A Brilliant Solution Quotes

“It was a government in which Congress rather than the president was assigned the responsibility of leading the nation.”
― Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution

“their minds, the executive—or the presidency as it would later be called—carried inherent possibilities for corruption. Even as a servant of the legislature, empowered only to execute what that body had enacted, the executive could do serious damage to the nation. An ambitious man, for example, might ignore or undermine the will of Congress, acting as a partisan for an influential faction or a special interest group within that legislature. Or if he was to be elected by the legislature as Madison’s Resolution 7 proposed, a man eager to retain office might agree to do the bidding of a powerful group within Congress in exchange for reelection. Or, driven by avarice, he might sell out his nation’s welfare or security to a foreign power or to a cabal of the states.”
― Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution

“best, they felt, they might be able to forestall the inevitable decline into tyranny. “I am apprehensive,” wrote the normally optimistic Ben Franklin, “that the Government of these States, may in future times, end in a Monarchy. But this Catastrophe I think may be long delayed. . . .”
― Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution

“Few of the delegates held a view of human nature any rosier than Madison’s, but most took pride in anticipating human frailties and taking steps to protect the nation against them. And”
― Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution

“Washington had also asked that the Bible on which he would swear his oath come from the nearby St. John’s Masonic Lodge. The choice carried a more private symbolism, for Washington, like many of the Revolutionary leadership, had long been a member of the secret society know as the Freemasons. With little or no attachment to any church, Washington had two intense organizational commitments: Freemasonry and the Society of the Cincinnati.”
― Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution

“In eighteenth-century parlance, the president was to be a disinterested leader, removed from the tarnishing effects of ambition, greed, and factional wrangling, a check upon the sectional or class interests of lawmakers in the House and Senate.”
― Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution