Making a Claim or Making a Case: What Qualifies a Person to be President?
“I can say with confidence there has never been a man or woman—not me, not Bill, nobody—more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as President of the United States of America.”
Pres. Barack Obama, July 27, 2016 at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Really? It is no partisan dig or veiled expression of a personal animus against either Obama, Bill or Hillary to question the validity of such a wildly, absolutist claim. How about taking a short walk down the long road of history to make the case for an individual far lesser known than the aforementioned trio, but whose lived experience, I suggest, far exceeds the credentials of those mentioned by the former president.
NO, not her…
Jill Munroe
One of the original Charlie’s Angels, played by Farrah Fawcett.
NOT her either…
Kris Munroe
Jill’s younger sister and fellow Angel, played by Cheryl Ladd.
I mean James Monroe.
James Monroe
American Founding Father who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825.
In today’s America, where the voting public seems to have lost any clear or consistent idea of what credentials qualify an individual for the office of president, Monroe represents a startling reminder of what once was. Elected president for the first time in 1816, he was re-elected (without opposition!) in 1820. Take a look at his resume and decide for yourself whether you agree that he merits recognition as arguably the most qualified individual EVER to serve as president.
Crossed the iced-over Delaware River to fight alongside Gen. George Washington at the Battle of Trenton on Christmas Day 1776. 18-year-old Lieutenant Monroe was shot down by a musket ball, the bullet tore through his chest and lodged in his shoulder, severing an artery. Had it not been for the quick work of a timely physician, Monroe would have perished in a pool of his own blood.
Braved the bitter cold, desperate hunger, and unbelievably cramped quarters of Valley Forge in a tiny log hut along with his old schoolmate, Lieutenant John Marshall. The dimensions of these structures were utterly claustrophobic: fourteen by sixteen feet, with only six and half feet for headroom—designed to house a dozen men. Monroe fought heroically in the thick of the Revolutionary War but refused to take a cent for his service. Pro bono.
Elected to the General Assembly of Virginia, and to its eight-member Executive Council, in May 1782 (along with John Marshall). The Council acted as the effective government of the state.
Elected to the five-man Virginia delegation to the Confederation Congress. He served from 1783 to 1786, resigning his position on the occasion of his marriage to Elizabeth Kortright in New York City. One significant accomplishment of his time as a delegate to the country’s first national government was refining Thomas Jefferson’s ambitious 1784 Land Ordinance into something more practical. His reasoning for doing so arose from his own personal inspection of the western territories under consideration. Monroe’s suggestions would be incorporated into the immensely consequential Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
Reelected to the Virginia General Assembly as a representative of Fredricksburg (1786). He simultaneously won appointment as the commonwealth attorney, a position that came with a much-needed cash salary but also the onerous burden of circuit riding across the state, courtroom to courtroom.
Served as a moderate Antifederalist delegate to the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788. His support for state government, fears about the welfare of western territories, and defense of individual liberties led him to disagree with his friend, John Marshall, his longtime hero/patron, George Washington, and his esteemed Virginia colleague, James Madison, in voting against ratification.
Though defeated by Madison in a run for a seat in the House of Representatives, Monroe was elected by the Virginia General Assembly to the US Senate in 1790, filling the vacancy left by the death of Senator William Grayson. He served only four years of his six-year term, resigning his seat to accept President Washington’s appointment as US Minister to France.
Relations between America and its former ally France had soured due to the French Revolution and the war it unleashed across Europe. The American government, reflecting the mood of its citizenry, was passionately divided in its allegiance to either Britain or France. President Washington sought to establish a safe middle ground between the belligerents, but neither side saw their interests respected by his Proclamation of Neutrality, and so they continued to harass American shipping. To ease this strain and reassure both countries of America’s genuine peaceful intentions, Washington sent John Jay, a Federalist, to London, and James Monroe, a well-known Francophile, to Paris. The latter arrived in a city ravaged by mob violence and a population depleted by widespread murder and imprisonment. Speaking fluent French, he soon ditched the interpreters and conducted negotiations on his own. Unfortunately for Monroe, Jay’s ‘success’ in signing a treaty with England sank his efforts with the French. Recalled by Washington, he and his family departed France for America in the spring of 1797.One notable—and rather spectacular—achievement of his time in Paris was the liberation of Adrienne de Lafayette (wife of the Marquis de Lafayette) from prison (and the gallows) and the conveyance to America of her children, two daughters and a 14-year-old son, George-Washington Lafayette. The boy was delivered to the care of his godfather, President Washington.
Happy to have him back in Virginia, Monroe was elected governor by the General Assembly in December 1799. It would be his first of four terms in that office. Prior to his election, the state’s top official had been a powerless ceremonial figurehead. Monroe changed all of that. Taking full advantage of his authority to speak, he endlessly agitated—even shaming—the legislators into enacting a series of reforms and initiating new construction projects (such as the state’s first penitentiary—where incarceration replaced punishments of whipping, branding, and hanging).
Monroe’s first term as governor (1799-1800) proved tumultuous—on both a personal and professional level. Former president George Washington’s death on December 15, 1799, set an ominous tone for the year ahead. On the domestic stage, it was a presidential election year—a campaign that would devolve into an ugly, scurrilous donnybrook of rabid partisan acrimony. The nation would also weather a devastating outbreak of yellow fever. Norfolk would be hard hit in August, killing three percent of its population, requiring Monroe to adopt the mantle of a “Quarantine” governor. In that same month, a slave insurrection headed by Gabriel Prosser was narrowly averted due to a torrential rainfall caused by massive thunderstorms on the night it was to be launched. The uprising had to be postponed as widespread flooding across the region destroyed bridges and roadways, making travel impossible. Virginia's courtrooms were also flooded—with the arrest, trial, and sentencing of those involved in the conspiracy to burn Richmond to the ground, kidnap Monroe, and slay the surrounding white population. On the evening of the day in which Governor Monroe personally interrogated Gabriel, the Monroe family sadly watched their son, James, die from whooping cough. Internationally, the year witnessed the end of the Quasi-War with France and the elevation of Napoleon to the autocratic post of First Counsel of France. Lady Liberty looked quite a bit different than she had in 1789.
With endless uncertainties and troubled communications concerning navigation of the Mississippi River, ownership of New Orleans, and control of Western Florida, President Jefferson’s secretary of state, James Madison, sent Robert T. Livingston to France to sort things out. However, the ambassador’s arrival was met with sly chicanery by the French foreign minister, Maurice de Talleyrand, or as he was known to many, Le Diable Boiteux—"The Lame Devil.” Panicked about the prospects of war, Jefferson tapped his friend Monroe to dash over to France as a ‘minister extraordinary’ to help push the negotiations across the line by offering a financial settlement for the contested territories. And just in case things didn’t progress as hoped, Monroe was authorized to act in a similar capacity with Spain and, if necessary, London.
You know how this story ends: Although authorized to offer no more than $9 million for New Orleans and West Florida, Monroe and Livingston knew an incredible bargain when one was presented to them. Napoleon offered the entirety of Louisiana Territory for a mere $15 million, four cents an acre. The diplomatic duo happily, peacefully, doubled the size of the United States with the scratch of a pen and a handshake. The deal gave America the largest territory any nation had ever obtained without war from another in world history—almost 1 million square miles. Nothing in their instructions gave them the right to do this—nor had they acquired West Florida as instructed. Had they done wrong right? New Englanders certainly thought so. Of course, Jefferson would have a lot of explaining to do about the legitimacy of the transaction being a strict constructionist of the Constitution. A few days after the deal was closed, the two ministers were Napoleon’s guests of honor at a reception held at the Louvre. After dinner and drinks, Monroe joined the First Counsel for a long, private conversation. In French. Imagine that.
And then it was off to dreary London for the Monroes. James was to do his level best to resolve the bitter dispute regarding England’s unrelenting and unapologetic impressment of American sailors on the high seas. The Monroe-Pinkney Treaty (1806) that was signed woefully disappointed those ambitions.
Monroe spent the years 1804-1807 dutifully trying to implement instructions sent from Washington concerning the intensifying commercial/territorial distress the country was experiencing on account of the Anglo-French war. Bouncing between the courts of Paris, London, and Madrid much like a pinball, he found his efforts frustrated in the face of European contempt for America. Weary and longing for home, the Monroe family left the continent in October 1807, arriving at Norfolk on December 13, 1807. Essentially impoverished by his diplomatic duties abroad, Monroe returned determined to improve his financial situation by a concentrated management of his vast landholdings.
But Virginians also wanted him back in the governor’s seat, electing him to his fourth term on January 16, 1811. He would serve for only 77 days, resigning on April 3 to assume his duties as secretary of state under President James Madison. It had been an urgent call from the president, who was in desperate need of Monroe’s international expertise. Monroe took the oath of office on April 6, 1811. Back in the national spotlight, back in the thick of things.
Thus began Monroe’s lengthy tenure in the Madison administration. He served as Secretary of State from 1811 to 1817, but notably took the reins of the Department of War in 1814 following John Armstrong Jr.’s resignation after the burning of the capital. For a critical year, Monroe effectively managed both portfolios, concluding his dual service as Secretary of War in 1815. Monroe is the only person in US history to head two cabinet departments at the same time. These being war years with Britain, Monroe oversaw all diplomatic and military operations, including the Treaty of Ghent negotiations (1814) that ended the conflict. The guy routinely worked seven-day weeks, surviving on snatches of sleep and haphazard meals. Was he part Spartan?
That is some resume, folks.
In 1816, James Monroe ran for president and won in a landslide—securing 183 of 217 electoral votes cast. He’d beat that record in 1820 when he ran for reelection, capturing 231 of 235 electoral votes in a race lacking any real opposition.
While serving as the fifth president of the United States, working in close cooperation with his Cabinet, in particular his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, Monroe forged a bold, even provocative, manifesto of American foreign policy: the Monroe Doctrine (1823). The United States intended to declare to the world who the sheriff was in the Western hemisphere. The administration planted a massive stop sign prohibiting any further European colonization in ‘our’ neck of the woods. Fifteen Latin American nations had declared independence in the years 1810-1822, and Monroe intended to see them remain so. Newspapers applauded and echoed the public’s approval. Here’s but one out of a multitude of examples: “The president’s words had been received throughout the country with a warm and universal burst of applause.” (Portland Eastern Augus) It goes without saying that the Great Powers of Europe didn’t share the same enthusiasm.
Monroe had also finally acquired what he’d labored so hard to obtain: His administration secured Florida from Spain in the Adams-Onis Treaty (1819). Spring Break for all!
The honeymoon period of his first years in office was heralded by the national press as an “Era of Good Feelings.” Even Harvard—ground zero of Federalist politics—seemed touched by the national mood swing, bestowing upon the Virginia Republican an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in July 1817.
Of course, the country’s very real sectional interests and stubborn regional prejudices hadn’t disappeared. Instead, like a virus, they lay dormant just beneath the surface, awaiting the right set of conditions for another flare-up.
Monroe was himself something of a relic of the past. A living, breathing, walking reminder of the Revolutionary Era. Have you ever known a person who seemed to be stuck in the past? Perhaps it’s the music they listen to or their hair style. Consider Monroe’s fashion sense. In a room crowded with men in ankle-length trousers—the hip craze of the new ‘democratic’ era—he stood out in his tricorne hat, powdered hair, old-fashioned knee breeches, silk hose, and buckled shoes. His children must have winced at the museum they called ‘Dad.’
James Monroe was the final shade of Jefferson’s shadow and the last of the first generation of Founding Fathers. His two-term presidency brought an end to the Virginia Dynasty. Since his death in 1831, the nation has had four Virginians occupy the White House: William Henry Harrison (however briefly), John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson.
Tragically, James Monroe died destitute and despondent. His wife of over forty years, Elizabeth, perished on September 23, 1830. He died the following year on the Fourth of July—the third president to pass on the nation's anniversary. He followed John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom had died within hours of each other in 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
I rest my case.