Trump Didn't Invent the Tribunate Presidency

On Monday, 29th of June 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the President of the U.S could exercise greater control over the federal bureaucracy, stipulating in a 6-3 decision that the president had the power to remove members of the Federal Trade Commission. The Trump v. Slaughter decision has widely been interpreted as a victory for the ‘unitary executive’ theory—the idea that the executive branch is one indivisible unit which cannot be separated from the will of the president—and a blow to the independence of government agencies.

The ruling also advances the conservative goal of dismantling the so-called ‘administrative state,’ a collection of state agencies which critics allege operate without proper executive oversight and run the risk of forming a parallel ‘deep’ state which pursues interests at odds with the will of the American ‘people’ as embodied in the actions of the chief executive. 

The desire to protect the power of the president is often connected to deeper philosophical ideas about the role of the executive as the porte-parole of ‘the people.’ Since politicians are sent to the White House to enact the will of the winning section of the voting public, to allow unelected bureaucrats to undermine the political program which the president has promised to enact on behalf of the people is to subvert American democracy. The president here emerges as a friend of the people. He is cast as a frustrated victim of elite intrigue, whose desire to protect and faithfully represent the will of the people is torpedoed by traitorous usurpers, often within his own administration. This was a feeling not unlike what John Adams experienced during his tenure as the first party president of the United States. 

In Lindsay M. Chervinsky’s Making The Presidency, one finds John Adams fighting off repeated attempts by members of his cabinet to undermine his office at a time of mounting domestic and international peril. The Revolutionary War now over, and the constitutional conventions done and dusted, the country faced financial bankruptcy, party divisions, and the predations of former friends and foes. The one constant and familiar source of stability, Gen. George Washington, stunned the world by resigning his office and peacefully retiring to his country estate, leaving the deeply paranoiac and sensitive Adams to steer the ship of state in his gaping absence. 

Prickly temperament aside, Adams was well-suited for the job. Of all the Founding Fathers, save Madison, the New Englander was arguably the most well-read, and had ‘‘probably spent more time thinking about the role of the executive than almost anyone.’’ Even to this day, Adams ‘‘remains one of the most qualified presidents in American history’’ (Making the Presidency, pp. 8, 45).  In The Constitution of England (1771), a legal masterpiece by Swiss philosopher Jean-Louis de Lolme, Adams found a sensible exposition of the idea that the chief magistrate was a natural ally of the people. 

According to Luke Mayville, a political scientist, it ‘‘was a political maxim for Adams that democratic power existed in a mutually supportive relationship with unitary executive authority’’ (John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy, p. 42). The executive’s role in this constitutional system was to guard against the ambitions of vainglorious men of status (and aspiring status). Men like Timothy Pickering, a fellow New Englander, who proved to be the most annoying member of that group of partisans known as the ‘Essex Junto,’ named after Essex County, Massachusetts. 

The Essex men formed a clique at the extreme end of the Federalist Party which worked within the Adams administration to bend government policy to their will. Rather than execute the President’s foreign policy vision, Pickering and other radical Federalists sought to establish friendly relations with Britain, laying the diplomatic groundwork for a disastrous, but thankfully averted, war against the revolutionary government of France (Making, p. 98).

In ancient Athens, troublesome men such as these were simply ostracized, but the liberal demands of modern government required a different approach. Adams conceived of the Senate as an ostracizing mechanism designed to confine talented but dangerous individuals to a controlled chamber where their ambition could be redirected to benefit the republic. In this confined space, the private citizen, looking at the excellence of the senator, ‘‘could hope for the benefits of his exertions, without dreading his passions’’ (John Adams, 36). Left undiscussed is what to do in a situation where this same man of ambition finds himself in the President’s close circle of ministers—or occupying that highest office itself. Adams’s presidency was to suffer the consequences of this oversight. Adams would spend most of his presidency complaining that the ‘‘Unreasonable Conduct of Jacobins’’ and ‘‘insolent Federalists’’ at home conspired with great efficacy to ruin his political career (Making, p. 253).

Partisan tensions were further aggravated by the novelty of having a president (Adams) and vice president (Jefferson) from two different parties. Chervinsky notes that more so then than today, there was ‘‘a very real concern that Jefferson would form a shadow administration and tear the whole experiment apart’’ (Making, p. 56). Barely a day into his presidency, Adams could already spy ‘‘a Sense of Ambition, beyond all former suspicions’’ emerging from the poorly disguised attempt by cabinet members to resist his directives and to take their marching orders from party outsiders (ibid., p. 68). Alexander Hamilton, the de facto leader of the Federalist Party and a name synonymous with ambition, interfered with cabinet decisions. Adams did not know that many of his secretaries funneled secret cabinet intel to Hamilton and were delaying their responses to his queries and directives until they had received a definite opinion from the party leader. Some cabinet members went so far as to lift ‘‘whole paragraphs from Hamilton’s missives’’ to craft their policy recommendations. Jefferson for his part came close to committing outright treason when he rather carelessly conveyed to other notable individuals within the President’s circle that he was very much displeased with the state of government affairs, and intent on doing something about it (ibid., p. 69). 

Throughout this trying time of betrayal and subterfuge, the Adams family sought with moderate success to remain as fair and impartial as could reasonably be done given the circumstances, and to save the presidency, through well-chosen periods of silence and discretion, from the bad odor of moral corruption and party excess. The closest Adams came to losing the confidence of the American people was when he signed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 into law. Chervinsky notes that voters were not initially put off by the censorship of supposedly ‘radical’ revolutionary rhetoric, but as news of sundry outrages trickled in, voters responded as Jefferson and the Republicans had expected: by punishing the Federalists at the polls (Making, p. 198). 

Under Adams’s leadership, state officials arrested Benjamin Franklin Bache, editor of the Aurora (a Republican paper), while three other men were charged ‘‘with raising a liberty pole, reading an essay to a crowd that criticizes the federal government, and shouting ‘Damn the President,’’ respectively’’ (Making, p. 199). This illiberality cost Adams the 1800 election, and confirmed Hamilton’s insight that under the new constitutional framework adopted by the convention delegates, the chief magistrate was ‘‘amenable to personal punishment and disgrace,’’ through periodic elections (John Adams, p. 33). It is also an important historical reminder of the supreme importance of restricting the ability of the chief executive to violate the basic rights of citizens. Adams’s fear of oligarchy pushed him too strongly in the direction of executive power, to the neglect of a healthy paranoia of executive tyranny. Despite this imbalance in his thought, Adams remained committed to the rule of law and the principles of limited government (John Adams, p. 133). 

Adams’s pursuit of dignified public conduct was not just a matter of private morality, but also of civic virtue. Adams’s high view of the presidency was often misinterpreted by rivals as a sign of devotion to monarchist principles, and perhaps as evidence of a secret desire to transform the presidency into a royalist institution (Making, p. 40). Adams entered office with this accusation hanging over his presidency, and may explain why he worked so hard to fend off any aristocratic airs. When his wife Abigail painted the family coat of arms on the family carriage, Adams demanded that she paint over the emblem, for it ‘‘would be a folly to excite popular feelings and vulgar Insolence for nothing’’ (ibid., p. 54). Adams also refused a military escort to his inauguration ceremony. 

During the ceremony, Adams made sure to express his reverence for free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power. When George Washington shadowed the newly sworn President Adams, with Jefferson trailing not far behind, all three entered the annals of history. For the first time in American history, American citizens were able to witness a transition from one federal leader to another. This was all the more remarkable given the fact that revolutionary France had tried and failed to provide a bloodless example of this democratic principle in action (Making, p. 60). The peaceful transfer of power is now taken for granted today, but back then a smooth transition in power, especially under the peering eyes of rival party members, was an astonishing event in world history. One American newspaper declared ‘‘a new era in our history, and in the history of Republican Freedom’’ (ibid., p. 62).

The rotation was all the more stunning given the fact that there was no prior precedent for this precise political event. As Chervinsky notes, ‘‘Washington established countless executive precedents, but until they were repeated, they were little more than historic anomalies.’’ Adams’s task, and ultimately his legacy, was to forge ‘‘the parameters of the presidency’’ for everyone who followed. If ‘‘George Washington created the presidency,’’ Chervinsky explains, ‘‘John Adams defined it’’ (Making, pp. 7, 9). 

Chervinsky also notes, no doubt with a tinge of sadness, that the norms and precedents that Washington, Adams, and Jefferson established through their public example ‘‘largely held firm until January 6, 2021’’ (Making, p. 8). As the Trump administration works to remake the executive position, it is important to look back at the unique historical circumstances and personalities which made the presidency what it is today. Adams, we are told, ‘‘developed a deep commitment to neutrality,’’ and was ‘‘eager to avoid battles that would harm American trade, threaten the safety of the nation, and sacrifice lives and treasure’’ (ibid., p. 3)—a dramatic contrast to the current occupant, whose notoriously chaotic tenure has destabilized the world economy and dealt a tremendous blow to the country’s reputation as a source of institutional stability. This havoc-maker now has the legal means to continue unraveling the constitutional norms and habits which the founders of the republic worked so hard to establish for posterity’s sake. 

Featured image is "John Adams," Gilbert Stuart, c. 1800.