D. All of the above.
There will be no true/false section in the test, however. True and false are simply not political concepts. It will have to be a false/false test instead.
“I will bring new ideas to Washington.”
U False U False
“I look forward to building bipartisan support for my programs.”
U False U False
“I didn’t do it.”
U False U False
“And I’ll never do it again.”
U False U False
“I have the full support of my loving spouse and family.”
U False U False
The Founding Fathers Have Some Words With Us
Our partisan political conflict has turned into the kind of ugly, brutal, and merciless persecution that filled the Roman Colosseum during the time of the emperor Nero, but where are the Christians? We have a murderous spectacle where vicious, bloodthirsty wild animals roam the arena in Washington. However, none of their victims are faithful, innocent, brave, or good.
Let us turn away our eyes from this unholy gore and look instead for some wisdom and advice from our Founding Fathers.
The Founders were not, of course, invariably wise advisers. They could be silly. Thomas Jefferson predicted “there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.”**** (Current membership of American Unitarian Universalist congregations: 154,704.)
And the Founders could be wrong. After James Madison had served in the Virginia legislature he wrote a 1787 memorandum, “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” expressing shock at the pork-barreling, logrolling, horse-trading nature of practical politics. As if practical politics ever had any other nature.
John Adams argued, “The law . . . will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations, and wanton tempers of men.”***** Yes it will.
In fact, the Founders could be very wrong indeed. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist no. 84, dismissed the need for a Bill of Rights.******
Jefferson, in his 1785 Notes on the State of Virginia, said, “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God”—a statement that would have surprised the slaves who labored in the earth on Jefferson’s plantation. And to whom did Jefferson expect to sell the fruits of this earth? He was always ready to insult those who engaged in trade. “Merchants have no country,” he wrote in a letter to an admiring colleague,******* going on to impugn the patriotism merchants feel for “the mere spot they stand on” compared to the spot “from which they draw their gains.” No wonder Jefferson died deeply in debt to a whole bunch of merchants.
But the Founders did possess sound good sense about intransigent political ideology and rabid political partisanship. They’re crap.
Being men of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the Founders put their thoughts more eloquently. But Benjamin Franklin was almost that blunt about the dangers of falling in love with one’s own opinions and deciding to be the smartest person in the room (especially after everyone else has left). And George Washington, on the subject of party politics, sounds like he’s one fuck short of a fuck you.
Below is what they had to say.
On the last day of the Constitutional Convention, September 17, 1787, Benjamin Franklin was concerned that too many delegates would be unwilling to sign a Constitution that had resulted from so much—often strongly disputed—compromise. He wanted to make a short speech urging the Constitution’s adoption. Franklin was too weak and ill to give the speech himself. It was delivered on his behalf by fellow Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson and recorded in James Madison’s notes on the convention. (Which, one trusts, were more coherent than the notes I took in Government 101: “How a Bill becomes a Law—Cong. propose markup something something subcommittee something vote conference vote veto or something.”)
Franklin’s speech is concise—by the standards of the day. It’s worth salving our itchy little modern attention span to read the text in full. Besides, Franklin was one of the few, if not the only, Founder to publicly display a sense of humor. (Although Founding Mother Abigail Adams was good at privately teasing her self-serious husband, John: “Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives.”********)
Benjamin Franklin
Mr. President [Franklin was formally addressing the Constitutional Convention’s president, who happened to be our other admonitory Founding Father George Washington], I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve [Franklin, wisely, did not list them, though he preferred a unicameral legislature and thought the chief executive had too much power and should be replaced by a committee, etc.], but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.
Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. Steele******** a Protestant in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain french lady, who in a dispute with her sister, said “I don’t know how it happens, Sister but I meet with no body but myself, that’s always in the right—Il n’y a que moi qui a toujours raison.********”
In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all
