Washington - There is at least one thing President Donald
Trump and George Washington have in common: Both the first and current
presidents said they didn't want to be paid for the job.
Near the end of Washington's inaugural address, the
wealthy landowner and Revolutionary War commander who'd accepted no salary for
his military service said that he "must decline as inapplicable to myself
any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably included in a
permanent provision for the Executive Department."
Trump, meanwhile, has said since the early days of his
campaign that he would not take a salary, stating at a stop in New Hampshire
that "if I'm elected president, I'm accepting no salary, okay? That's not
a big deal for me." In a Twitter Q&A, he said "I won't take even
$1." And in a 60 Minutes interview shortly after he was elected, Trump
said he might have to take $1 a year, but would not take a salary, claiming
"I've never commented on this, but the answer is no."
Presidents receive a salary because the Constitution
requires it, stipulating that the amount cannot be changed while a person is in
office. US law puts the president's annual paycheck at $400 000, plus $50 000
in expenses.
As a result, Washington did take a salary of $25 000, a
sizable sum for the times. And as of Monday, we know that Trump's
"intention right now," according to what press secretary Sean Spicer
said in a briefing, is to donate his salary at the end of the year. "He
made a pledge to the American people, he wants to donate it to charity and he'd
love your help to determine where it should go," Spicer said to reporters.
Ironic
The irony, of course -- at a time when questions continue
to be asked about overlapping interests between Trump's presidency and his
businesses -- is that one of the very reasons the framers wanted the president
to take a salary, even if they were wealthy enough not to need it, was to avoid
potential conflicts of interest. It was also designed to send the signal that
anyone -- not just the wealthy elite -- could become president, and served as a
reminder that the president is a public servant to the citizens who pay him a
salary.
Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley said in an
interview that in the case of Washington, a wealthy landowner, taking a salary
meant that if a bad fate befell his properties, having a salary could keep him
from succumbing to the temptation of potential corruption. "You come in,
you have all these rich holdings, but if for some unforeseen reason a storm
wipes out all your crops and now you're broke and in debt, you would at least
have money to live on," and not become "beholden to moneyed
interests."
In Trump's case, Princeton University political historian
Julian Zelizer said the question is not about the conflicts of interest that
could come up if the government did not pay him a salary, but the ones that
continue to be raised about potential entanglements between his business and
his presidency. "He can tell voters I'm not taking a salary -- I'm
obviously not someone who is looking to take a profit" from being
president, Zelizer said. "But that's not really capturing the bigger
problem."
"I won't take even $1," Donald Trump says on refusing presidential salary https://t.co/6Kg6oFpZcy pic.twitter.com/rFJDf2DzLW
— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 12, 2016
Many Americans, he says, "don't follow all the ins
and outs of the news," for example, about how hosting events at Mar-a-Lago
could benefit membership at the club he owns or other potential repercussions
of Trump's decision to retain ownership of his business.
"For him to say to them, 'I'm not even taking a
salary,' that sounds really good," Zelizer said.
Meanwhile, by offering a salary for the presidency, the framers
intended to encourage people of any background to run for the job -- not
everyone, of course, had the character or money of Washington. In The
Federalist paper No. 73, Alexander Hamilton wrote that "there are men who
could neither be distressed nor won into a sacrifice of their duty; but this
stern virtue is the growth of few soils."
If Trump indeed donates his salary this year, he won't be
the first president to do so; John F. Kennedy and Herbert Hoover, both of whom
were wealthy, also donated theirs. But the more presidents make a show of
giving away their fortunes, or of talk that they won't accept a salary, the
more it could create an expectation that presidents do so in the future.
Read also: Winners and losers in Trump's first budget plan
Former House and Senate speechwriter Rob Goodman
explained it this way in a November essay in Politico: "In such a
political culture, we would increasingly question the capacity of anyone other
than the wealthy to serve the public with integrity," he wrote in arguing
why Trump should take a salary. "Trump's pledge is a powerful statement
for a nation of booming inequality."
It's already a well-studied paradox of the presidency,
noted Barbara Perry, presidential studies director at the University of
Virginia's Miller Centre, that Americans tend to vote for wealthy presidents,
however much we may want presidents to "be like us." "We hate
the plutocrat, but we sure vote for really wealthy people to be president,"
she said.
Trump, she said, has twisted this paradox, as he has with
so many other political norms, with a strategy that seems to say "I don't
need to downplay how much money I have. In fact, I will play up how much money
I have. Rather than try to be like the common person, I will show you how
uncommon I am."
Indeed, it was concerns about wealth and inherited power
that also played a role in the decision by the framers to give presidents a
salary. The president's paycheck "has remained important as a reminder
that you're a public servant, and when you receive a salary, the person who
gives the salary has some rights ," Zelizer said. "The job is not an
inherited right. This isn't an aristocracy."
A businessman president should get that, Zelizer said,
whether he ultimately donates the money or not: "Donald Trump understands
the power of pay. When you pay someone, you can fire them."