Background of news –
Senate seats for ex-Presidents?
By Bertram Benedict
Herbert Hoover, our only living ex-President, was listened to with considerable respect by the 1944 Republican National Convention. The reemergence of Mr. Hoover has reawakened proposals that former Presidents be given seats without votes in the Senate, where theirs would be the voice of experience.
Rep. Canfield (R-NJ) has introduced the bill to make former Presidents voteless members of the Senate. They would receive the same remuneration as elected members. Mr. Canfield points out:
President rate high in their ability to voice with force and accuracy the views and aspirations of a great number of their fellow-citizens. Congress is itself the nation’s sounding board of public opinion.
A precedent exists in Congress for voteless members. The House has four such – a delegate each from the Territories of Hawaii and Alaska, a resident commissioner each from the possession Puerto Rico and the Commonwealth of the Philippines. The two delegates are elected for two years, the commissioner from Puerto Rico for four years; the commissioner from the Philippines is appointed by the President of the Commonwealth. The four traditionally speak only on subjects affecting their constituencies.
Example of John Quincy Adams
Only two former Presidents of the United States have been elected to Congress. One was John Quincy Adams, who was elected to the House for nine terms beginning two years after his retirement from the Presidency and lasting until his death.
The second Adams as a member of the House fulfilled the purpose for which seats in the Senate are now sought for all ex-Presidents. Disdaining partisanship, he spoke out fearlessly on almost all topics of the day. A former Secretary of State, he became chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House.
Prof. W. E. Ford has written of him as a member of the House:
At the time of his election, no member has sat in the House who possessed such varied experience and appropriate qualities. He was familiar with the inside political history of 40 years abroad and at home… As a debater, he was listened to with respect and, when aroused, with nearly as great fear, for his integrity was unquestioned his information vast and ready… His Congressional service [was] quite the most important part of his career.
Johnson member of Senate
Andrew Johnson, leaving the White House on March 4, 1869, came close to being elected to the U.S. Senate by the Tennessee Legislature in that year. In 1872, he was defeated for election to the House, but in 1874 was sent to the Senate. He served during the brief special session of 1875, in the course of which he denounced President Grant for aspiring to a third successive term. Johnson died before the Senate met for regular session in December 1875.
Grant left the Presidency a poor man, and for a time subsisted on income from a trust fund set up for him by friends. That may have been one reason why he tried for a third term. When his trust income dwindled, he joined a brokerage firm; its failure in 1884 threw him into personal bankruptcy, and ultimately Congress had to revive for him the rank of general, with salary. His memoirs brought in large sums only after his death.
Some of our recent Presidents (Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, Hoover) could fall back upon private means after leaving the White House. Others, like Coolidge, found remunerative pursuits open to them. Taft became Chief Justice. In Great Britain, a retiring Prime Minister almost always remains in Parliament.