of Law at the University of Michigan
Dr. Julian Davis Mortenson teaches constitutional and international law at the University of Michigan. He writes primarily in the field of constitutional history and is co-author of Foundation Press’s new constitutional law casebook. His current book project, which is under contract with Harvard University Press, develops a comprehensive account of presidential power at the American Founding.
To learn more, check out “The Executive Power Clause” by Dr. Mortenson in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.
Follow Dr. Mortenson on Twitter.
Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky is a Senior Fellow at the SMU Center for Presidential History and a host of this podcast. She is also the Kundrun Open-Rank Fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies
, a
Scholar-in-Residence at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies, and a Professorial Lecturer at the School of Media and Public Affairs, GWU.
Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky is a historian of Early America, the presidency, and the government — especially the president’s cabinet. She shares her research by writing everything from op-eds to books, speaking on podcasts and other media, and teaching every kind of audience.
To learn more about Dr. Chervinsky’s scholarship on George Washington, read her recent book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.