 history. It established the executive departments, the first revenue streams for the national government, approved the first amendments to the Constitution, adopted a program for paying the country’s debts, embraced the principles of capitalism as the underpinning of government financial policy, founded the first National Bank, established the national capital on the Potomac River, and enacted the first patent and copyright laws. Not least, it also established the Federal Court System and the Supreme Court, with John Jay as its first Chief Justice. They didn’t accomplish all this with a group hug; they did it through shameless deal-making, the kind of flip-flopping that is ritually decried by modern pundits, and the suspension of personal principles in order to get things done.
Present-day Americans might well wonder if today’s congressmen would have been up to the tasks faced by the First Congress. But we miss the point if we think that they were made of a different caliber, or that the problems that they faced were so different in kind. The members of the First Congress were not demigods. “We are beginning to forget that the patriots of former days were men like ourselves,” as Charles Francis Adams put it, in 1871. Along with Madison and other exceptional men such as Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, their ranks were filled mostly with men of average ability. What they had in common was that the great majority of them were professional politicians, mostly lawyers. Few were amateurs, and almost none were ideological zealots. They were men experienced in government, they understood the need for compromise, even on matters of deeply held principle, and they had the experience to do it. Although they differed deeply on many issues—on slavery, centralized government, regional interests, taxation—they wanted the government to succeed. They also believed in politics as a tool for national survival. After all, the right to be political was what they had fought the Revolutionary War for: It was the engine that made republican government work.
7 Times World Leaders Addressed Congress
Jim Lo Scalzo—EPA
So what lessons might members of Congress draw from their predecessors in order to break today’s gridlock? Public faith in our democratic institutions is more important than any single issue. Attacks on the government in order to advance a partisan agenda undermine American values and betray both the spirit and the intent of the founders. In tough times it takes experienced professional politicians to shape the compromises that will always be necessary to keep the country together and move it forward. And that doesn’t just mean compromise on the small stuff: It sometimes means sacrificing deeply-held principles in hope of prevailing another day.
That there is politics involved in Supreme Court appointments is nothing new. But if ever there has been a moment when legislators are called upon to rise above the ideological fashions of the moment in order to preserve public respect for the court, and indeed for government itself, it is now. To attempt to sabotage the president's clear constitutional power to appoint new members to the court would indeed make the founders cry.