Josh Hammer

During the Constitution ratification debates between the Federalists (who supported ratification) and the Anti-Federalists (who opposed it), one of the most strident areas of disagreement was the extent to which the proposed position of president of the United States was actually an ersatz king. Leading Anti-Federalists thought the new president would be a thinly veiled monarch. In response, leading Federalists—including those who would eventually hold radically different views of presidential p…