I would like to talk about the President of the United States.

On May 30, 1787, a small group of men in Philadelphia changed the world. They were the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Among other things, they created an officer of government unlike any ever before, one destined to become the most powerful political figure in our modern world - the President of the United States.

“There must be one, and not three,” they said. The office would require energy, action, and decisiveness. With only one, we would always know who’s responsible, and once a year he was expected to report to the people.

They were going to call him “His Excellency.” (Madison, p. 523) But that wouldn’t do. The President of the United States is a man of the people, a leader among equals.

Four years he would serve, and then he would be returned to his people, and that was the design. The framers felt if he merited their esteem, they could have him again as president. The only limit on his term was to be the wisdom of the people who elected him.

It was considered that he not even receive a salary, but sometimes the best of men are not wealthy men. He was to serve for love and honor, not for love of money.

The framers put him under the most sacred oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. To preserve that document, they felt, was to save us as a nation.

Never – never was the president to start a war! He could defend us in case of attack, but he could not start a war. If the blood and money of the people were to be expended in war, the people must declare it. But once it was declared, he was the Commander-in-Chief.

No law was ever to be imposed on us without his approval – no treaty that he did not negotiate. He was to be our voice to the nation, the champion of our rights and liberties, and the guardian – the guardian of all his people.

He alone was to be the nation’s voice of mercy and reason through the pardon power. All the chief officers who execute the law and judge it were to be his appointees – his nominees. He was to be the one man in government above the pettiness of partisan politics. He was not to be a man of the party, but a man for us all.

So critical was his leadership, and so vital his virtue, that the framers did not trust the common people to find him and elect him. So they devised a system whereby the wisest among us would select the wisest to be him.

He had to be a native son, a fully imbued American, filled with wisdom, maturity, goodness, and integrity. He was to be our voice, our protector, [and] the great man of the people.

He would be, and still is, only as powerful as ‘we the people.’ Similarly, he is only as good as we are. And the nation would be ever after as safe and free as he was good, honest, and wise.

Few men living can affect more people in a deeper way for a longer time than the President of the United States. Therefore, all things considered, this week God help us to be wise!