Joseph Bessette and Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute remind us about the role the president is supposed to play in our constitutional system.

… [W]hen it came time to craft a new constitutional order for the federal union, a more capable and independent executive was needed. What was desired was an executive that could act with decision, dispatch, and secrecy; provide the new government with direction and energy; be capable of checking the legislature politically; and, still, be accountable to the general public in some fashion. In short, as delegate James Wilson put it at the start of the Constitutional Convention, the new executive was to be an unprecedented mix of monarchic-like vigor and republican restraint. How this was accomplished is the story of the creation of the presidency at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. …

… The Convention ultimately settled on the Electoral College system as a means to select a president. The president’s election would be independent of Congress and would rest, if indirectly, on popular support. …

… It is often said that the presidency was created with George Washington in mind, given his presidency of the Convention and the universal expectation that he would be the first president elected under the Constitution. No doubt, the delegates felt more comfortable about what they had crafted knowing Washington would be the first chief executive. That said, what’s striking about the Convention’s deliberations is how open they were about the need to create an office that would operate effectively and responsibly without someone of Washington’s stature and virtues. In the end, the authorities the delegates vested in the chief executive were as much a reflection of their confidence in the characteristics of the institution they crafted and its concomitant promotion of “presidential” behavior as it was trust in the personal characteristics of the men they expected would rise to the nation’s highest office.