| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3 | The History Cooperative

Bruce Ackerman. The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2005. Pp. 384. $29.95.
According to Bruce Ackerman, the Founding Fathers made a number of critical errors in their writing of the U.S. Constitution. These included, among others, that they did not foresee the problems of having the vice president count the Electoral College votes or the possible difficulty of a "lame duck" congressional session. However, the most serious shortcomings of the Founders were their failures to anticipate the development of a plebiscitarian presidency and modern political parties.	1
Ackerman's ambitious work argues that it was the conflict between a victorious Thomas Jefferson, as a plebiscitarian president in 1801, and the Supreme Court, led by Federalist John Marshall, that resulted in a new workable synthesis between the Court and a popularly elected president. Jefferson's election marked a "constitutional transformation in American history," Ackerman claims, that represents "the birth-agony of the plebiscitarian presidency" when "for the first time in American history, a president ascended to the office on the basis of a mandate from the People for sweeping transformation" (p. 5).	. . .

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