His Excellency, Supreme Highness, Grand Pooh Bah – No, just Mr. President

When the electors of the Electoral College gathered in their respective states in November 1788 to cast votes for president, the original system for choosing a president had not yet been amended to the form it has today.

The 12th Amendment, adopted in 1804 in time for the re-election of Thomas Jefferson, marked the first presidential election in which the electors voted separately for president and vice president, which clear separation ultimately produced combined tickets for the top two offices.

Until then the electors had simply cast their votes in the fashion the Constitution first directed with each elector voting for two candidates. By constitutional terms, providing he got a majority of electoral votes, the highest vote-getter would become president, the runner-up  vice president. In the event of a majority tie the matter would be sent to the House of Representatives to choose between those with an equal majority vote, with each state holding one vote or, if no one had a majority the House would choose from the top five candidates in the mix.

That’s why in 1796 John Adams found that his Vice President would be his foremost political enemy, Thomas Jefferson. It’s why in 1800 Jefferson would win the presidency on the 36th ballot in the House of Representatives after a political scenario-too complicated to explain — played out to leave him in an electoral college tie with Arron Burr (Alexander Hamilton tipped the House vote to Jefferson, thus thwarting Burr who not long after shot and killed Hamilton in their famous duel.)

But in 1788 those complications lay ahead and the first election for president proceeded as originally set down in the Constitution with electors voting their first two choices.

George Washington finished first, getting  the votes of all 69 electors from the 10 states participating in the election (North Carolina and Rhode Island did not take part as they had not yet ratified the Constitution while New York was late appointing electors.)

The electors in each state were chosen in a manner decided by their state legislatures as applicable to that state but not necessarily by the voters. Among the 10 states whose combined 69 electors decided the first presidential election, only six conducted a popular vote. Washington received over 39,000 popular votes to some 4,300 distributed among others. Of course women could not vote, Native Americans could not vote, slaves could not vote and generally only white men with landed property could vote. Still, in context, Washington won the first presidential election in a landslide.

The Constitution originally provided for the second highest electoral vote winner to become Vice President. With 34 electoral votes, Adams thus became the first to hold that un-esteemed office. Ten other men received electoral votes with the highest count among them being but 9 votes (the same electoral college tie breaker apparatus for the presidency applied if warranted).

The only vice presidential duty set down in the constitution other than to stand in waiting upon the death (or now too under the murky 25th Amendment the incapacitation of the president ) is to serve as president of the Senate with the power to break tie votes in the Senate.

To the long and short of it, when the first Senate convened, actually ahead of the inauguration of Washington as president, which did not take place until March 4, 1789 when he arrived in New York, then the nation’s temporary capital, it was unclear to many, including Adams, what presiding as president of the Senate meant. Adams had notions that it should mean he would wield considerable parlimentary power in the chamber.

As it turned out the senators, early on jealous of their powers and prerogatives,  didn’t see it that way at all. Within months it had become clear that the vice presidential role was entirely limited and that the only real presence the vice resident had in the Senate was to sit at the head of it on the dais when present in the Senate and to cast a tie vote breaker.

It likely would have fallen out that way in any case but the first months of the first year of the first Senate term were consumed by a debate that today seems frivolous but lately alarmingly pertinent and in which Adams not only did not distinguish but caused himself considerable political harm.

The debate concerned titles. What, Adams and others asked should we call the President of the United States?

The House of Representatives had no problem answering the question. It voted quickly enough to address the president as, “George Washington, President of the United States,” which was and is simple enough and to the point.

But in the Senate, from the start a body impressed by itself,  there was a contentious debate in fact an argument that contained other undercurrents.

As reported by historians, a committee given the task of pondering the question came back with the likes of “His Highness, President of the United States…”

Adams was on the side of devising an exalted title, suggesting at one point apparently — to the Senate of a new nation that had only lately thrown off a foreign monarch — that it address Washngton as “His Majesty, the President.”

In May 1789 the Senate came up with the same answer the House had months earlier. It decided that then and — so far — forever after the President of the United States would be called just that, and no more than that.

During and certainly by the end of his first term, Washington made it clear just president would suffice in accord with the congressional determinations as he came to be addressed simply as Mr. President, a lasting usage he encouraged.

The office of president may be exalted but not its occupant except occasionally by history.  It became clear and remains so in title as well as substance, that the president heads a Republic, leads a democratically elected government and is constrained by constitutional other limits.

It is equally clear after more than 238 years of the presidency that the President of the United States is not a highness, a majesty, a supreme or exalted this or that, nor an excellency much less a high or highest excellency.

He is Mr. President, accountable to and governed by the United States Constitution as it sets out the duties, terms and limits of his office.

George Washington knew that from the start of it all.

It is time the present United States Senate remembered and understood this just as well as their predecessors did in the very first Senate.