Elected Officers

“Fan Ch'ih asked about benevolence. The Master said, "It is to love all men." He asked about knowledge. The Master said, "It is to know all men."

“Fan Ch'ih did not immediately understand these answers. The Master said, "Employ the upright and put aside all the crooked; in this way the crooked can be made to be upright."

“Fan Ch'ih retired, and, seeing Tsze-hsia, he said to him, "A Little while ago, I had an interview with our Master, and asked him about knowledge. He said, 'Employ the upright, and put aside all the crooked;-in this way, the crooked will be made to be upright.' What did he mean?"

“Tsze-hsia said, "Truly rich is his saying! "Shun, being in possession of the kingdom, selected from among all the people, and employed Kai-yao on which all who were devoid of virtue disappeared. T'ang, being in possession of the kingdom, selected from among all the people, and employed I Yin and all who were devoid of virtue disappeared."“

Aristotle in his “Politics”, Book II, Part XI said, “For, whenever the chiefs of the state deem anything honorable, the other citizens are sure to follow their example; and, where virtue has not the first place, their aristocracy cannot be firmly established.”

The problem facing the designers of the Constitution was how do you create a system which will employ the upright and put aside the crooked? The Framers knew that the crooked were clever and could be counted on to advance themselves if possible. They decided on a system of checks and balances where the crookedness of one branch would check the crookedness of another branch and produce a virtuous government. Different methods were designed to select the House, the Senate, and the President. These methods were meant to select persons for different roles in government.

The picture above graphs the elected elements of the Federal Government along with intended roles and areas of responsibility. Leadership and Representation vary inversely with each other. The more a Federal Officer directly represents the voice of the People the less he can display his own leadership and character. The House is supposed to be the direct Representatives of the People. The President is supposed to show the greatest independence and personal character. The Senate occupies a middle position. The extremes of either lead to dictatorship. An authoritarian law and order dictator or a peoples dictator, but it is dictatorship all the same. There is also a split in areas of attention. State Governments are supposed to be focused on internal and domestic affairs. The Federal Government is meant to be focused on interstate and foreign affairs. In the Federal Government the House is more appropriately interested in domestic matters. The President is meant to provide leadership in national crises, external threats, etc. The Senate again occupies by design a middle position.

When the President occupies himself with Domestic affairs he begins to buy the votes of the people. This path leads to a People’s Dictatorship. When the President uses external threats to consolidate power he becomes an authoritarian Dictator. Again both extremes lead to the same result. The system is designed to balance the branches and their areas of responsibility against each other. The House checks the President in domestic matters. The President leads in Foreign matters and emergencies. The Senate provides a stable body of senior statesmen to provide a constancy to the system. It has a voice in laws, approves the appointments of the President, and his actions in treaties.

As a responsible voter, a Citizen should understand the different roles that the different people he elects into office are meant to fill. He should cast his votes accordingly. The tendency is to insist that the Senate be as instantaneously responsive to the polls as Representatives are meant to be. The tendency in time of peace is to want the President to assume a role as Peoples dictator in domestic affairs, and in times of foreign trouble to assume a role as Ultimate Leader. This has resulted in the Congress becoming weaker than it was meant to be and in the Presidency becoming somewhat Imperial.